“Knowledge society” and its conception of knowledge: The production of interchangeable “knowledge workers” and the potential redundancy of educational process*

The concept of “knowledge society” or “knowledge-based society”, which was the “buzzword of EU governance” [1] in the time of the Lisbon strategy (2000-2010), is by no means an invention that would have its origin or a certain tradition in educational science. On the other hand it is not only a “policymaking” phrase, that are usually temporarily coined to standardize the vocabulary during the “policymaking” process and for its public presentation in various PR activities. The concept of “knowledge society” has its own specific background of origin and a certain continuity. One crucial remark on this point is needed. The recent introduction and adoption of this concept was not accompanied by a historical theoretical analysis, but in most part by merely wishful ideas and perceptions what “knowledge society” could be or should be. The dominant idea of this kind was that this type of society is something good and desired, something worth striving for. In the end, who would reject a future society presumably “full of knowledge”, which is so vividly recalling ideals that are by our imagination ascribed to the age of Enlightment?

But if we turn to the origins of the concept, then we should be a little surprised, because “knowledge society”, although it is speaking about education and knowledge, is definitely not a concept that originates from educational or humanistic sciences, but from another kind of discipline, which is technical in its nature, namely scientific management. This discipline, which purpose is in short how to turn people into human resources and how to make this type of resources productive as singular and as organized, has its own specific perception of knowledge and education. One of the first and most elaborated formations of this concept, under the name “knowledge economy”, can be found in the work of Peter F. Drucker, [2] The Age of Discontinuity (1969), where knowledge is put ahead of capital and becomes the central resource in economic growth and production. Also three decades later, in 2001, Drucker wrote that “the next society will be a knowledge society. Knowledge will be its key resource, and knowledge workers will be the dominant group in its workforce”. [3] Although rarely outspoken, this managerial theorem has an implicit assertion, namely to mobilize the educational process on all levels and in all forms as a unite of supply, which task should be to deliver knowledge, now understood as an applicable factor in the processes of production and innovation. We can not underestimate the original features of “knowledge society”, which were laid down as a managerial theorem concerned in finding new resources for the so called “economic growth”. Consciously or not, all present attempts how to deploy education into economic processes like those included in the Lisbon strategy, which is directly speaking about the shift to a knowledge-based economy, as “a powerful engine for growth, competitiveness and jobs”, [4] are more or less resembling the foundational principles of “knowledge society”, which is their first class reference, although it is not usually recognized as such.

In this introduction we exposed in a sketch one of today’s most decisive theorems that is, with significant help from “wishful thinking”, already accepted and introduced in the horizons of our present understanding what future function education should have. It is enough to take the ongoing “policymaking” processes in this field seriously to confirm that. But why should be the question of “knowledge society”, as it was exposed in this introduction, relevant in thinking the ESL problem? First of all, it is not so reasonable to throw directly our efforts in inventing new methods and solutions, if we have an already existing problem, mostly unrecognized as a part of a specific paradigmatic shift of the whole educational system. Second, if we accept this as a fact, then we also admit that we are not discussing a situation in educational field that would allow us to pursue our research in the imaginary “neutral” state. The managerial paradigm where “knowledge society” is founded upon is far from being something “neutral”. On the contrary, its specific and intentional agenda is just pictured as “neutral” and only possible. In the following paper I will expose some selected features of this concept and try to argue why, if accepted on the systemic level, could represent an additional obstacle in solving sensibly the ESL problem.

Let’s begin with the changing character of knowledge. If the purpose of educational process is becoming something else, such as restoring economic growth and decaying economic conditions, thus is prone to changing also the character of knowledge that is supposed to be taught in school. The ongoing strategies for future education (example ET2020) and their belief that schools should place greater emphasis on teaching entrepreneurship and business mentality (also as a class teaching principle) rather than on falling reading ability and literacy or civic education, is clearly indicating that the “knowledge of the future” will not be about, let’s say how to understand the world we are living in, but it will have to prove its legitimacy in technical innovation and entrepreneurial action. Let’s look closer to some sections in the present EU strategy (ET2020). The introduction of this document exposes one of the fundamental features of the ET2020 strategic document, which is set to fulfil a specific role, that is to »create a stronger European economy«. [5] It is obvious enough that the only listed purpose of this »educational« strategy is not educational in the end, but economic. This significant paradigmatic turn is consequently contained in the language itself, more exactly where it expresses the need to »radically rethink on how education and training systems can deliver the skills needed by the labour market«. [6] Consequently, the mentioned intention to “rethink” is interpreted as a »fundamental shift« [7] in emphasised learning outcome, more exactly in the resulting knowledge, skills and competences. But this “shift” is not only in their investment in boosting growth, competitiveness and productivity, but rather in its unspoken part, that “knowledge” become a sort of disposable commodity, a sort of means to an end, that is produced and disseminated in order to serve and fulfil these already exisiting practical demands. In this instrumental relationship ends are those that determine the means. As we already mentioned, this shift is not an authentic invention of EU visionaries, but rather a repetition and application of those contents that were earlier developed in managerial theorems. Drucker’s (1969) description which type of knowledge should be constitutive for knowledge society is the crucial reference and building material on the level of content and regarding its imperative form that dictates today’s attempts to subjugate entire educational systems as delivery unites of applicable knowledge. Let’s look closer to Drucker’s reformulation of knowledge:

“’Knowledge’ as normally considered by the ’intellectual’ is something very different from ’knowledge’ in the context of a ’knowledge economy’ or of ’knowledge work’. For the ’intellectual’, knowledge is what is in a book. But as long as it is in the book, it is only ’information’ if not mere ’data’. Only when a man applies the information to do something does it become knowledge. Knowledge, like electricity or money, is a form of energy that exists only when doing work. The emergence of the knowledge economy is not, in other words, part of ’intellectual history’ as it is normally conceived. It is part of the ’history of technology’, which recounts how man puts tools to work. When the intellectual says ’knowledge’ he usually thinks of something new. But what matters in the ’knowledge economy’ is whether knowledge, old or new, is applicable, e.g. Newtonian physics to the space programme”. [8]

For Drucker (1993) traditional knowledge of “educated people” helped them to understand many things, to talk and write about a variety of topics, but their knowledge was “general” and most important it was still “applied to being and not to doing”. [9] This is the reason why these “generalists” are outdated, because “they did not know enough to do any one thing”. [10] The knowledge Drucker is considering has to prove itself in action: “What we now mean by knowledge is information effective in action, information focused on results. Results are outside the person, in society and economy, or in the advancement of knowledge”. [11] One more citation is needed on this point to clarify another important difference that constitutes this new knowledge in comparison with “traditional” education with emphasis on science:

“Knowledge’ rather than ’science’ has become the foundation of the modern economy. […] This demand in return, reflects the basic fact that knowledge has become productive. The systematic and purposeful acquisition of information and its systematic application, rather than ’science’ or ’technology’, are emerging as the new foundation for work, productivity, and effort throughout the world.” [12]

As we see knowledge in the “knowledge economy”, and this is not just one type of knowledge among others but the only remaining and constitutive one, is not about understanding the world, it’s past and present, but has to be put at work in the same manner tools are put at work, it has to be useful and especially it has to be productive. Its legitimacy is proven only when directly contributing to production processes and innovations. [13] On this point we have to approach more closely to our central question of ESL. This reformulation is not regarding just knowledge, as it is usually percieved, but is equally valid also for those that learns it, develops it and uses it. If knowledge is now used in productive activity, then this activity can not be something that happens independently or separately from those that perform the activity. On the contrary, if knowledge has to be productive, then also those who use it as a tool have to be productive. In the final step, those who use tools become means themselves. What other meaning than this is contained in the widely used formulation of “human resources” or “human capital”, which is not only what Laval (2005) argues in classical liberal tradition that an individual is in possession of his/her own means of production, but that when “stock of knowledge, qualifications, competences, individual characteristics” [14] and all other most human aspects of an individual are formed and exist only to serve productive purposes, then this individual in not far to become an asset himself. And because “education will become the center of the knowledge society, and the school its key institution” [15] as Drucker said in 1994, a statement that was entirely reiterated in OECD’s general headlines, that “education will be in the center of the knowledge-based society”, [16] then also those that are participants in the educational process, both educators and those who are to be educated, are fully included into this logic. There are no doubts that the only place where the acquisition of “productive” knowledge will unfold is in “organized formal education”. [17] Therefore, entire new generations who are supposed to learn, study and be taught, they do so in order to become useful and productive. This kind of educational purpose is now an official statement in various EU strategies. Per example in Rethinking Education (2012) we can find an explicit assignment that “that education systems also need to modernise and be more flexible in how they operate to respond to the real needs of today’s society. Europe will only resume sustained growth by producing highly skilled and versatile people who can contribute to innovation and entrepreneurship”. [18] Mostly unquestioned statements like this eliminate directly the humanist tradition of education embodied in bildung (Humboldt). The so called “real needs” of today’s society, [19] presented without explanation simply because “needs” [20] themselves contain a certain constraint of necessity and can be communicated without explanation, become to dictate what activity and outcome should education display. That is nothing more and nothing less than the expressed “production” of productive animal laborans, whose only skills and competences needed are those that can quantitatively increase, technically develop and endure a society of a status quo, capable to violently change in a very narrow gap, that is in inventing new and new technical modes how to fulfil its only organisational principle left that is derived from the necessity of the life process itself (production and consumption). We have to mention once more that Drucker, like the EU education strategies later, does not have partial perspectives, but a universal one. The coming education of those “technologists” who will be able to apply knowledge to work will replace both the vocational training and classical education and become a “cornerstone of tomorrow’s education for everybody”. [21]

If the conception and character of knowledge that should be taught is drifting toward “productivity”, then also the approach of school system and educators toward students is prone and subjected to change corresponding to these new demands. The general aspect of this change is that those who are to be educated are not approached by educators as future citizens but as future “knowledge workers”, whose future “function” is not how to be capable to live in political community as a citizen but how to fulfil and create “as specialists” the productive demands of a society of organizations. [22] In Drucker’s (1969) writings “knowledge worker” has a particular importance as a “central employee in the society” [23] and the “leading social group”, [24] that is the true successor of both, the skilled and unskilled manual worker. It is more than interesting that the term “knowledge worker” is not mentioned in official EU documents we are dealing in this paper, although they reiterate all its fundamental principles. Let’s now look closer to some crucial aspects and features of Drucker’s “knowledge worker”. We should begin with the observation that although school is put into the center, Drucker is not discussing nothing like per example “knowledge student”. From this detail we can deduce that someone does not begin to be a “knowledge worker” when he/she starts to work or steps into job market, that would be too late, but rather when starts his/her educational process. It is school where “knowledge worker” is produced, while installing a universal skill that defines him/her – “that of using knowledge and its systematic acquisition as the foundation for performance, skill, and achievement”.Drucker 1969, 299 In a certain aspect a “knowledge worker” throughout his whole life does not have a time dedicated solely to learning/education and a time dedicated to work. Education and work, these two different activities are not separated any more but merged into a new activity, performed throughout the whole lifespan. Strictly speaking, “knowledge worker” is a non-student and a non-worker and represents a new figure. Second, because “knowledge workers” are not supposed to be autonomous, they are defined and produced with an inbuilt imperative: “knowledge workers must be effective”. [25] The level of effectiveness is proportional with highly specialised knowledge. The principle is simple: “The more specialized knowledges are, the more effective they will be”. [26] The imperative of effectiveness itself dictates that “highly effective knowledge workers do not want to be anything but narrow specialists”. [27] Here we have a dangerous paradox contained in the fact that if narrow specialist dedicate their efforts, in order to be effective, solely into their specialisation, they fall victims of their narrowness itself. Although they are spending most of their time in their miniature filed of work, they are unavoidably still part as living beings of a human world happening outside of narrowness and work. The greatest danger these specialist are subjected to and also the greatest danger they represent for the human world is, that due to their technical attitude their “ethical” judgement about “what to do” swings to often around the question “is it possible to do it or not”. On the other hand when tempted to speak and interpret the world “outside” their specialisation, they often resort to most instant analogies originating exactly form their profesional speciality, through which everything is explainable in advance. We have to ask ourselves thoroughly, which conditions are we facing when the perspective is turned upside down and accepted in Drucker’s (1969) terms, namely that the “educated people” due to their traditional and general knowledge become “dilettantes” and “knowledge workers” the new intellectuals? Third, “knowledge worker’s” cognitive capacities are intended to be used for work, even more; “…the job for the highly schooled is also a job in which one no longer works with one’s hands but by applying one’s mind”. [28] According to the Humboldtian concept of bildung the development of human intellectual and cognitive capacities, also capacities for moral and aesthetic judgement, comes from his/her “interaction with the outer world”, [29] while the “knowledge worker” as the latest stage of animal laborans is not in interaction with the world, exactly because his/her mind is applied solely to labour processes, which in postindustrial era results in producing new and new technical means to maintain, accelerate and innovate, in Marxists terms, the metabolism between humanity and nature, yet including humanity itself as “nature” intended to be processed. The new condition on the horizont is that “knowledge worker”, because produced as a highly specialised “cognitive asset” of knowledge society, has few chances or no place left to retreat into contemplation and thinking. Fourth, “knowledge worker” is by definition someone that is supposed to be managed by a “’manager’ whose special competence is to plan, organize, integrate, and measure the work of knowledge people”. [30]

We have to consider all these aspect that are intrinsic to the concept of “knowledge worker”, without whom there is no such thing as “knowledge society”. To put it simply, to fulfil itself, knowledge society requires most of all knowledge workers, whose value can be now determined by their “function”, more exactly by their productive output in the processes of knowledge society (innovation, creation, production etc.) for which they are produced and to which they are reduced. But at the same time their uniqueness as acting and thinking individuals is highly questionable if not lost at all, because a certain “function” of a knowledge worker can always be fulfilled by another one with more elevated skills, higher efficiency or a newer idea, thus they are interchangeable by their nature. If “knowledge worker” is defined in an imperative form, “must be effective”, then this is also the principal parameter, measuring performans, that is deciding how valuable or worth a human being is. Looking from the perspective of an individual student the problem regarding the ESL phenomenon becomes even more evident. If the purpose of education is levelled to let’s say economic survivalism and employability, then school can be understandably percieved just as a type of training for future work opportunities and market competition. If so, nothing is preventing that school education (educators also) could easily be regarded as something expendable, because what activity can offer better training for work opportunities and entrepreneurial skills, than the practicality of the work itself or of any other specialized work training programme available on the market? On the other hand, if policies introducing “knowledge society” will succeed in revolutionizing the whole vertical of education, then we face an even bigger question, that was left unanswered also in Drucker’s opus. It is obvious that a society founded on specialist knowledge and composed of specialists is instrumental and consequently not an end in itself. The question that remains unanswered is “capital”; what for? What would be the final purpose and meaning of our life? Although posed in a macro perspective, these questions have to be considered in an appropriate form and dimension also in the moment when we have to explain the meaning of education to those that are to be educated, of course, if we still accept that education is a matter of being and not only doing. In psychological terms this would be narrowly called motivation. What are we going to school for? What are we learning every day for? To become effective specialists and earn good money! Ok, but what for? These questions cannot be answered in the perspective of “knowledge society” or it’s supporting managerial theorems. But if left behind and unanswered they not simply disappear. They stay as a void, where students can quickly perceive their schooling endeavour as meaningless.

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