The change from
the first education paradigm where information was rare, expensive and
relatively reliable to the second education paradigm where information
was overwhelming and considerably unreliable has been accompanied by
considerable changes in the sectors where people are employed.
The
1800's:
In the 1800s people were predominantly employed in the manufacturing
and farming sectors where they either made objects for sale or grew
crops and animals for food. There were a significant number of people
employed in the service sector as teachers, store owners, lawmakers
and politicians. A few people were "knowledge workers" able
to use their knowledge and understanding to generate new businesses
via entrepreneurial activity and risk taking.
The
20th Century:
In the 20th century there was a dramatic shift in the numbers of people
who employed in each of these sectors. The dominance of the manufacturing
and farming gave way to the rise of the service sector. The number of
people who were knowledge workers also increased but not significantly.
The
21st Century: The
21st century has seen a continuation of the trend of people moving out
of the manufacturing and farming sector and moving into the service
sector but at a reduced rate. However a new trend is beginning to emerge
and this is significant growth in the "knowledge" sector.
The
reasons for this are slightly more complex but they follow the general
line that as countries seek to preserve their Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) growth by selling products and services to overseas countries,
they do need to continue to manufacture and farm with increasing efficiently
but at the same time the relative high cost of their products (due to
the high price of local labour), in comparison to low-wage rate economies
means they will generally only really be able to compete by creating
innovative and/or well branded products, as overseas countries are willing
to pay a premium price for such products and services.
"New
technologies, which are taking over many of the routine tasks performed
in the workplace, are directing workers toward the more complex tasks
that require thinking, understanding, assimilating new knowledge, and
problem solving. A new computer-guided system for finding defects in
textiles does so with greater accuracy than human inspectors and enables
the work to be accomplished at much faster speeds (Taylor 1998)."
http://www.cete.org/acve/docgen.asp?tbl=tia&ID=126
