Success in the information age: Critique of suggestions made by Dave Murphy
Barbara Hannaford
PSYC 7010: Learning & Assessment
Take home exam #1
February 14, 2000
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We have discussed many current tends and changes in required knowledge, attitudes, and skills that will be required for the information age. A variety of authors have described these trends and/or have offered their ideas about the requirements for success. Using this information, you are to critique the article, "Learning the Ropes is More Than Learning the Job" by Dave Murphy which appeared in The Atlanta Constititution on February 67, 2000.
Select what you consider to be the two most important points made by the author. Justify your selection by describing several trends that will make these particular points extremely important for K-12 students. Describe knowledge, attitudes, and skills that will be necessary to develop if one were to successfully take the author's advice on these points. How do your recommendations relate to the SCANS report and to Huitt's critique of that report? Your answer should include specific connections between the trends, the author's points, and the required knowledge, attitudes, and skills.
Finally, make specific recommendations about how teachers and schools can address the development of the prerequisities for success. For example, what should educators do to help students develop the necessary knowledge, attitudes, and skills so that they can "get their financial acts together" when students become young adults in their 20s.
With the rapidity of change that sweeps our world from the agriculture and industrial age into the information age, educators and governmental leaders worry that education will not be transforming or reforming with equal swiftness. While technology has quickly changed the face of education, several trends, such as de-jobbing and entrepreneurship, are impacting education and educational policy makers at a slower pace. As business leaders, educators, and the government try to cope with the flux, students sit in classrooms around the country oblivious to the impact of these trends on their futures. In "Learning the ropes is more than learning the job," Dave Murphy (2000) describes personal attributes needed for success in the constantly changing information age and global economy. Murphy’s observations correspond with the skills and competencies of both the SCANS report and Huitt’s "SCANS report revisited." While many of Murphy’s ideas overlap, two significant points, technological proficiency and financial responsibility, should be of importance to K-12 students as they prepare to meet the ever-changing demands of a global labor force.
Murphy (2000) states that technology won’t go away. Indeed, the information age has seen technology revolutionize and entrench itself in communications, armed forces, education, medicine, entertainment, and even family meal planning. As students prepare to become successful members of a global workforce, their need to be technologically adept is profound. The SCANS report (as cited in Huitt, 1997) determined that in order to be successful, effective workers need to be competent in using computers to process information, in understanding technological systems, in applying technology to specific tasks, and in maintaining and troubleshooting technologies. Technology competency requires that students possess knowledge and skills in not only computer usage for task completion but also in an understanding of how technological systems work and interact. Yet, are students aware of the importance of these skills? Are their parents?
Our students are very much aware of the rapidity of change surrounding technology. In fact, they embrace it. Just ask any ten-year-old who wants his or her Nintendo replaced with a Sony Playstation. Our students have been immersed in technology since birth; indeed, some students are the products of medical technology. However, students are unaware of the significance of their own technological proficiency on their ability to become productive members of society. Society seems equally oblivious. Many parents and community members, especially those in rural areas, are unaware of the impact globalization plays in what students need to know and need to be able to do. As the trend towards a global economy progresses, the wheels of change move slowly in educational reform, especially in implementing technology. While our students are not technologically illiterate, many educators and school systems are.
Providing students the opportunity to achieve technological competency can be a daunting task for educators and school systems held hostage by curriculum objectives, standardized test scores, politicians, and taxpayers. The expense of keeping pace with the rapid changes in technology is prohibitive for many school systems. Educators and departments of education, as well as government and business leaders, must convince parents, local school boards, and taxpayers of the necessity of classroom technology in order to produce students who are competitive in a global economy and labor force.
The benefits of technology in the classroom extend beyond the obvious. Not only are students afforded the opportunity to acquire the essential employment skill of computer proficiency, technology in the classroom also builds interpersonal and thinking skills necessary for the workplace. High school students, after four years of exposure to computers as tools for exploration, became independent and collaborative problem-solvers, communicators, record-keepers, and learners with the computers (David, 1994). Students (and teachers) know technology is fun; hence the proliferation of cell phones, video games, and interactive websites. While many educators use technology to enhance their lessons, they may fail to stress to students that the ability to use technology is essential as an employment skill. The following recommendations will help teachers to impress upon their students the need to be technologically proficient and adaptive. First, teachers must wisely choose the technology incorporated into their lesson plans. The use of technology must be hands-on, relevant, engaging, and promote critical thinking and problem solving skills. Additionally, educators and schools need to instill in students, and in society, the attitude that the ability to use technology is a marketable skill, one that must be constantly upgraded if students are to remain competitive in a global economy.
Technology and the rapidity with which it changes every aspect of human life have led to other trends. De-jobbing and entrepreneurship are changing what many have considered an American institution: the job. There are now 45,000,000 persons in this country who are self-employed or who are working in part-time or temporary positions (Whitman, 1996). Entrepreneurship requires not only the skills and competencies found in the SCANS report and the "SCANS report revisited," but also the financial management skills Murphy discusses. K-12 students need to be made aware of the importance of the skills necessary for entrepreneurship, particularly financial management, since it is expected that by the year 2000, 50% of all homes will have home-based businesses (Huitt, 1995).
The SCANS report cites the productive use of resources such as allocating time, money, materials, space, and staff as a competency necessary for an individual to be a successful member of the labor force. In addition, the SCANS report further finds personal responsibility and self-management to be essential workplace skills (Huitt, 1997). Huitt (1997) expands these skills to include setting and using goals (statement of desired end results), self-efficacy (one's beliefs about the possibility of success), and self-regulation (one's actions to guide one's own behavior towards a goal). Few types of employment exemplify the need for setting and using goals, self-efficacy, self-regulation, and financial responsibility as entrepreneurship. Murphy asserts that learning to save and invest is one of the most crucial career skills. He instructs readers to find jobs to support their lifestyles, learn to budget, and learn to invest. The information age has led to economic globalization, entrepreneurship, and the necessity for understanding personal finances.
Yet again, society seems oblivious to the need for learning how to budget, how to save, and how to invest. In addition to growing up in a technologically changing whirlwind, students are products of an immediate gratification society. Shopping malls cater to teens and young adults with expendable incomes, expensive tastes, and little sense of saving or practicality. Credit card companies solicit high school seniors. Our students are not prepared for the skills required to be financially responsible and successful. While schools may offer classes in economics and finance, personal responsibility in financial security is not usually part of the curriculum. In addition, entrepreneurship as a career choice is seldom offered to students, male or female. One recommendation to ensure students are financially prepared for the rapid changes of the information age is for educators and schools to restructure their curriculums. To meet the demands of an information age workforce, curriculums must include coursework in personal finance and entrepreneurship as well as opportunities for internships with local entrepreneurs.
Educators and schools have a particular responsibility to teach financial management skills and entrepreneurship to female students, as females are frequently among the first groups to suffer from change in the workplace and 52% of households with incomes less than $15,000 are headed by single mothers (Huitt, 1998). Huitt asserts "if women do not want to pick up the economic crumbs left behind by men, they need to make the transitions now." Schools must become the entities providing those transitions by encouraging young women to enroll in more math, science, technology, and finance courses. With the trend of de-jobbing impacting personal incomes and the discrepancy in pay between men and women for equitable work, more women are starting their own businesses. Close to eight million women own their own businesses (Huitt). Teachers and schools must communicate to young women, and to young men, the need to master personal financial responsibility and entrepreneurial skills in order to be successful, productive, and self-reliant members of society.
Education is a key to success in the information age (Huitt, 1997). The SCANS report calls for a workforce educated in basic cognitive and affective skills. Huitt’s "SCANS report revisited" expands that education to include optimism, setting and using goals, self-efficacy, and self-regulation. Murphy (2000) further expands what a workforce needs to know to include adaptability in a technologically evolving world and personal financial responsibility. In order to meet the needs of students as the metamorphosis of the information age continues, schools and teachers must transform what takes place in the classroom. While some school systems are adequately providing students with the basic cognitive and technological skills necessary, many are not.
Curriculums cannot continue to be structured around the whims of departments of education and legislators or improving standardized test scores. Curriculums must be structured so that every student masters basic cognitive skills in reading, writing, arithmetic, speaking and listening; basic affective skills in attitude, values and character; and basic conative skills in setting and using goals as well as in self-management (including personal financial management). These school reforms are imperative in the information age and a global workforce.
Teaching the skills necessary to ensure success, productivity, self-reliance, and happiness cannot be left solely to the responsibility of educators. The SCANS report (as cited in Huitt, 1997), the "SCANS report revisited," (Huitt, 1997) and Dave Murphy (2000) call for sweeping changes in educational philosophies if schools are to provide the skills persons entering a labor force will need. Business and industry, religions, families, and communities must work together to educate students in core curriculums, technology, finance, character, and tolerance. With the rapidity of change currently witnessed in the move to an information age, school and curriculum reform of paralleled rapidity is compelling. If students are not prepared for the changes the current trends bring, their chances for success are sadly limited.
[Instructor's note: Several new terms/skills/issues were mentioned in the summary paragraph. These should have been discussed in the body of the paper.]
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