Human Capital in the Knowledge Society: People, Profit and Peaceful Development

by Peter Smith



Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO


Honoured colleagues on the dais, associates in the room, it is a great pleasure for me to be here as the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO for Education. I am honoured to have been invited to join such distinguished company to discuss the critical issue addressed by this conference: human capital in the knowledge society. And I do so with the humility that comes with the knowledge that crossing the divide we face between demand and supply is a tall and complicated order. Moreover, I am sobered by the fact that the work we do here this week is, in fact, the easy work. Sharing perspectives and experience, discussing and analyzing the problem, getting the data, doing the research is the easy part. Creating learning/working environments that are rich in texture and purposefully intended to promote and sustain the deep needs of society, building a culture of peace, and developing the intellectual and behavioural capacity of the broad population including the workforce is far more difficult.



Too often, we describe the need for new structures and then ignore our own words in practice. Too often, we choose the familiar and comforting over the new and different. If, however, we want new societies of educated and thinking people, if we want productivity and opportunity for the many, then we must harness the transformational potential of the times we are in. The great irony we face is that conventional approaches to education and workforce development have gotten us where we are. They cannot, however, get us where we need to go. We must live the change we have made in order to continue the revolution of economic and social opportunity that has been generated.



It is common sense. If you want to compete in the Tour de France, you can’t ride a tricycle. And if you want to run a marathon, you don’t wear hiking boots. If we aspire to world class results in education, to new global standards and expectations, then we should be ready to do the hard work of developing and implementing, monitoring and improving the new practices, the transformation of time, space, and responsibility unlocked by the technological revolution, still in its infancy, that will make us successful. This is an area where UNESCO’s Education Sector stands ready to partner with any who come forward beginning today and into the years ahead.



Let me begin with a few points to underscore the situation that we are in, in human terms.



Take the bull by the horns

We have a saying in my country, “Take the bull by the horns”. It suggests that, if you want to succeed, you have to face your challenges directly and seize them with sureness and force. But, the saying carries another implication: if you do not take the bull by the horns, the bull will gore you. If we are serious about the human capital issues raised in the conference prospectus, then we should understand that a failure to act will lead to a larger failure in the years ahead economically, civically, and socially.



Darwin doesn’t care

Why is this necessarily so? Because Darwin doesn’t care what we say, it is what we do relative to others that matters. Recently, in the International Herald Tribune, a writer described what he thought was an economically short-sighted and failed business orientation in certain parts of the European continent. He argued that, even if economic or educational policy satisfied short-term needs, the long-term impact favoured the more competitive, flexible and enlightened policy. We live in a time when a decade is an eon and falling behind in the education race is a fatal blow to a country’s or a region’s future.



Darwin’s assertion that the future goes to those who are flexible, not the smartest or the fastest, defies the rhetoric of politics, or business, or education. And it scorns short-term success at the expense of long-term strength. Because Darwin doesn’t care. He doesn’t play favourites, he describes the conditions for success. His theory rewards the long-term competitive advantage.



Workers who think and thinkers who work

Our schools and nonformal programs need to educate thinkers who can work and workers who can think. When we started considering the issue of educational results 20 to 30 years ago, we could afford poor alignment between schools curricula and the needs of the workplace and the larger society. But those days are over. For the first time in history, a failure to closely match human characteristics needed with the work to be performed will have very negative consequences. And, if we want a thoughtful citizenry and workforce that learns throughout life and contributes to the continuous renewal of their company or their organization, then we must want the same things for the society around us.



You cannot grow a strong plant in a garden of weakness. More educated people are more socially, civically, and economically powerful. They engage in the society around them more, and they are more economically successful. So, as focused as we might be on the bottom line, we must be mindful of the societal bottom line as well and work to strengthen that also.



Bring the margin to mainstream

Where will we find the new work force we need? Of course, there is a fierce competition for those already trained and proven. Countries and businesses recruit and compete for the existing talent. But pursuing that policy alone is short-sighted and insufficient. Until new workers are brought to the table, there will never be enough people. We must succeed in our education and training programs with those who have historically been marginalized. The pathway to a knowledge society workforce lies in widening the mainstream of opportunity to more people, bringing those previously excluded to the table of opportunity through education and training. If success is the objective, our business goals are inextricably connected to larger social goals. Our host country, the Republic of Korea, is an excellent example of such success. Its education and training programmes of the past forty years broke free from tradition and focused on preparing adaptable, thinking workers for the knowledge and technology-driven workplace. As we all know, the results of these policies have taken the Republic of Korea to levels of prosperity and social development unimaginable a mere three decades ago.



The problems we face

Not enough teachers

A recent study completed by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS), located in Montreal, Quebec, put the teaching crisis plainly in perspective. Ten years from today, the global demand for teachers will exceed the supply by 15-18 million people. So, the one thing we know for sure is that, in ten years, there will be fewer teachers per student, not more. This assumes that our ability to train and reward teachers stays constant or even improves slightly. When you analyze this data for “hard to teach” subject areas: math, science, technology, language, the figures get much worse. The hard truth is that people with Masters Degrees in these specialty areas will opt for the private sector or other, higher paying careers in most cases, leaving hundreds of millions of children without a trained teacher in the classroom.

These are the horns of the bull. Untreated, this situation alone is an incalculable drag on economic, social and civic progress. Why? Because success in the workplace and the community stands on the shoulders of successful learning in formal and informal programs. You cannot have one without the other. You can skim talent from the top, and you can recruit talent away from your competitors. But that is a struggle defined by scarcity that ignores the more dangerous and difficult reality: we need many more who can step up to the challenge of the 21st century. So we must find answers of quality to the question, “How do children learn effectively and well with less or even without trained teachers?”



Poor participation and learning rates in hard to learn areas

We need to rethink our approaches to teaching and learning in the “hard to learn” areas of math, science, and technology. Too often the subjects are offered like a dose of castor oil, assumed to be difficult, with a high failure rate being part of the reality of teaching difficult subjects. Drawing on advances in cognitive science and emerging modalities for delivering learning, curricula and pedagogies can be adapted to the learning style of the individual learner, creating much more success while maintaining high standards.



The academic structure of knowledge does not fit the real world of practical application in a fast-paced and innovative environment.

When I served as Founding President of California State University, Monterey Bay, we learned an important lesson. Representatives from Silicon Valley companies told us that they wanted us to educate students to be “everything but an engineer”. Their complaint was that the licensed engineers they got needed retraining immediately and were not ready for the “real work” awaiting them. They suggested that we forgo the engineering programs and educate people to use knowledge to solve problems. You do as you are taught. If we want people to be creative at work, we must encourage them to be creative in school.



Universities have to face a fundamental challenge to their core identity. Consider the two following examples. First, in a world where content is ubiquitous and ever-expanding, what has happened to the universities’ traditional role as the gatherer, organizer, and presenter of content through curriculum? Can the university retain its monopoly as the lead provider of verified content? The answer is no: they cannot. Universities, as well as TVET providers, have to rethink their approach to curricula and pedagogy, seeking the experts where they are and focusing on learning outcomes, designed to achieve both through pedagogy and content, the intellectual and substantive learning goals set in advance.



In a world where the pace of change is ever-increasing, can universities afford to reinvest in modern equipment at rate high enough to stay at the leading edge of technology and knowledge so their graduates enter the work force with the right grounding in new applications and technology? No, they cannot. We need a new form of Public Private or even Multi-stakeholder Partnerships, which includes in addition to the private sector also civil society inputs. In these partnerships, as we develop centers of excellence at our universities, we also focus on the resource that the private sector, innovation and re-capitalization driven by the marketplace. Universities cannot proceed separately and survive, in the main.



Don’t just increase trained intelligence, deepen intellectual capacity

This requires working purposefully on creating curricula and learning environments where those characteristics are rewarded and enhanced.

Schools and universities say they want students to think for themselves, to be critical thinkers and problem-solvers, to work well on teams. They say they want their graduates to be able to apply what they know and continue to learn. Too often, however, the taught curriculum emphasizes the internalization and regurgitation of information and concepts. I call this trained intelligence. It won’t be sufficient in the knowledge society. If schools and universities do not lay the requisite base of content and intellectual orientation, the already significant costs associated with retraining will continue to expand. If we want TVET graduates to be able to think critically, then we have to ask them to do it and reward it academically. If we want professionals who are university graduates to work effectively on teams, then we have to reward and require it as part of their study. There is an old saying you have probably heard, “Hire for skills, fire for behaviour”. The problem is right on the college transcript, for all to see. A compilation of subject matter and grades, how the student did at school. Nowhere does it focus on behaviour, nowhere on the intellectual ability that underlies the fruitful use of knowledge. We are left to our imaginations and what conclusions can be drawn from an interview. This is not the path to the knowledge society.



Where will we get the workers?

The work of reforming a school system is never done. The Republic of Korea has accomplished this so well, there needs to be a vision for continuous improvement cycle; always managing your failures towards success in the future. This is the work of generations. And what is a country to do while it waits? Where will the new workers come from?



Look at the resources right in front of you. Consider the workplace as a source of talent, often concealed, as well as a laboratory for learning. Consider the nonformal and experiential learning achieved at work or in other settings as legitimate for advanced standing towards degrees and certificates. Make the problems faced at work the content of the curriculum. Involve the workers in the design and implementation of their training and education. Research shows that knowledge gained from interactive learning formats is retained longer and used better (Scheckley and Keeton). And lastly, we need to break down the barriers between learning and work so that learners can move effortlessly from learning to work and back without hindrance or loss. Indeed, the recommendations that emerged from the Second International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education, held right here in Seoul in 1999, stressed that multiple pathways to academic achievement were a key requirement for building a flexible and competitive workforce.



Finally, we need policies, investments, and practices that open the closed doors of educational practice at all levels and focus on two objectives:

· Quality learning for all

· A diversity of practice in the educational marketplace that rewards deep learning and effectiveness.



Within this new environment for effective learning, there are new policies that need to be considered.

1. International protocols need to be developed that allow certificates and degrees to travel with the graduate wherever he or she goes. The day must end when professional competence is lost and left at the national border.

2. The largest and most accessible pool of unrecognized talent today is already in the workforce. If existing workers can have the skills and abilities that they have developed nonformally and informally at work recognized for academic credit, two things will happen. First, there will be an explosion of capacity as skills are recognized and rewarded. Second, as existing employees move up in the career ladder, spaces for others to work will be created along with higher effectiveness and efficiency in the workplace.



Conclusion

The demand for new intellectual and human capital, coupled with an exploding supply of techniques and modalities for delivering high quality educational services, combine to create an irresistible force for change and quality throughout the field of education. I am confident that we will pay sufficient attention to emerging technologies and the research of the profile of the new demand for intellectual capital as well as the skills that support it. We will fail, however, in the long run, if we view education as simply a means to an economic end or if we believe that the educational needs of the emerging population, including the workforce in question, will be met primarily with conventional approaches.



Education, business, government and society at large must join hands in a new partnership that includes a free flow of expertise and teaching, new curricula, access to cutting edge, appropriate technology and research as never before to bring best practices and improved results for many learners currently marginalized. UNESCO can and will work with any and all interested to identify and disseminate new best practices in PPPs, teaching and learning, and IT modalities. Working together, we can create a climate of confidence in new approaches to teaching and learning through research and best practice development.



The personal, social, environmental and civic dimensions of the educational enterprise are all contained in the strategy for economic success and are pillars of the sustainable model of development towards which we are all aspiring. Those who understand this and act aggressively will successfully have grabbed the bull by the horns. They will look back in a generation’s time to see the seamless link between quality education for all and the work force of the future. I look forward to working with you on this important challenge.



Thank you.