Rethinking Education in the Information Age

The Research of Thompson Professor Richard Murnane [caption id="attachment_8556" align="alignleft" width="182" caption="Thompson Professor Richard Murnane (© 2004 Andrew Brilliant / Brilliant Pictures, Inc.)"]

[/caption] In 1994, when science writer Jeremy Rifkin predicted mass unemployment at the hands of technology inThe End of Work, his book sent shivers of apprehension throughout the American workforce. Tens of millions of jobs would be eliminated, he contended, leaving only a small group of elite managers to prosper in the high-tech global economy. But, according to economist Richard Murnane, HGSE’s Thompson Professor of Education and Society, Rifkin made a major miscalculation. In a groundbreaking new book, The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market, Murnane and his coauthor, Professor Frank Levy of MIT, argue that advances in technology have restructured America’s job distribution, rather than obliterated its workforce. “The challenge now is to provide our high-school graduates with the skills they will need to gain access to the growing number of technical, professional, and managerial jobs,” Murnane asserts. “Many of those jobs now require some level of higher education or special training, and our students have to be prepared to take advantage of those opportunities.”

To help students prepare for the new working environment, high schools will have to reevaluate not what they teach, but how they empower their students to use information, says Murnane.

To help students prepare for the new working environment, high schools will have to reevaluate not what they teach, but how they empower their students to use information, says Murnane. In their book, Murnane and Levy urge educators to help students develop complex communication and expert thinking skills. “These are not specific subjects that compete for classroom time with math, science, and social studies,” says Murnane. “These are the tools that enable students to understand the concepts behind the facts.” For instance, today’s customer service representatives must not only competently use databases, draft e-mails, and manage automated telephone services and Web pages, they must also know how to respond to unexpected customer concerns. Workers unskilled in the art of complex communication—observing, listening, persuading, and negotiating—will simply be less sought after in today’s Internet age, says Murnane. Similarly, as machines take over many of the basic, repetitive tasks that humans used to perform, workers increasingly require more training to use the new technologies effectively. For example, good auto mechanics need to know what to do next when the computer diagnostics say that a car has no problem, yet the car does not operate properly. Often, this requires understanding how the car’s systems interact and the limits of computer diagnostics. If high schools neglect to teach students how to think “expertly”—to apply learned knowledge from one set of circumstances to new, open-ended situations—Murnane warns that their graduates will be unprepared for the growing number of jobs that provide a middle-class salary in an economy increasingly populated by machines. Achieving these changes in K­­­­­-12 education is no small order. The good news is that federal and state standards-based reforms can pave the way for coherent, schoolwide efforts that prepare students to become expert thinkers and complex communicators. However, the assessment used to measure students’ knowledge and skills are critical. If exams ask only what happened, and not why, Murnane cautions that students may not receive an education that will prepare them for the next stage of their lives. “The declining value of a high-school diploma has made it clear that all students must now excel at expert thinking and complex communication—not just the students aiming for competitive colleges,” he says. “What we teach, how we empower our teachers, and how we assess our students will determine who participates in the new economy.” About the Article A version of this article originally appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. For More Information More information about Richard Murnane is available in the Faculty Profiles.