World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 464

economies (every kind of expertise imaginable, security services or high-tech consultancy services, financial, accounting and management services) and in the more traditional public sector (social services, health and education services, etc.). In both these cases, information and communication play a vital role. The key aspect here is the personalized acquisition and processing of specific data for a clearly defined project. In this type of service, both the provider and the user influence the quality of the relationship between them. Clearly, people can no longer be trained for this sort of work in the same way as they learned how to plough the land or make a sheet of steel. These new jobs are about interpersonal relationships; workers' relationships with the materials and processes they are using are secondary. The growing service sector needs people with good social and communication skills - skills that are not necessarily taught at school or university.
Lastly, in the ultra high-tech organizations of the future, where relational inadequacies might cause serious dysfunctions, new types of skills will be required, with an interpersonal rather than intellectual basis. This may provide an opportunity for people with few or no formal educational qualifications. Intuition, common sense, judgement and leadership skills are not confined to highly qualified people. How and where are these more or less innate skills to be taught? The problem is akin to that raised by the idea of vocational training in developing countries. Educational content simply cannot be inferred from a statement of the skills or abilities required for specific tasks.
Work in the informal economy
The nature of work is very different in the economies of developing countries where most people are not wage-earners. In many sub-Saharan African countries and some Latin American and Asian countries, only a small proportion of the population is in paid employment. The vast majority works in the traditional subsistence economy, where specific job qualifications are not required and where know-how is the fruit of tacit knowledge. For this reason, education cannot simply be modelled on the types of education that seem to fit the bill in post-industrial societies. Besides, the function of learning is not confined to work; it should meet the wider aim of achieving formal or informal participation in development. This often involves social skills as much as occupational skills.
In other developing countries, a thriving unofficial modern economy based on trade and finance may exist alongside a small official economic sector and agriculture. This parallel economy indicates the existence of business communities capable of meeting local requirements.
In both these cases, there is no point in providing the population with high-cost training (since the teachers and the educational resources have to
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