starting out

Hello fans!  (ok, I'm being optimistic *grin*)
Over the next 6 months, I am preparing for and writing my comprehensive exams at UBC, so I am going to be reading, writing and ruminating about my topics of interest.  By posting daily on this blog, I hope to accomplish a few things:
1) organize my thoughts
b) discipline my time
iii) share ideas with others interested in the same things

If you are interested in Lifelong learning and where it intersects with the Knowledge-based economy, I would be thrilled to have you follow, share your ideas, and critique mine.

Let me start with the briefest of profiles:
After careers in education and pharmaceuticals (training and sales) I returned to school to work on a PhD.  Power and work-life balance have been themes of interest to me academically and socially.  But I am currently exploring conceptualizations of the KBE.  I joke that my working title is: "LLL and the KBE:  WTF?" because although the KBE seems to be the driving factor behind much LLL conversations, it's definitions are either vague, confusing, or in conflict with other definitions of the KBE.  So, one of the tasks I have set out for myself is to better understand what different stakeholders mean when they use the term. I plan on posting here, my various ruminations as I explore.

Today I read the first 2 chapters of a book edited by Kuhn, Tomassini and Simons entitled "Towards a Knowledge-based Economy?  Knowledge and learning in European educational research."  In these chapters Kuhn explains why he believes that research and policy in the EU is directed toward "the theoretical domestication of knowledge and learning for global competition." (p. 19).  His basic argument is this:

1.  A large amount of policy and research is driven by the belief that we are in a knowlege based economy.
2.  The research agenda of the EU is evidence that we don't know much about what a knowledge based economy is.  We certainly don't know the relationship between knowledge and the economy.
3. Economists tend to explain that the KBE reflects a fundamental change in knowledge and in knowlege's role in economics.
4. The theoretical explanations of the relationship between knowledge and the economy as presented by "learning economists" is non-sensical and internally inconsistent.
5. Economists tend to prioritize tacit knowledge as the only economically valuable knowledge, because it cannot be widely held by the competition and because new knowledge tends to start as tacit knowledge developed through praxis in practice.
6. The problem with tacit knowledge, is that it doesn't fit a market model because it's hard to buy/sell.  In order to buy the tacit knowledge, you must first codifiy it.  By codifiying it, it because obtainable by the competition, so it loses its value.   Hmmmm.  We have a conundrum!
7. Since knowledge refuses to fit nicely into market models of the economy and follow the rules of capitalism, Kuhn says that economists call for political intervention, more or less, to beat it into submission.
8. These political interventions should take the form of incentives to learning, and the development of learning environments.  why?  Well, if individuals (knowledge-holders) are required, as per the model, to "learn and dump" knowledge that only serves utilitarian interests of the capitalist economies and organizations in which they function (knowledge-owners), they hold no personal interest in learning and must be persuaded to learn it.  You need to convince workers that they should learn the knowledge which is a social good, instead of a personal goal.  Boy, that sounds sustainable, doesn't it?
9. We will value people based on their ability to learn and dump knowledge.
10.  Those who cannot learn and dump as much as others, will be marginalized.
11. These people will not be seen as poor or under-paid, but rather as unemployable and under-skilled. They will be blamed and punished for their lack of capability.

I must say, once you got past the grammar and typos, it was an interesting read.  I did like the term "mind equipment" refering to workers who learn and dump knowledge.  It's an interesting way of looking at the KBE.  However, i think Kuhn jumps a little too much from premise to conclusion without looking where he steps.  For one thing, he takes issue with the notion that the KBE is being presented as unavoidable. And yet, the conclusions he draws about the KBE are presented as though they are also unavoidable effects of the KBE.   I'm also not sure I agree that economists equate tacit learning with new knowledge.  But much of his dismissal of economic thinking is predicated on that statement.  Although he condemns KBE models as "totalitarian" suggesting that workers can have no room left for learning of any sort if they are busy learning for utilitarian purposes, his own arguements suggests a totality that is not warranted.  In his presentation of the changing role of knowledge in the economy, he doesn't seem to allow for degrees of change. Knowledge may well be participating as a commodity in the market to an extent, and to an extent it is participating as it always has. 
It occurs to me that what has changed is not just the role of knowledge in the economy....to whatever degree that is true with ICT and rapid change and globalization and so many other changes.  I think the KBE is partly just a new lens with which to view the participation of knowledge in economic terms.  To look at how knowledge is involved in new ways, but also how it has always been involved.  The KBE is a theoretical framework by which we can consider the effects of knowledge and its role in economics.  This doesn't mean knowledge has no roles outside of economics.  And while the KBE discourse is becoming hard to ignore, it may indeed be in danger of supressing other discourses around social roles of knowledge.  But this is just one way of looking at knowledge.  And that should be kept in mind by both those "for" and "against" the policy and research directions being promoted by KBE discourse.

Well, that summary is less than adequate to address the reading I have done.  But it's a start.
I invite you to share your thoughts.
and
Mr. Kuhn, if you are out there....I'd love to hear if I've misinterpreted your work!

Carrie