We have heard so much these last years about the information age, or – building upon that very idea, and expanding it – the knowledge society. According to the knowledge society concept, information is worth nothing as long as it has not been transformed into useable knowledge.
Schools have been called to change accordingly. They should develop new competencies, namely those related to this transformation of information into knowledge. Memorizing facts becomes obsolete, we must learn to build true knowledge that can be used in various contexts.
There has been a recent call by certain academics, amongst them Mitchel Resnick (MIT), to rethink this position and to take the next step… towards the ‘Creative Society‘! We can no longer teach youngsters to merely transform information into knowledge. It’s becoming increasingly important to be able to create truely new solutions to complex unexpectable problems. Established knowledge is no longer suffisant to face the new problems of today’s societies. Sticking with it cannot lead us to a brighter and sustainable future…
Kids thus need to learn how to be creative problem-solvers, not mere knowledge (re)construction machines, nor simple ‘old’-knowledge-applying ones…
More on Resnick’s website: http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/
For those specifically interested in the “Creative Society” idea, please read this paper: http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/Learning-Leading-final.pdf