The biggest difference between humans and animals is that humans can actively make tools and produce products, thus continuing and enhancing their physical abilities and improving their quality of life. The improvement of tool performance and the development of labor productivity are almost synchronous, and both have experienced a gradual process from low to high. In this process, human beings have been pursuing and accumulating knowledge. It is no exaggeration to say that knowledge accumulation is the foundation of all development and progress of human society.
In the Stone Age, when human beings were still in primitive ignorance, the only tools were extremely crude stone tools, wood products and bone tools. Human beings can only maintain the lowest state of existence, and they can't actively explore knowledge in terms of ability or ideology. At that time, the accumulation of knowledge was basically the inheritance of survival experience and skills because of the lack of knowledge carrier? Words, so we can only rely on word of mouth from person to person, or record by knotting rope and woodcarving, and the knowledge accumulation is quite poor. In this state, it is not only impossible to take the initiative to invent and create, but also impossible to slightly transform the production tools, which requires tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years of practical exploration. The transition time from beating paleolithic to grinding neolithic is several hundred thousand years. In the Stone Age, human beings basically depended on physical fitness, and tools, experience and skills were only auxiliary, with very limited functions.
The era of agriculture, animal husbandry and handicraft industry appeared together with the history of human civilization. At this time, bronzes and ironware have replaced rough stone tools, and social division of labor has been formed. Humans have replaced hunting and gathering in primitive society with planting, breeding and manufacturing. During this period, due to the appearance of characters, the recording and dissemination of knowledge had a fixed carrier, and the accumulation of human knowledge had a considerable increase compared with the Stone Age. At the same time, with the development and expansion of agriculture, animal husbandry and handicrafts, human production skills and production efficiency have been further developed, and the role of tools (including farm tools) has become more and more important. Humans have been able to consciously and actively improve tools according to their own needs to improve production capacity and quality of life. Some basic tools invented early in this era are still widely used in modern society, such as shovels, hoes, axes and saws.
But the power source of this era is basically human and animal power, as well as a small amount of water and wind. Due to the limited capacity of power facilities, the development of transportation and information exchange is seriously restricted, resulting in a very slow speed of knowledge dissemination, which eventually leads to backward educational means and low learning efficiency. If a person wants to master a certain knowledge or skill, it often needs a lifetime of professional accumulation. For example, to learn a trade, you basically have to learn from a teacher from an early age, and after a long apprenticeship, you will become a skilled craftsman in middle age. In this way, a person's knowledge is relatively narrow, and his skills and experience can only be limited to his own occupation. Once the external environment changes, he can't continue to engage in his previous career, and his lifelong knowledge accumulation will vanish in an instant, making it difficult to switch to other fields.
The era of industrial economy began with the modern industrial revolution in the west, and its most notable feature is that large-scale machine production replaced the traditional workshop-style manual operation, and mechanical energy gradually defeated human physical fitness. With the appearance of modern means of transportation, especially the invention of remote information tools such as telegraph and telephone, the speed of knowledge dissemination has made a stormy leap. Both the number of people receiving education and the amount of knowledge received by the educated are increasing in a series of squares or cubes. In order to pursue higher production efficiency and more energy-saving labor methods, many sophisticated machinery and equipment have been invented, which put forward higher requirements for workers' knowledge literacy, and pure manual labor without knowledge content is gradually? Fall out of favor? .
Inventions and creations in the era of industrial economy have completely different characteristics from those in the previous era? In the era of agriculture, animal husbandry and handicraft industry, the inventors of new tools, new equipment or new products are basically front-line production workers. Their inventions are based on long-term production practice and have a strong perceptual knowledge. Their inventions belong to the accumulation of experience. Inventions in the industrial economy era are basically made by professional inventors or engineers and technicians. Their understanding of knowledge is more rational, and their inventions belong to the recombination of universal principles and basic knowledge. In contrast, the advanced nature of the industrial economy era is not only reflected in mechanized mass production, but also in the surge of knowledge dissemination and expansion. The popularization and migration of knowledge have been greatly enhanced, laying a solid foundation for the emergence of the future knowledge economy era.
? Knowledge economy? As a brand-new thing, although it has only appeared for 20 or 30 years, it has swept through every field of the world with strong vitality and unstoppable momentum, bringing qualitative changes to people's production, labor and study life. People's most intuitive feeling is that the emerging intelligence-intensive industries in Silicon Valley have replaced multinational groups in oil, steel, automobile and other industries with a history of 100 years in just a few years and become the leader in the industrial field. Talent competition has gradually become the mainstream of business competition, and all major enterprises in the world are fine? Who gets the talent gets the world? . ? Forbes Rich List? All the newly elected figures in the world have made their fortune by high technology. At this time, people are finally surprised to find that intelligence has completely replaced physical fitness and become the basis for a person to stand on the society. In order not to be eliminated in the competition for survival, everyone needs to absorb new knowledge and information at any time.
In the current era of knowledge economy, with the inefficiency of old knowledge and the rapid increase of productivity of new knowledge, the knowledge's? Half-life? It has been shortened to only five years, and people will continue? Charging? Only in this way can we ensure that we are not behind the times, and whether continuing education can be effectively guaranteed has become a key link to determine a person's future development trend.
According to the statistics of western sociologists, in the era of agricultural economy, a person only needs to be in 7? /kloc-receive education at the age of 0/4, and accumulate enough knowledge to cope with future work and life; In the era of industrial economy, the learning age has expanded to 5? 22 years old. In other words, the typical school education model from primary school to university is the product of the industrial economy era. In the current era of knowledge economy, relying solely on school education can no longer meet people's demand for continuing education.
At the same time, with the improvement of production efficiency, the working hours in contemporary society are further shortened, and the natural life span of human beings is gradually extended with the development of medicine, thus providing rich time resources for human individuals to receive continuing education.
If the shortening of working hours and the extension of natural life span provide sufficient conditions for individuals to receive continuing education, then the improvement of knowledge ability and the acceleration of knowledge renewal in contemporary society have become the necessary conditions for everyone to receive continuing education.
The crisis of insufficient knowledge and ability first arises in the workplace. No matter what occupation a person is engaged in, his motives are nothing more than two. One is to ensure survival, and the other is to realize self-worth. So-called? Motivation generates demand? Whether trying to experience a sense of accomplishment through work or not being eliminated by the workplace because of aging knowledge and weakening ability, we must constantly accept new information and new theories in the process of practice to improve our knowledge quality and professional competitiveness.
In addition, the mobility and uncertainty of contemporary society are increasing, making it difficult for a person to stick to a certain profession? One-sided When the professional environment changes, you must add a lot of new knowledge in a short time and move your original ability and quality to a new field. Especially with the development of social production technology, many occupations gradually disappear, and it is even more essential to transfer abilities through re-education. For example, in just ten years, electronic zinc plate printing has replaced the traditional movable type printing in China. A compositor? Be completely eliminated as a profession. When was the quality and ability accumulated at the beginning? Zero? At that time, if a person's knowledge was too narrow, or it was difficult to migrate in a certain field, it would be difficult to survive in the workplace of contemporary society.
Therefore, the concept of vocational education came into being, and every employee should work until he is old and learn from it.
Even if we exclude utilitarian motives such as ensuring survival and promotion in the workplace, we still need to receive re-education in real life to improve the level and quality of daily life. With the development of society, some professional skills that only some people have mastered have gradually become popular life skills for the whole people, such as car driving, computer operation and foreign languages. If you don't master these new skills, you will feel many obstacles in the process of communicating with society and others, which will directly affect the normal progress of daily life projects such as tourism, shopping, medical care and entertainment.
Therefore, after entering the second half of the twentieth century, people have never felt the importance and urgency of learning. ? Learning society? This word finally appeared in western countries in 1960s, and was quickly accepted by the whole world. In a learning society, it is difficult to distinguish between the stage of education and the stage of work in a person's life, because learning has become a matter of anytime and anywhere, and it runs through all levels of work and life. People finally realize that traditional schools and school education are only a part of the whole social education system, an educational model, but not the whole connotation. Obtaining diplomas and academic qualifications is no longer the ultimate goal of learning. In order to improve their abilities or develop their hobbies, people are often willing to choose some practical non-academic education in the process of re-education. An important feature of a learning society is that people can choose the type of education independently instead of being passively indoctrinated, so both the form and content of learning are more active, objective, flexible and free.
Driven by the social trend of universal education, UNESCO formally put forward "education for all" in 1965. Lifelong education? The concept of career education advocates the establishment of a career education system around the world, and summarizes people's demand for career education into the following eleven motives and reasons?
1, life extension
Step 2 acquire new knowledge
3. Career change
4. Re-learning after previous learning failures.
5. Continuing amateur education
6. Need to work after stopping work
7. Professional growth
8. Improve social status
9. Promotion in the process of career and work growth
10, the demand for equal educational opportunities
1 1, the need for leisure and personal dignity.
? Lifelong education? Known as the field of education? Copernican revolution? Especially in today's cross-century era, it has become a recognized survival rule in 2 1 century. By comparing the four stages of social productive forces and analyzing eleven motives and reasons of the demand for vocational education, we can find that the concept of vocational education came into being with the arrival of the era of knowledge economy. Only in the era of knowledge economy can people truly feel the importance and reality of career education, thus accepting the concept of career education and actively applying it to practice; The learning society, in which everyone is willing to receive vocational education, provides a steady stream of power for the sustainable development of knowledge economy. Visible,? Knowledge economy? With what? Vocational education? What's the difference between them? Grow together? Proportional relationship, the prosperity of one side, will provide a broader development space for the other side.