(Cultured; 05-03; p.4)

Functionalities

The just mentioned correlations are valid for the last century. There are indications however that a once gained qualification will merely become a chance for a certain start in a career: more and more, employees are required to get further training throughout their work-life. The societal changes brought about by this have been named by the pedagogues Karlheinz A Geißler and Erich Ribolits.

K A Geißler repudiates the concept of "employability" which the EU apparently prefers (cf. for the following: Geißler, K A: "Employability - das Bildungskonzept für die Ich-AG" in: Frankfurter Rundschau Nr. 90, 16/04/03, D2-edition, p. WB 6).
According to this concept, an employee shall no longer get a vocational education in the forms described above, but partial qualifications that he has to choose self-responsibly to preserve a standing in an ever-changing market: "Vocational learning, following this logic, is brought increasingly closer to the place of its exploitation and thus changes as fast as the local conditions of exploitation. [...] Knowledge becomes thereby prior to reasoning, information prior to education." (ibid.; this and the following quotes are translated, originals are in German)

Who in this race bets on the wrong horse, i.e. the wrong qualifications, loses out. Therefore, K A Geißler demands that politicians should "not quite that unreflectively ... head away from the once broadly accepted goal of education, to develop and strengthen within vocational education also those abilities that enable for resistance against the impositions of the work-world." (ibid.)

E Ribolits has a similar diagnosis (cf. Frankfurter Rundschau: "Wer nicht lernt, soll auch nicht essen" in: ibid.).
Asked by the interviewer, if it was the "creative opportunist" that is sought after, he answers: "The flexible, adaptable, who adapts his personality to the respective requirements: immature and intelligent at once. One that has only learned to learn what has been demanded of him." (ibid.) - One may ask, if such character-lacking persons do have a personality at all.

On the argument of the interviewer that by further training one had the chance to get a better job, Ribolits answers: "For the individual, that can be true. But for society in total nothing changes. [...] As something essential is faded out: Structural change at the core consists of make do with ever less working people. With every new technique work-places are made redundant. That is the logic of this economical system. Even if all unemployed and all employees threatened by unemployment would learn what supposedly is necessary, some remained redundant." (ibid.)

 

Both pedagogues thereby hinted at possible solutions out of that dilemma: a private one, individual-orientated which in its extreme may lead to forms of social Darwinism or as an alternative a political one, society-orientated which does not give way for big individual advantages, but perhaps may help withstand harsh societal changes.
Before, however, hasty optimism in respect to the second choice comes up, a warning has to be issued: functionalists rightly state that German society differentiated itself into various self-centred areas, comprehensive changes thus cannot be made by political actors. - What they on the other hand can do - and one may see this as political task - is to initiate them, respectively.

(end of article)