It is an “endogenous” ability. It is a threefold tool: hermeneutic (to understand and interpret knowledge), investigative (to discover and generate knowledge), and heuristic (to create “new” knowledge).
Published in Chapter:
Is Electronic Knowledge a Plural Thought?
Franco Frabboni (University of Bologna, Italy)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 2
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-845-1.ch037
Abstract
With the third millennium a new and attractive scenario has opened up, giving voice to an old face of culture: knowledge. Its “new” identity—holistic, multidimensional, and ecosystemic—was highlighted by the European Union in 2000 at the Lisbon conference. In the 21st century there is a star carrying out on its tail these words: welcome to the knowledge society. Knowledge is an immaterial good needed by any nation, because it’s like a bank account that any complex and changing society needs to have. It’s a capital with three faces: economic, social and human (Frabboni, 2006). a. As an economic resource, knowledge promotes a mass-school, a school for everybody: the competitiveness and reliability of a productive system are based on schooling and on the “well-made heads” of younger generations, b. As a social resource it promotes democracy, because knowledge provides all citizens with the necessary alphabets to create a widespread social cohesion; therefore education must be spread during all the seasons of life, from childhood to old age, c. As a human resource it helps the person-subject to move away from the devastating mass-subject. A school of knowledge and of values (i.e., of mind and heart) will have to invest on a person that is nonduplicable, noneasily influenced, and nonuseful; with his or her eyes open on dreams, utopias, and enchantment. School has the task of forming a plural mind and an ethic of solidarity.