Students are customers. And what are they buying? The ability to remain competitive and flexible on the open market. The capacity for self-realisation! Self management! Self-direction!
It’s about skills acquisition. Don’t we all have to renew our skills if we are to remain competitive in a knowledge-driven economy? Don’t we have to be able to organise our own learning? To work to continually actualise our potentiality?
It’s about skills based implementation! The mobilisation of talent! Of human resources! It’s about becoming objects of investment. About measurable, identifiable and commodifiable skills! It’s about self initiation! Self regulation! Self-evaluation! Reinvention!
There are new markets! Needing new skills! New talents! Always! Capitalism’s expanding – always! It’s not only about employability, it’s about being personally fulfilled. In the new world! In the coming world! It’s about entrepreneurial skills.
We have to help develop those behaviours, skills and actions that will be useful to them. Actualisation is the goal. And the method.
There’s a question of national interest. About maintaining global competitiveness! Expanding the knowledge economy! Increasing national efficiency! Effectiveness! It’s about strategic importance. Economical viability! Human capital! Economic necessity must become educational necessity. And Philosophy can be part of this adventure.
The great thing about philosophy is that it teaches flexibility. Keeping options open. Generic skillsets – that’s the key.
It’s about remaining entrepreneurial. It’s about being willing to learn. It’s about maintaining self-motivation! Self-directed action! Self-generation!
Philosophy will have to be transformed into something socially usable. Take its place within the allotted order of things. According to the contemporary determinations of the economic! The political! The social!
It’s about economically manageable skill sets! It’s about producing professional, employable adults. That has to be the aim of philosophy just as it is the aim of every other subject area.
Work in Progress 