The Need for Continuous Learning (Peter Drucker, 1994)
It never ends. There is always the next new thing to learn. And not just the next new thing, but, in reality, the new world — the whole new landscape, the changing approach, to work itself. “The old has gone, the new” keeps coming…
Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker, who coined the phrase the “knowledge worker” in his 1959 book Landmarks of Tomorrow, wrote this in his 1994 essay: The Age of Social Transformation:
The great majority of the new jobs require qualifications the industrial worker does not possess and is poorly equipped to acquire. They require a good deal of formal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytical knowledge. They require a different approach to work and a different mind-set. Above all, they require a habit of continuous learning. Displaced industrial workers thus cannot simply move into knowledge work or services the way displaced farmers and domestic workers (the dominant jobs at the turn of the last century – R.M) moved into industrial work. At the very least they have to change their basic attitudes, values, and beliefs.
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Randy Mayeux
Bob Morris
As you know, Peter Drucker provided several of my favorite quotations, including this one: “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” As I read this post of yours, I was reminded of that insight…and realized that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the insatiable curiosity that sustains lifelong learning.
By the way, Drucker was deeply offended whenever referred to as a “guru” and throughout his life characterized himself either as a “student” or as a “bystander.” Moreover, he selected as a title for a memoir Adventures of a Bystander.
My recent post about my friend, Pete Shannon, clearly indicates that how important curiosity is…and Pete is the kind of fellow who follows it wherever it takes him. It is difficult (if not impossible) to learn efficiently in the sense that Drucker invokes the term in his observation. Learning is messy, inconclusive, fragmented, and never-ending. Just before he died, Socrates claimed that all he knew was that he knew nothing.
That said, another of my favorite quotations was provided by then president of Harvard, Derek Bok, when a hostile crowd appeared at his doorstep during Parents Weekend, protesting a recent tuition increase. He responded, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
Thank you for another thoughtful post.
Comment by Bob Morris | Thursday, August 26, 2010
These are great! Thanks.
And, yes — learning is messy…
John Wooden called himself a teacher his entire career/life. Teaching; learning — the name of the game, never finished!
Comment by Randy Mayeux | Thursday, August 26, 2010
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