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Education is one of the very few social institutions that most, if not all citizens come into contact with at one time or another in their lives. This contact happens mostly and to the greatest extent at an early age. The two main roles of school - and the degree to which it should accomplish both can be debatable - are to educate people about citizenship (this can be viewed as a socialization role), and to prepare people for the job market.

The problem of unemployment is a widely known phenomenon. Castells has pointed out that this is really only a problem of Western nations. Many countries in the European Union have unemployment rates well above 10 percent with some even reaching 25 percent. As jobs become increasingly technology-based, schools are blamed to be outmoded and inadequate to prepare the young generation for the changing job market, a concern voiced by many in the U.S.

If schools are to prepare children for the job market then their curricula need to reflect the skills needed for the most prevailing job sectors. As the Reinventing Schools: The Technology is Now! conference of 1995 pointed out, the one room schoolhouse of the 19thcentury changed in the 20th century to reflect the changes occurring in society. Previously most children only needed very basic skills because the majority of them were to enter the agricultural sector. This later changed when industrial jobs gained ground in employing workers. Participants at the Reinventing Schools conference pointed out that the new schools resembled factories and students took on a passive role in listening to instructors. Some basic skills still seemed sufficient since most people were to enter a job and stay in the same occupation all their lives. This is no longer the case. The average American with a high school or a college degree will have six to eight careers in life. This means that it is no longer sufficient to learn some basic skills and then rely on those for the rest of one's career. Even the skills learned in the first job will not guarantee an easy transition to the next occupation. Since people are highly likely to change careers, they require the skills for easy adaptation to new circumstances. They also require a bigger variety of skills to be able to cater to different situations.

Many of the old methods focused on the memorization of information. Although this may be an appropriate method for teaching children some of the knowledge they need to acquire, other types of learning also have to be implemented in the classroom. Knowing how to access information, analyze data, communicate with others on a regular basis are also essential skills that increasingly need to be accounted for in the curriculum of students to match the needs of employers. As a Swiss professor of Psychology, Patrick Mendelsohn has put it "Mieux vaut savoir tout chercher que chercher à tout savoir." ("It's better to know how to look for everything than to look to know everything.")

Training new employees takes time and money and so employers may prefer to hire individuals who already possess the necessary skills for a job. Given that the percentage of Americans working in the information sector has risen considerably in the past decades, it is important to consider how preparation for this sector can be achieved through education. The skills needed in such areas include problem solving, analysis, evaluation, and decision making skills.

U.S. Representative, Constance A. Morelly pointed out the lack of technology in the classroom in the following comment she had made at the Reinventing Schools conference: "As we look to the major sectors of our economy, the educational system is the only sector that has not brought technology to bear upon its operations. And in a society so rich with information, we can no longer rely on skills appropriate only for the industrial aged." Professor of Education and Information Technology, Christopher Dede was trying to get a similar message across when he observed that "[i]f all computers and telecommunications were to disappear tomorrow, education would be the least affected of society's institutions."

Eszter Hargittai,
The Pros and Cons of
Implementing the Internet
in the Classroom