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Why Information Literacy is Important
The global economy is changing the nature of work, and the centrality of human capital. Rapidly evolving technologies are creating a global network, which will highly value an elite group of thinkers and workers.
Three types of jobs will dominate the 21st century as noted by Brandeis economist Robert Reich in The Work of Nations. Those include:
- Low Level Service providers
- Unique Skilled Service provides
- Identifiers of problems & problem solvers
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At the top of the new worker hierarchy are those persons who can quickly and efficiently identify and solve problems using technological resources.
The new elite work force will be composed of those persons who have advanced levels of critical thinking and technological skills, that will allow them to identify issues, find appropriate information, quickly analyze the situation, and solve problems using available
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resources. These power brokers of the future will have fused "library literacy, computer literacy, media literacy, technological literacy, ethics, critical thinking and communication skills (Work group on Information Competence, Commission on Learning Resources and Instructional Technology, 1995, p.4).
The benefits and the burdens of the emerging economy will create inequalities of wealth and power that will surpass the trends of the past two centuries.
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As educators the question that we must struggle with is how best to position African American students for the more intense competition that the rapidly changing economic structure will demand?
One way to achieve a better social balance might be through the integration of information competency skills in higher education, in general, and at California State University Long Beach, in particular. By teaching information competency skills to Black Studies students we can hope to:
- Gain advantage of the new economic dynamism by providing students with the intellectual tools required to develop new modes of social resistance;
- Foster critical thinking skills that challenge the status quo;
- Create scholars/activists who can research and write about the effects of unfettered capitalism on the African American community in the 21st century.
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