Abstract

While there is a consensus that the world is undergoing an economic and cultural revolution, often called “The Information Society,” we have yet to see signs that these trends are about to foment anything truly revolutionary in the classroom. While there has been much talk and action in the name of the goal of “information literacy,” our view is that the changes being implemented so far affect the delivery of information to students far more than it affects the content of what students learn. We believe that the revolution will come when people begin to connect the possibilities of delivery of information via the internet with the possibilities of overhauling the content of the curriculum to reflect the new availability of the information itself. We discuss a now familiar transition in the sociology of work—the transition from expending capital by building large inventories of products “just-in-case” a customer would order them to minimizing the capital outlay for inventories by developing instantaneous electronic ordering and rapid physical delivery of products “just-in-time” to meet customer demands. We make the argument that this transition in the workplace has its parallels in the classroom, because the traditional justification for much curricular content is to require students to learn something “just-in-case” they might need to know it or use it. We argue that the revolutionary changes in education will occur when educators begin to consider how to use the activities of the classroom to develop basic, transferable skills that include the goal of informational literacy so that students capitalize on their new ability to access content “just-in- time” to incorporate it into classroom activities and assignments.