In virtually all developed countries, and many transitional countries as well, an orthodoxy about the crucial role of education has emerged. I call this orthodoxy the Education Gospel because it expresses a faith in education as the principal route to salvation — as the source of economic growth and competitiveness, the mechanism of individual advancement, the solution to poverty and social exclusion, the renaissance of countries whose past glory has been dimmed by subsequent centuries. In most countries, as well as the European Union promoting the Europe of Knowledge and the OECD (2001) emphasizing the Knowledge Revolution, the Education Gospel starts from an observation that the Knowledge Society (or the computer revolution, or new technology) is changing the nature of work, presumably in profound and comprehensive ways (Lloyd and Payne, 2002; Keep, 2000). Then the rhetoric of the Gospel in every country has emphasized the development of skills — core skills and key skills in England, Schlusselqualificationem (key qualifications) in Germany, “higher-order” skills in the U.S., “soft skills” and communications skills and “skills for the 21st century” in many countries (Brown, Green, and Lauder, 2001). In most cases the need for skills then requires an expansion of formal schooling, particularly in postsecondary education, or what OECD has called Tertiary Education for All (OECD, 1998); and lifelong learning also becomes important as individuals change jobs many times over their lifetimes. Like disciples of religious and secular gospels, its true believers have acted on faith, rather than inviting questions about the empirical assumptions underlying the Education Gospel.
