Throughout this volume we have emphasized the existence of an on- going and relentless race between technology and education. Economic growth and inequality are the outcomes of the contest. As technology races forward, demands for skills— some new and some old— are altered. If the workforce can rapidly make the adjustment, then economic growth is enhanced without greatly exacerbating inequality of economic outcomes. If, on the other hand, the skills that are currently demanded are produced slowly and if the workforce is less flexible in its skill set, then growth is slowed and inequality widens.

Goldin and Katz (2008, 352)

This quote contains a major dynamic about how knowledge growth creates disruptions in the equilibrium of society. Each stage of knowledge growth has led to a new level of education as differentiation has occurred both vertically in the sense of more grades or levels and horizontally in the meaning of more and more specific training tracks at each new level, paralleling the differentiations we have seen in the stratification system, organizational form and kinds of networks. Our terms primary, secondary, and higher education obscure the concept of skill formation, hence my renaming of this societal institutional sector. Many debates exist about what the all too commonly used phrase— “a good education”— actually means. These debates can be usefully avoided by instead asking what skills, research capabilities, and problem- solving capacities— and the latter is a nontrivial addition— are needed in a worker, given a particular stage of knowledge creation and, more, precisely a specific occupation. However, since the word “education” is such a convenient shorthand— and to avoid the monotony of constantly repeating the more cumbersome phrase “skill formation/ research capability”— I will use these terms interchangeably.

What, specifically, are the skills taught at each of these three levels of education? Primary education as we saw in Chapter Five provided literacy, which gave access to jobs such as primary school teacher, railroad conductor, and telegraph operator. Then, in the second stage, mass secondary education developed. In Europe, the elite educational tracks consisted of gaining cultural capital (Latin and Greek and, in the case of France, philosophy).