In The New Education, Cathy Davidson tells us how the United States’s current educational system was shaped 150 years ago, in a time of industrialization, and was modeled to emphasize outputs and productivity in order to satisfy the market’s needs.

Now, in an era of internet, automation and social media, where careers are constantly under threat or disappearing, Davidson argues that the higher education system needs a deep transformation, one that makes students not just workforce ready but world ready. This means to help prepare students in broad skills like critical thinking, creativity, communication, cross-cultural perspectives, and beyond, for they need far more than solely technology skills.

With the grown of world’s market complexity, it becomes clear the need for more interdisciplinary approaches, methodologies that combine the learning of ethical, social, and economic dimensions in every discipline.

However, if the work itself is more precarious, income inequality is rampant and middle-class wages are largely stagnant, as Davidson recognizes in her book, shouldn’t we be arguing for a more complex transformation of the educational system? Shouldn’t we be questioning the precarization, the inequality and the low wages? I do not see how Davidson “revolution” of the higher educational system will automatically change this neo-liberal precarious scenery, on the contrary, I see it as a way of – once again – adapting youth to the Capital’s needs.

For me, it was utterly strange to read this book for this class. Of course, Davidson view of the higher educational system is correct and applies to the US’s universities, but it falls far away from other countries different systems and urgencies. I look forward to discussing it in class and getting to understand what is the project behind what seemed to me to be a very gringo middle-class book, and how it relates to our decolonial perspective.