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It argues that U.S. youth are being prepared for “commodity jobs” while future opportunities require “innovative work” grounded in knowledge, design, and new social interactions. The paper frames the coming crisis as one of learning across school, home, workplaces, and communities, and introduces epistemic games as a potential solution for developing the needed competencies.",{"@graph":63,"@context":119},[64,80,102],{"@type":65,"itemListElement":66},"BreadcrumbList",[67,71,74,77],{"item":68,"name":69,"@type":70,"position":9},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":72,"name":10,"@type":70,"position":73},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/",2,{"item":75,"name":11,"@type":70,"position":76},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/presentations/",3,{"item":78,"name":59,"@type":70,"position":79},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/before-every-child-is-left-behind-how-epistemic-games-can-solve-the-coming-crisis-in-education/238246/",4,{"url":78,"name":59,"@type":81,"image":82,"author":87,"headline":59,"publisher":90,"fileFormat":93,"inLanguage":57,"description":61,"dateModified":94,"datePublished":95,"encodingFormat":93,"isAccessibleForFree":96,"interactionStatistic":97},"DigitalDocument",{"url":83,"@type":84,"width":85,"height":86},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/before-every-child-is-left-behind-how-epistemic-games-can-solve-the-coming-crisis-in-education/238246.png","ImageObject",442,249,{"name":88,"@type":89},"Rizky","Person",{"url":68,"name":91,"@type":92},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-25","2026-09-11",true,{"@type":98,"interactionType":99,"userInteractionCount":101},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":100},"ViewAction",9,{"@type":103,"mainEntity":104},"FAQPage",[105,111,115],{"name":106,"@type":107,"acceptedAnswer":108},"What is the core crisis the paper identifies in education?","Question",{"text":109,"@type":110},"The paper describes a crisis of learning: young people are being prepared for commodity jobs, but the economy will reward innovative work that requires knowledge-based skills.","Answer",{"name":112,"@type":107,"acceptedAnswer":113},"How does the paper define “commodity jobs” and “innovative work”?",{"text":114,"@type":110},"Commodity jobs are standardized, transferable tasks enabled by technologies like computers and the Internet, while innovative work depends on knowledge for novel design and new forms of interaction.",{"name":116,"@type":107,"acceptedAnswer":117},"Why can countries like the United States no longer compete by selling commodities?",{"text":118,"@type":110},"Because production of commodities is spread globally and can be done in lower-cost centers, their advantage shifts to creating non-standard products, services, and technologies that competitors cannot easily replicate.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":78,"og:type":121,"og:title":59,"og:site_name":91,"og:description":61},"article",{"robots":123,"canonical":78},"index,follow",{"doc_id":125,"site_id":56},238246,1791716637,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":128},{"doc_id":125,"user_id":129,"nickname":88,"user_avatar":130,"doc_module":9,"category_id":8,"category_name":11,"doc_title":59,"doc_description":61,"doc_content":131,"file_id":132,"file_url":133,"file_type":134,"file_size":135,"view_count":101,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":9,"is_downloadable":9,"audit_status":9,"page_count":40,"language":136,"language_code":57,"site_id":56,"html_lang":57,"table_of_contents":137,"faqs":138,"seo_title":139,"seo_description":61,"update_tm":140,"read_time":141},962085564807,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_6f874abed73319feea01a86fa6f0fab8","WCER Working Paper No. 2005-7 September 2005  \nBefore Every Child Is Left Behind: How Epistemic Games Can Solve the Coming Crisis in Education  \nDavid Williamson Shaffer  \nDepartment of Educational Psychology/ Wisconsin Center for Education Research/ Academic ADL Co-Laboratory University of Wisconsin–Madison  \ndws@education.wisc.edu  \nJames Paul Gee  \nDepartment of Curriculum & Instruction/ Academic ADL Co-Laboratory University of Wisconsin–Madison  \njgee@education.wisc.edu  \nWisconsin Center for Education Research  \nSchool of Education • University of Wisconsin–Madison • [http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/](http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/)  \nCopyright © 2005 by David Williamson Shaffer and James Paul Gee All rights reserved.  \nReaders may make verbatim copies of this document for noncommercial purposes by any means, provided that the above copyright notice appears on all copies.  \nWCER working papers are available on the Internet at  \n[http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/publications/workingPapers/index.php](http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/publications/workingPapers/index.php).  \nThe research reported in this paper was supported by a Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship, a grant from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award (REC-0347000), and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, School of Education, University of Wisconsin– Madison. Any opinions, findings, or conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies, WCER, or cooperating institutions.  \nBefore Every Child Is Left Behind:  \nHow Epistemic Games Can Solve the Coming Crisis in Education 1  \nDavid Williamson Shaffer and James Paul Gee  \nThe Crisis  \nIn his recent bestseller, The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman (2005) argues that the United States is facing a looming crisis—a crisis with the potential to wreck havoc on the old and the young, on rich and poor alike. Freedman talks about this new crisis mostly in terms of foreign policy and global economics—what nation states, governments, businesses, and workers must do to adapt to the changing world at the beginning of the 21st century.  \nBut this crisis is not just a crisis of economics or politics. At its core, this is a crisis in education—a crisis in education unlike any we’ve seen before. The coming crisis is a crisis of learning, and it is a crisis that we will have to face in school, at home, in workplaces, and in communities.  \nThe coming crisis is this: Young people in the United States today are being prepared—in school and at home—for “commodity jobs” in a world that will, very soon, reward only people who can do “innovative work” and punish those who can’t.  \nWhat do we mean by commodity jobs and innovative work? Let’s start with the literal notion of a commodity. A commodity is a standardized product or service available to a mass audience at a reasonable price. The “old capitalism”—the capitalism of industry, manufacturing, assembly lines, and large corporations heavy with middle managers; the capitalism of the post– World War II world; a capitalism that was vastly successful in producing a massive middle class in the United States—was built on the production and sale of commodities (Greider, 1997; Thurow, 1999) .  \nHowever, in a world in which the science and technology necessary to produce and sell commodities efficiently have spread across the globe, the competition to produce wealth through commodities is fierce as never before. The work of building wealth through the production of commodities has moved, by and large, to the lowest cost centers in the world, places with more trained workers willing to work for lower wages, places like China and India with huge and increasingly well-trained workforces.  \nThe result is that countries like the United States—countries with higher wages—can no longer compete on the basis of making and selling commodities (G","cbCaimur82lNtqDB","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaimur82lNtqDB","pdf",131833,"English","# The Crisis\n## Commodity Jobs and Innovative Work\n## Value, Knowledge, and Global Competition\n## Why the Crisis Is Different","[{\"question\":\"What is the core crisis the paper identifies in education?\",\"answer\":\"The paper describes a crisis of learning: young people are being prepared for commodity jobs, but the economy will reward innovative work that requires knowledge-based skills.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the paper define “commodity jobs” and “innovative work”?\",\"answer\":\"Commodity jobs are standardized, transferable tasks enabled by technologies like computers and the Internet, while innovative work depends on knowledge for novel design and new forms of interaction.\"},{\"question\":\"Why can countries like the United States no longer compete by selling commodities?\",\"answer\":\"Because production of commodities is spread globally and can be done in lower-cost centers, their advantage shifts to creating non-standard products, services, and technologies that competitors cannot easily replicate.\"}]","Before Every Child Is Left Behind - How Epistemic Games Can Solve the Coming Crisis in Education | PDF",1789133014,6]