From inspired teaching to effective knowledge work and back again : A report on Peter Drucker's schoolmistress and what she can teach us about the management and education of knowledge workers

Purpose – The emerging knowledge societies will – besides many other dramatic changes – see a teaching revolution. This paper seeks to propose quality standards for this new type of teaching. Design/methodology/approach – The paper argues that Peter Drucker experienced much of what he later came to call the principles of self management and effective knowledge work as a boy aged nine or ten at the Schwarzwald School – an utterly exceptional, progressive elementary school in Vienna. Given these astonishing similarities, this school's avant‐garde approach to teaching might just provide some insights into what effective teaching for a future knowledge society should be like. The paper is based to a large extent on accounts by and about the almost forgotten school's owner‐manager Eugenie Schwarzwald, some of which were made available only recently in the course of several biographical research projects dealing with this revolutionary pedagogue and social entrepreneur. Findings – Firstly, the paper identifies similarities between the teaching practice at Eugenie Schwarzwald's schools, her approach to leadership on the one hand, and Drucker's principles of effective management and knowledge work on the other. Secondly, it concludes that in a knowledge society both effective management and teaching need to be extensively individualised services – much more than in an industrial mass society. Practical implications – Combined, Schwarzwald's practice and Drucker's teachings challenge some seemingly up‐to‐date practices in both higher education and corporate personnel development, and helps in understanding what actually produces effective personal learning for the rapidly changing knowledge economies of the twenty‐first century. Originality/value – The paper introduces selective aspects of progressive education to the field of management.