Imagine doing the same thing the same way repeatedly not just for months or years, but centuries. Such is the way of education, whether public or private.
Worse, education’s immutability is prized. If this is doubted, see how parents and children alike covet the oldest, most “old school” of schools.
No doubt this is great for teachers and professors. That’s because change is difficult. Most would prefer to do things as they’ve always been done.
Which is of course a sign that education’s impact on the past, present and future of economic life is vastly overstated. Seriously, how could what frequently attains prestige from a centuries-long existence (see Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.) convey any knowledge or skills related to thriving in a commercial world that changes all the time? Thinking of Google alone, not only could its founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) not have majored in internet search, we would never have heard of them if Google’s search features still resembled what they were when Google opened its doors in 1998.
Which brings us to a recent opinion piece penned for the New York Times by Anastasia Berg, assistant professor of philosophy at UC Irvine. Berg wrote that “Higher education aims to create cognitively mature adults, which in turn requires us to ensure students learn to read, think and write on their own. It is easier than we think: Creating tech-free spaces and incentivizing students to spend time in them requires no new resources. All it takes is will.” Is it any wonder that innovators like Peter Thiel no longer take educational attainment seriously?
Berg’s desire for “tech-free spaces” speaks to a teacher mindset much more troubling for education than ideology. While technology routinely elevates the quality of all that we all do on the way to much greater leaps in productivity and attainment, Berg’s op-ed speaks to a mindset among educators that teaching, for being teaching, must not be disrupted in the way that every other profession always and everywhere has been. What a mistake not just for students, but for teachers themselves.
That’s because progress in all walks of life is defined not by what we know and do, but by what we no longer need to know and do. Put another way, technology that frees us from how we used to do things isn’t a barrier to knowledge and progress anymore than work divided is a barrier to progress by virtue of it freeing us to specialize. It’s instead a reminder that whether it's machines, extra hands, or both, we’re not harmed by what does and thinks for us.
Sorry, but education isn’t some kind of other when it comes to technology. Berg claims that AI technology that will do and think for us “threatens students’ most basic skills,” but it more realistically signals that the basic skills taught in school are no longer relevant to success (or not) in life and in work.
As opposed to teachers and professors keeping technology out of the classroom so that they can teach as they always have, parents, children and administrators alike should demand that they not just open the proverbial doors wide to the latest and greatest technology, but that teachers and professors rapidly reinvent how they instruct if they’re interested in continuing to work as teachers and professors. Seriously, how else can education maintain relevance if those educating are shielding themselves and students from market realities?
Hopefully in the above question readers can see the biggest threat to learning: it’s not left-wing teachers, rather it's lazy teachers unwilling to evolve as every other profession always has to the betterment of those in the profession.
