Dangerous Education

What Should Education Strive To Be in The Next Quarter Century?

Technological change is driving societal change. Artificial intelligence is drawing massive investment, which is making us feel anxious about the need to jump on that crazy train for fear of missing out. But what about authentic intelligence? Human intelligence? Where is our investment in people-learning, not machine -learning?

Education is being forced to reckon with AI. There is an entirely new “market” for tech companies that is identified as “artificial intelligence in education (AIED)”. This new tech is being seen by some as a remedy for under-resourced, overworked educators. But it appears that as we continue to spend so much time debating what should happen in and around the classroom there is very little time and money left to invest in what happens there.

What should education be today?

In our third and final examination of Neil Postman’s legacy, we look at his prescription for education as it faces this technological assault. Students today are groomed on screens, which has made them irritable and distracted. We have a library on our phones but we only skim and glean. In the last chapter in Postman’s final book, “Building a Bridge to the 18th Century,” he makes five suggestions on how to teach “reason and skepticism” as essential skills for emerging citizens in a democratic society. Are his ideas a helpful road map to cope with the ubiquity of technology today?

Postman’s first suggestion is “that we would actually teach children something about the art and science of asking questions.” Postman asserts, quite correctly, that “question-asking is the most significant intellectual tool human beings have.” However, it is not taught in school.

Imagine if we reversed the outcomes of education to evaluate the questions and not the answers. Rather than reciting all the facts remembered about a subject, learners list all the questions they can muster about the subject. When you think about it, good questions cannot be asked unless a level of knowledge is attained; the question must be based on something. More to the point, for Postman, this is the first step to developing skepticism.

Secondly, Postman expands upon his ideas about language. “Twenty-three hundred years ago,” he writes, “educators devised a pattern of instruction whose purpose was to defend themselves against both the seductions of eloquence and the appeal of nonsense.” Postman believes that we should be teaching The Trivium – logic, rhetoric and grammar.

Before we dismiss this as a remnant from the Middle Ages, let’s look at what Postman is getting at. The study of semantics is “about the relationship between language and reality; …about the differences among kinds of statements, about the nature of propaganda, about the ways in which we search for truths…”

In today’s world of disinformation, perhaps the greatest skill with which we can arm our youth is the ability to parse meaning from what is being said.

“Whatever else we bring into the new century,” writes Postman, “we will certainly feature the greatest array of propogandist techniques in human history.” And this was in 1999, before AI. Now, nothing is certain, and everything must be assumed to be fake.

“Words are not only tools to think with but, for all practical purposes, the content of our thoughts… whatever meanings we give to the world – what sense we make of things – derive from our power to name, to create vocabularies.”

Every word connotes a meaning, but the word’s meaning can be altered to achieve a prescribed end. “If thoughts can corrupt language,” wrote George Orwell, “language can also corrupt thoughts.”

"Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts,” writes Stephen Pinker, whose studies on the linguistic behaviours of children led to his assertion that humans possess an innate facility for understanding language. “But it is also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is about the relation of words to reality - the way that speakers commit themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way their thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world."

We need to take Postman’s suggestion seriously. Thinking is influenced by the language we speak; the use of different languages causes people to think differently. Today more than ever, education must focus on “what is meant” and how words are used to change thoughts and trigger action. Perhaps this is our greatest tool in the war against disinformation.

Postman’s third suggestion in that we teach a “scientific outlook”. This is an extension of his ideas on questioning and studying semantics. In essence, he is saying that we should be able to evaluate any potentially contradictory premise through a scientific lens to unearth the evidence and draw our own conclusions. Why not compare creationism to Darwinism? What have we got to fear? We should not censure these inquiries based on our scientific biases.

Today, even teaching the subjects of science is in question. Climate change, for example, has been politicized. But when we look at the evidence, it is real. A scientific outlook helps cut through the fog and softness of how science is being taught, often with a particular point of view. We need to teach how the history of science and how scientific theories are assessed. This is critical to demolishing what Postman rightly calls propaganda; there’s no other word for it.

“Technology education” is Postman’s fourth suggestion, but he is not referring to the nuts and bolts of word processing. Postman wants students to know “what are the psychological, social and political effects of new technologies.” To do this we need to offer the history of technology, the principles of technological change and the economic and social changes that technology imposes.

“If we want our students to live intelligently in a technological society,” he states, “I don’t see how this can be done if they are ignorant of the full meaning and context of technological change.”

We can barely imagine how the marketplace was changed by the first person who marked a clay tablet. Or how people feared the anarchy of the first pencil. We know that movable type shattered the world view of monks bent over their manuscripts. Maybe our way out of our fortress of screens is to take stock of how they are walling us in?

Finally, Postman believed we need to teach religion – comparative religion to be exact.

“… so much of painting, music, architecture, literature and science is intertwined with religion. It is… quite impossible for anyone to claim to be educated who has no knowledge of the role played by religion in the formation of culture.”

Anyone visiting one of the great art galleries or museums of Europe knows this. But Postman goes further, “…the great religions are, after all, the stories of how different people of different times and places have tried to achieve a sense of transcendence. Although many religious narratives provide answers to the questionf how and when we came to be, they are largely concerned with answering the question, Why?”

Studying religion offers learners an opportunity to grapple with existential questions. This helps them think about “why we are here and what is expected of us?”

There is no doubt that ignorance of different religions contributes to misunderstandings, othering, and even hostility. Peaceful coexistence relies on mutual understanding, so Postman’s idea is not so far off the mark. In a world so united by technology, we are divided more than ever by information echo chambers which feed distrust, conspiracy and anger. The comparative study of religion seems like the perfect pin to prick the disinformation bubbles we live in.

If the idea that education must “have as one of its ideas the cultivation of a skeptical outlook based on reason”, then education is dangerous. By its very nature, it encourages children to think critically and to question authority.

But Postman believes that “a democratic society must take the risk, that such a society will be improved by citizens of a critical mind, that the best way for citizens to protect their liberty is for them to be skeptical, to be suspicious of authority, and to be prepared (and unafraid) to resist propaganda.”

As we face the next twenty-five years - the darkening clouds of authoritarianism and the manipulation of public opinion through artificial intelligence - we need to invest in human intelligence. We need to build society’s resilience through teaching questioning, the study of reason and semantics, and scientific approaches.

Let’s reward the question, not the answer – for as we know, we are quick to change our answers to please the questioner. Let’s study how technological change affects our world view and our actions. Let’s pull our heads out of the all-consuming screens and look over the parapet to take stock. Let’s gain a better understanding of one another and our different reasons to be.

This kind of education is dangerous. It’s exciting. And it’s worth the risk. In fact, it may be the only risk worth taking.