While traditional, memorization-driven, arithmetic-heavy (industrial revolution era) education is already widely criticized, the prime elements of education (text books, linear learning, essay writing, etc) are all on the brink of being disrupted.
As I suggested in Edition 1, ChatGPT has done to writing what the calculator did to arithmetic. But what other implications can we expect here?
The above and the three headlined sections below are quotes from the website Implications produced by Scott Belsky. He offers a monthly paid newsletter there. Kudos to Gary for the link.
Belsky is noting a few of the potential changes in education, and PSA has noted we want to perhaps start from an aggregation of “best teacher practices” to then analyze how those can be implement or supported through tools such as ChatGPT.
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The return of the Socratic method, at scale and on-demand.
The Socratic Method, named after the Greek philosopher Socrates, is anchored on dialogue between teacher and students, fueled by a continuous probing stream of questions. The method is designed to explore the underlying perspectives that inform a student’s perspective and natural interests.
I experienced a couple years of this during business school (I rarely admit my youthful insecurity-fueled desire to get a Harvard MBA, that’s another..umm…dialogue), and loved the student-directed nature of learning rather than being lectured at.
The framework felt optimized for surfacing relevance and stoking organic intrigue. Imagine history “taught” through a chat interface that allows students to interview historical figures. Imagine a philosophy major dueling with past philosophers – or even a group of philosophers with opposing viewpoints.
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The art and science of prompt engineering.
How to search Google is one thing, but imagine an entire logic-based lexicon of how to inform, constrain, and optimize the prompts we give to AI that impact outcomes.
Much like students learn Excel and calculators – and even how to use more advanced formulas and engineering calculators – how do we outfit students to make sure AI is working for them (and not the other way around)?
Also, related to the next forecast, how do we equip the next generation to know what they can trust and how to evolve their own mental judgment as AI spits out answers?
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The bar for teaching will rise,
…as traditional research for paper-writing and memorization become antiquated ways of building knowledge. What is practical knowledge anyways? Is it knowing the answer, or knowing where and how to find the answer? Is it having the information, or being able to connect it to stimulate ingenuity?
I hope this new tech evolves education to be more about learning how to think. How to find answers. How to connect dots. How to express yourself creatively (and stand out, merchandise your ideas, galvanize support for unpopular views).
I think we’ll see the return of oral arguments and supervised persuasive essay writing.
And “art class” will shift from being an hour spent painting on a Thursday to the use of creative tools across the curriculum (making a short film is the new history paper, drawing a comic book is new the science report, etc).
As I like to say, creativity is the new productivity. In the age of robots, AI, and algorithms replacing human jobs, we need to outfit the next generation to be creative and provocative minds.