Teachers are faced more and more with this question, and are finding it harder and harder to give students answers that convince them. If students know that education is helping them move towards what they want to be, then motivation is there. If they don’t, it can feel like you are pushing a heavy boulder uphill, with the thought that sooner or later it will roll back down again.
More and more students now have the excuse that AI will do everything for them, and those who do want a job want to do “unrealistic” jobs such as being a YouTuber. This can make us teachers ourselves doubt. What is the point of education? It is no longer 100% clear that education is a must. Teachers still see it as important, but that inch of doubt makes a big difference to one’s conviction — and own purpose.
Rather than denying the source of doubt, let’s go into it.
The argument usually goes somewhat like this:
Premise 1: AI will do all our jobs in the future.
Conclusion 1: We don’t need to have a job.
Conclusion 2: We don’t need an education.
It is not clear to what extent Premise 1 is true, but if it does come to pass, then Conclusion 1 is a logical conclusion. There is no NEED to work. If we take “need” as meaning a means toward what we need to survive — food, water, shelter, etc. — either the government will provide these free of charge, or they won’t and humans need to return to raising their own food, finding their own water, and building their own shelter. If the latter comes to pass, then self-sufficiency and practical skills will prove crucial.
Even if Conclusion 1 comes to pass, that does not logically lead to Conclusion 2 — we don’t need an education. We have been conditioned to see education as ultimately just a means of getting a job that makes us a living. However, this can blind us to other factors that make education worthwhile.
In fact, seeing education as a means to making a living puts a great amount of stress on young shoulders. We are telling them that unless you do your homework, you won’t pass your exams. And if you don’t pass your exams, you won’t get into XYZ college and that will severely damage your chances in life.
Rather than students being excited to learn and excited about career prospects, the far stronger feeling for most students is the fear of losing. No wonder there is a mental health epidemic.
One of my best friends came very close to suicide after not getting the grades to get into the university he was aiming for. Turns out that in the end, things worked out better than if he had got the grades. But this sense of failure blinds us — to a great degree (excuse the pun).
Considering ending it, just because of letters on a piece of paper! My friend is not alone, and too often we hear of horror stories when people actually go ahead and end their lives before they even begun. This can’t be healthy.
And whether AI takes our jobs or not, thinking about what the purpose of education is without the goal of making a living is a worthy endeavour. I don’t know where such a dialogue will go, but it’s amazing how few people even consider it. It’s as if only now, with AI domination, we can afford to ask what education could be if we sideline the necessity of making a living — and not seem wildly irresponsible to do so.
If nothing else, the potential of AI has allowed us to think with one less inhibition — and that is an exciting new and relatively unexplored territory.
Let’s be clear where we are starting off. We are accepting the argument that some kids make: that AI will do all jobs. But we are not automatically accepting this means there is no point in education.
If we don’t need to work, then that gives us autonomy over how to spend our time. Many worry this will lead to people spending even more time playing computer games and consuming content. Many people, myself included, judge this as a waste of one’s life and worry that so much potential is getting leached away into screens. Not only this, but long-term use decays our bodies and minds in numerous ways. And what’s more, those who don’t waste their lives this way will be landed with the ever-growing healthcare bill.
However, let’s let down some assumptions we have built up and see what we can now see.
Firstly, this scenario involves AI running the show. In such a society, AI should have no problem with any healthcare bill. Feel a bit lighter now that at least you might not have to pay for other’s choices?
OK, let’s see if we can let go a bit further.
With no need to work, we finally have true freedom. And yes, that unavoidably involves allowing people to make bad choices. So as long as you judge others for making bad choices, you are preventing yourself from feeling true freedom because you have a self-imposed restriction on the range of possible choices you have available to you.
Yes, you could buy a cigarette but you would NEVER smoke it! That is not true freedom.
So rather than just seeing the downsides of AI, consider also the potential it gives us for the first time in life’s existence – freedom.
We don’t really want freedom, though. We don’t trust humans with freedom, though. And not without justification. Just look around you as you walk along the high street and peer into people’s living rooms. People glued to TV screens with their arm round the pizza box next to them on the sofa.
However, we assume this will only worsen if we are unemployed. However, we haven’t run a true test.
Firstly, many of these people we see stuck to screens are too tired out to do anything else — they are overworked and stressed out by the treadmill of adult life. I added in ‘adult’ because I almost made the mistake of calling this ‘life’. And this is no life at all!
Secondly, most people have been conditioned to believe their purpose is their work and their work is their purpose. They have been running on the treadmill so long they’ve forgotten what it feels like to be off it.
And this treadmill started with the expectations of parents and teachers telling them they better keep running. As a result, rather than inspiring students and encouraging them towards an unlimited, abundant, and confident mindset, parents and teachers too often infected children with the virus of fear.
The function of the child is to live his own life – not the life that his anxious parents think he should live.
— Alexander Sutherland Neill
Therefore, it is perhaps fair to say free humans will be captured by screens, but this may not be the case for truly free humans. There are so few that we can’t claim to have run this test. And it is an experiment that is vitally important.
When we are saying people will be sucked in by screens, the implicit assumption is that they are being influenced by screens — we use words like ‘sucked in’, ‘addicted’, ‘enchanted’, etc. to describe this phenomenon.
However, as A. S. Neill wrote:
Free children are not easily influenced; the absence of fear accounts for this phenomenon. Indeed, the absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child.
— Alexander Sutherland Neill
Could it be that our education is making children stressed and seeing their only purpose as surviving in a harsh and brutish world?
So either people are working or they are relaxing with their entertainments. But take away the need for work, and the belief that we must work to have worth, then perhaps we have a completely different human. One that is not, as A. S. Neill put it, “easily influenced”.
This doesn’t necessarily mean they will never go on social media or game, but rather that any use of it will feel harmonious. For instance, a sports coach may have a full day coaching children and spend an hour or so in the evening playing an online game with their friends.
In Western culture there is a tendency to milk every last minute of time, but true freedom means relaxing into the state where you feel you have unlimited time — there is no rush to get anywhere and you can just appreciate whatever you are currently doing.
In a world of AI, education is not necessary, but it is the best gift you can give a child.
If AI does everything better than you, it is easy to think there is nothing meaningful to do with your abilities. An incredibly fulfilling part of life is using one’s natural abilities. This is part of the reason many assume people will be unfulfilled if they don’t have to work.
But in fact, this freedom from having to work gives us the freedom to unashamedly choose to focus on our strengths and what we naturally enjoy.
You don’t need to work. You spend your free time making things, helping others, exploring, exercising, socialising, creating, competing, and learning (following the trail of your own curiosity).
All of this can, and should, start at school.
A. S. Neill said of starting Summerhill:
“We had one main idea: to make the school fit the child – instead of making the child fit the school.”
This is a school that is irresistible, because it works with the child rather than against them. Such a school is far less likely to have children yearning after their screens.
Teachers find their purpose in showing children a way of living that is available to them. No longer are teachers forced to tarnish their innate vocation because of the imprisoning guilt of not optimising time to help their students to achieve the best exam results. An expectation that comes from without.
Stifling for teacher and student alike.
My friend almost took his life because he felt inferior. But inferiority isn’t the only motivator.
People naturally want to create things, master things, overcome obstacles, and contribute to the world around them.
An AI-dominant world could allow a mental shift. Rather than feeling, “I need to work or otherwise I’m a failure,” people could now think, “I don’t need to work! What do I genuinely want to do?”
Ideally, this shift would happen at school, where teachers surround them who are able to support them in the early stages of this new way of living.