School's out for...ever
I have a complicated relationship with school: my favourite teachers have often gotten the best out of me whilst the institutions themselves have borne the brunt of much of my ire, something about the forced obedience, giving up of respect and subservience to paid masters hasn’t sat well with me. It’s safe to say that when it comes to schools, I’m as anti-establishment as they come.
It is possible, however, to separate the establishments from the practitioners, as well as the practitioners from their practices. We can critique where aside from whom what we learn from without any inference on the other two respectively.
On a pedagogical level, the one-size-fits-all structure we place our children in doesn’t make sense when everyone is unique, for example: my daughter, in a moment of great self-reflection, told me that she learns better verbally - that when she hears about a topic and speaks about it in return, her level of recall and interest in the subject is increased. It shows when she does her spelling tests: when she spells the words to me audibly, she scores higher than when she writes the words down in class.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating: my neighbour, who hadn’t formally trained as a teacher, home-schooled all three of her kids and had two breeze their respective ways into Cambridge. One could argue that home schooling is a norm for the privileged and in today’s constrained macro-economic climate you may be right, however, one could also argue that given the rising costs of education and childcare, having one parent sit-out the career rat race in support of the child’s education might make more financial sense - it certainly does for the young family next door where the young mother of a one-year old is a pre-school teacher anyway.
The past Edtech businesses I have worked in have been obsessed with personalised learning journeys: knowing a child’s attitude, aptitude and altitude to provide personalised learning advice as well as using assessment as a way for learners to “choose-their-own-adventure” when it comes to creating efficient learning:
The advent of AI has the potential to up-end education forever: your own tutor in your pocket that understands how you learn and provides the key ingredients as well as the personalised recipe for what is next.
(Editor’s note: As an aside, check out the impact that AI is already having on established Edtech businesses like Chegg and Pearson as ChatGPT starts to take hold.)
AI can act like a virtual tutor, giving students one-on-one guidance by identifying areas where students are struggling and offer extra help and resources. These virtual tutors can change their teaching methods on the spot based on how students are doing.
It can help grade tests and assignments that have objective answers, like multiple-choice questions which saves teachers time, so they can focus on other important tasks. AI can use virtual reality (VR) and simulations to create cool learning experiences, explore different parts of the world, or even do virtual science experiments. These interactive activities make learning more fun and help students understand things better:
The teaching of “Empire” has been a contentious issue in British schools especially as this country begins to recognise that the oppression of other people isn’t something to be proud of. AI tools can assist teachers in making new and more current educational materials like lesson plans and presentations. By analyzing large amounts of educational data to find patterns and insights, schools and policymakers can use this information to make better decisions about things like curriculum design and resource allocation.
Of course, at least 70% of school fees are spent on an environment where the child’s physical and emotional wellbeing is catered for; while AI can bring many benefits to education, it cannot replace the environment in which great teaching and childcare happens. Teachers and care givers play a crucial role in guiding and supporting students, while AI has the potential to enhance the learning experience by offering personalized help and resources.
With this in mind, what does the structure of education look like in the future? Is this the end of traditional schooling? Will an industry like education, which has been notoriously slow to innovate in the past, be jolted into change? This guy certainly hopes so.
