Issues with Education and the coming Age of Intelligent Machines
My rant on education.
Some experts purport that Artificial Intelligence is yet to happen,
but I think, it depends on who you talk to. My personal opinion is that it has already happened but is slowly strutting along as all sciences should do. I see it as a thrilling topic to talk about in the general sense as there is so much hype about what is actually going on. The massive hype is based on the direct impact it brings to industry with the now available computing power but this is nothing new. The field of education will be at a great advantage if A.I. could be used properly
1. Intro
Schools nowadays are mostly adopted as a business instead of being a place of learning and they are a far cry from what they were growing to be; basing myself here from the ancient times of Aristotle in Greece, the wise people at the library of Alexandria or the intellectual capital of Bagdhad that existed. I will focus on STEM education, which is my background.
2. Problems
First I came to wonder how in secondary classes, the art of asking questions in class has always been looked down by peers such that you are either seen as dumb or someone who is trying to portray his or herself as being extremely knowledgeable(depending on the environment) in the particular topic being discussed. Whereas, It is supposed to be celebrated. Also, some teachers who are not good educators and/or impatient strip away any confidence the student has. This is done by demeaning, scolding away, and making them feel it was imperative for them to know the answer of the question asked. It discourages the student to actually want to participate.
There are more teachers who are more interested in getting their paycheck than in doing their job properly. I don’t blame them here, the economy is bad(that’s unfortunate!!!) but will that same teacher be comfortable if he or she was told that the doctors treating him/her aren’t really interested in what they are doing and are just doing it for the cash. Sure the doctors could be competent but… Will you trust them as your medical professional if you had that information?
On the other hand there are teachers who have all the will they can muster to properly teach the students — these are the salt of the earth. But they are limited by administrators through non granting of funds and/or resources to be actually effective at their job.
On a higher note talking about the bloated administration surrounding most schools, some of the positions or roles occupied are useless in my opinion and I think those positions are some of the main reasons tuition keeps increasing year after year.
Each student graduating college or higher has had at least hundreds of teachers in his or her lifetime. It is pathetic that every time when one is asked of how many have actually made an impact on their lives or even just got them interested in a subject, most students couldn’t give a number that could be equal to the number of fingers on one of their hands(Well 2 to 8 teachers from what I have seen). Out of hundreds!!! This should be seen as something to be reviewed.
In scientific education the flaws of the general education system really shows when trained scientists or people who had some science education get to cherry pick science. It’s preposterous when you see it but you actually witness it even with the most seasoned scientists. There’s something missing in the educational system that leaves people with a gap in their understanding of what science is, how and why it works. It shows; when you have that many people being good at computing numbers and solving equations without knowing why they are doing it or, how it can help them or just knowing the intrinsic nature of mathematics and science in explaining the universe and nature around them. If you graduate out of your studies of science with this understanding then I think you will be incapable of cherry picking science.
Another problem is the way mathematics is dreaded by a lot of students in school. I sometimes feel we don’t learn maths/science in lower classes. We are not taught science well because we’re taught like it’s some compactified closed system of information rather than as a tapestry of discovery.
It’s a wiring of the brain, it’s not teaching someone maths or science. It is steeping them in circumstances where thinking that way is required to solve a problem. Most people hate maths because they are taught maths as a series of procedures — rather than as a method for inspecting and translating the natural universe. Science is a process, not a series of facts. The way science is taught in schools doesn’t reflect this.
There’s also an issue with a lot of students who don’t just want to put in the work. No matter how the educators motivate, no matter how well the learners can be inspired… they don’t put in the work and it does leave a negative view on the teacher’s performance. There are cases where the student might be slow(I will talk about them in the next paragraph), I am not talking about that; I am talking about the ones who truly enjoy the material but don’t put in any work to commit to what they are to know. These ones, I don’t know how they think they are going to be effective with learning as they are just practicing intellectual masturbation(I can say I was once of this group, I actually had to be slapped hard mentally 😆 😂).
Some people are just slower than others in general. We recognize that in our daily lives but we don’t accomodate for that in the educational system. We make people feel bad for the fact that they are being slow or repeating a class is something to be ashamed of. The fact that we have a system where different kids from different backgrounds are placed in the same room to be taught the same thing and for all them to assimilate it at the same pace when the common factor between them is mostly their age is baffling. Another thing I have never understood(It’s kind of funny actually) is how at the university level the same number of years is required to graduate from Computer Science, Maths ,Physics, Economics, Business, Music, Arts, History, Philosophy and Sociology. No one field is better or worse than the other but I actually find it weird that all of them require the same number of years to graduate when we know how vastly they differ from each other.
The best scientists and successful professionals don’t really depend on the quality of their school. Sure it helps but what I realized was that what made a great school wasn’t just the professors or teachers( it’s kind of necessary but they can only go so far)… but the realization of how much down time is spent during freetime at school, downtime between classes; talking about useless stuff, chasing a love interest, being in the library but not really studying…etc.
At some elite institutions you meet people talking about who(among them) might have an equation and/or algorithm named after them… in their downtime, who might win a Nobel Prize, a Turing Award, who might develop an awesome model that might revolutionize how some problem in physics can be solved or how machines can solve an impossible problem.
3. Some Solutions
You remember how I spoke about how one has averagely at most 2 to 8 teachers that has impacted them throughout their lives? I think one of the solutions is to have a cloning machine produced as quickly as possible to clone all these gems so as to take care of the future generation of students but I am not holding my breath for that😝.
One of the solutions I think of is to let high school students in the sciences perform the necessary reproducible experiments needed in science(I stress on that.)
I think something more feasible in the coming years are artificial intelligent models that educate at the same level or even better than those really good teachers.
3.1. High School Science
I stressed that we must let students perform the necessary reproducible experiments needed in science. One of the problem with academia is that too many people see it as an extremely closed community with high entry bar, something that exists only for boring nerds. If more highschoolers get the chance to know how awesome science actually is, that will change their perception and we will eventually get a generation with a very different worldview.
Many teens suffer from the feeling of being left out of the world. The fact that it happens during one of the most important periods of their lives doesn’t help. These people want to do something meaningful and receive the guidance. Let us give them the instructions and equipment needed, they are our future, after all.
3.2. Artificial Intelligent Educators
I sincerely hope that children will stop suffering from some ignorant, opinionated, unjust and abusing teachers. An artificial intelligence will not only be able to be infinitely patient with a student, it will be able to adjust and train itself to be the best teacher for every single student interacting with it. Even more, doing so will be one of its primary functions as a teacher — no real attachment to some personality, no mood swings.
In teaching science it will be a great progress, can’t really say anything about arts.
I really have no idea of the field of arts, I think those who have graduated in the field will have better opinions than anything I can muster but in my humble opinion there’s nothing that really prevents machines from understanding and appreciating art. Adjusted pace for every student can address the problem of burnout and frustration. Many highschoolers complain about being constantly overburdened with assignments, most of which don’t make sense. It doesn’t necessarily mean that AI will be “The” perfect teacher — but it will be a much more patient one.
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