A professor of education once asked Henry Mintzberg what he thought about the current American practice of appointing retired army officers to head up schools. Good idea, he replied, so long as the country is prepared to have retired school principals run the army.
The anecdote speaks on many levels, but perhaps most importantly, it addresses social values.
The purpose of education should not be numb obedience to the authority behind the content being delivered, and ending one’s career with the degree of knowing accumulated, matching the family income.
The purpose of education should be learning, not knowing. Since knowing is static and learning is adaptive, we need more people who know how to learn. People who can adapt, develop critical thinking, and be open to unlearning the dogmatic rhetoric that leads to further polarization of our societies.
With the AI taking an ever-greater role in education and the social sphere, the future will be determined by humankind’s ability to govern the complexity of social, economic, and environmental interdependent spheres. That ability can only emerge within the community of learning individuals that cultivate the culture of respect and understanding beyond the boundaries of their beliefs.
The static knowing individuals can never match the AI’s ability to process accumulated knowledge. The adaptive learning individuals can generate serendipity of the new knowledge, explore the depths of the human condition, and care for the Web of Life. These are the skills that should be governing schools, the army, AI, and all our relations.
Boris Matijas 