Welcome to the deep dive, where we try to cut
through the noise and really get to the heart
of what matters. Today, we're plunging into a
question that honestly feels more urgent almost
every day. In a world where AI can practically
teach itself, is human teaching becoming obsolete?
We've gone on a deep dive into some excerpts
from Teaching in the AI World, A Time for John
Dewey, which is a really thought -provoking post
by Gary Ackerman over on hackscience .education.
And our mission really is to dig out the crucial
takeaways on how a philosopher from a century
ago, John Dewey, offers this enduring and, well,
kind of eerily relevant framework for education
now in this age of AI. It is quite remarkable,
actually. Dewey's ideas, you know, they didn't
just appear out of nowhere. They came about during
this period of massive industrial upheaval in
the U .S. right around the late 19th, early 20th
centuries. The whole country was shifting really
rapidly from being mostly agricultural to this
urban industrial kind of powerhouse. And that
historical context, this backdrop of profound
systemic change, it just makes his insights,
yeah, uncannily relevant to our digital revolution
today. Right. And this is where we hit that central
puzzle, isn't it? We know AI can handle assessments.
It can fine tune curricula, even crank out personalized
learning paths. Seems great. But Dewey pulls
us back and reminds us that education isn't just
downloading information. He called it a reconstruction
of experience. Reconstruction of experience.
Yeah. What he really meant, I think, was that
real transformative learning has to be active.
It has to be deeply social. And it needs to be
rooted in real world meaning. And the core insight
here is pretty stark. No chat bot, doesn't matter
how advanced, can reconstruct experience for
a human learner. That's on us. OK, so let's really
unpack this idea, this reconstruction of experience.
One of Dewey's absolute foundational principles
was experiential learning, learning by doing.
And this was his direct challenge to the old
ways, the rote memorization, the really rigid
standardized schooling. He insisted that genuine
knowledge has to grow from actually doing things,
engaging with the world, and then thinking about
it. As he famously put it, and you can find this
in his 1938 work, Experience and Education, we
do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting
on experience. That's such a powerful distinction.
And it really highlights a potential pitfall,
I think, in the AI -driven classroom. Think about
those intelligent tutoring systems, maybe the
ones that guide students step by step through,
say, a math problem. While they seem efficient
on the surface, there's a genuine risk that learners
become, well, over -assisted. They're kind of
shielded from what Dewey called productive struggle.
Productive struggle. Yeah, that's such a key
phrase, isn't it? It forces us to ask, you know,
are students simply completing tasks handed to
them by machines or are they truly formulating
their own questions, testing their own ideas,
discovering patterns for themselves? Exactly.
Technology really should augment, always deepen,
not just replace those crucial opportunities
to wrestle with complexity, with ambiguity. And
what's fascinating here is that productive struggle
isn't just about making things arbitrarily difficult.
It emerges from problems that are genuinely relevant
and interesting to the students themselves. When
learning focuses on these kinds of authentic
challenges, it opens up the potential for a much
deeper kind of learning, one that can actually
change how students see the world. And that's
far more effective, surely, than just clear learning
objectives that, well, frankly, might have no
real meaning to them personally. In this kind
of experiential learning, it fundamentally demands
autonomy, right? Dewey saw the learner as an
active participant, a creator of meaning, not
just some passive recipient waiting for information.
And that view directly challenges these overly
prescriptive AI systems that can sometimes narrow
learning down into simple, almost behaviorist
feedback loops, like if you do this, you get
that reward. Like training a pet on those. Exactly.
The source warns that if we lose what it calls
the messiness of learning, that struggle, that
exploration, we risk losing creativity, resilience,
even that independent critical thought qualities
machines just, well, they can't replicate. Now,
here's where Dewey gets really interesting about
the social side of learning. He famously conceived
of the classroom as a miniature society. Just
imagine that. A space where democratic habits
are actually forged through collaboration, through
dialogue, through mutual respect. And this social
dimension, it's especially critical now. Why?
because powerful algorithms are already subtly
shaping things. They're structuring access to
knowledge, they're sorting students into groups,
they're even predicting future academic paths.
And critically, these AI systems, they're trained
on vast amounts of existing data. And that data
inherently reflects the past biases and all.
Right. So Dewey's philosophy, especially as this
idea of the classroom as a mini society, it basically
compels educators to really interrogate these
systems. It pushes us to ask those essential
questions like, what fundamental values are actually
built into the educational technologies we're
using? And who gets to decide which data, which
information truly matters in shaping a student's
journey? Who's making those choices? Dewey's
democratic vision, it really calls for transparency
here and active participation. It's simply not
enough for students to just learn with technology.
They absolutely must learn to question it, to
understand its structure, its limitations. And
this is a point that frankly isn't always at
the forefront of what we teach students or even
what we necessarily empower educators to explore
fully. It's about understanding the underlying
design. Yeah, the why behind the what. Precisely.
As our classrooms get more and more connected,
you know, to global networks, digital tools everywhere,
Dewey's commitment to what he called social intelligence
becomes this crucial safeguard against, well,
alienation, feeling disconnected. Teaching has
to intentionally cultivate empathy, shared inquiry,
a deep sense of belonging. Algorithms might personalize
content down to a last detail, sure, but they
cannot build community. That task remains firmly
and I'd say wonderfully. in the human domain.
Absolutely, it's about connection. Okay, moving
on to how we actually measure learning. This
is another big one. Dewey viewed intelligence
not as some fixed mark you hit like a score on
a test, but as this dynamic capacity to grow,
to adapt, to continually reconstruct your understanding.
He was famously a vocal critic of standardized
testing, seeing it as just far too simplistic,
too reductive. In this view, It stands in really
stark contrast to many of today's AI systems,
doesn't it? Because they're often oriented around
these static metrics, things like grades, completion
rates, maybe engagement scores. And while these
measures might offer useful snapshots, Maybe.
They simply cannot capture the true trajectory
of intellectual and personal growth over time.
It's like looking at one photograph instead of
the whole album of someone's life. That's a perfect
analogy, and it leads right into Dewey's powerful
warning against mistaking the quantifiable for
the meaningful. When teaching is guided solely
by algorithmic feedback, the source suggests
we risk, and I quote, collapsing learning into
performance. Hmm performance not learning which
as you said has very little to do with actual
genuine understanding or growth exactly So instead
educators really need to reassert the centrality
of reflection Just as do we argue for things
like learning journals or project -based assessments
portfolio evaluations today's educators have
to explore how technology can document not just
the final answers But the thought processes themselves
the journey The future of education, I think,
really lies in integrating data with narrative,
you know, metrics with metacognition, that ability
to think about how you think and learn. That's
huge. Now, the rise of AI in education, it sometimes
casts teachers in what can feel like these supporting
roles, right? Implementing tech platforms, managing
data flows, responding to automated reports.
It can feel like they're becoming technicians.
But Dewey's essential conception of the teacher
as a guide and co -enquirer. That remains absolutely
vital, maybe more vital than ever. Teachers are
the ones who must design these rich contexts
for exploration. They're the ones who foster
classrooms where students can truly debate ideas,
examine their own assumptions, make those profound
connections across different disciplines. Yeah.
So while technology is undeniably a powerful
tool, maybe like a magnificent hammer, perhaps
the teacher is still the architect. That's a
great way to put it. In the face of increasing
automation, the teacher's role becomes even more
critical in shaping the environment, the whole
ecosystem where meaningful growth can actually
happen. It's about designing the conditions for
discovery. And educators must actively resist,
I think, the reduction of their role to just
technical facilitation. The true task of teaching,
according to Dewey, is deeply creative. It's
ethical and aesthetic, even. It involves judgment,
empathy, improvisation. And no AI, however sophisticated
it gets, can substitute for those forms of human
responsiveness and connection. Okay, perhaps
Dewey's most powerful insights, especially for
right now, is his embrace of uncertainty. He
saw learning not as some endpoint where you arrive
at the right answer, but as this open -ended
journey where even provisional conclusions just
spur new questions, new inquiries. And this contrasts
so sharply with many contemporary AI models,
which often emphasize prediction and optimization,
trying to give us those seemingly perfect final
answers. Yet in a world that's just dominated
by rapidly evolving technologies, constant change,
the need to tolerate and maybe even celebrate
uncertainty. paramount. It's crucial. Students
have to learn not just what is known, but maybe
more importantly, how to navigate what is unknowable.
That's the real skill for the future. Yeah, that
shifts education fundamentally, doesn't it? Away
from simple content delivery towards capacity
building. Yeah. It moves the focus from, OK,
what is the right answer to the much more profound
question of how do I even approach this problem?
How do I frame the question in the first place?
Exactly. Ultimately, teaching in the age of AI,
it has to move beyond just acquiring knowledge.
It needs to be about cultivating truly flexible
thinkers, individuals who can adapt, who can
inquire deeply, who constantly question assumptions.
their own and others. And Dewey's vision really
offers the perfect scaffolding for building those
kinds of minds. So, after all this... What does
it all mean for us now? Where does this leave
us? It seems like while AI may indeed reshape
the mechanics, the how of education, Dewey's
deeper questions, they just persist, don't they?
Questions like, what kind of society are we truly
preparing students to enter? And maybe even more
importantly, what kind of individuals are we
genuinely helping them to become? I think that's
right. In a time when we have machine -generated
content, predictive analytics offering these
unprecedented tools, John Dewey reminds us that
the hard of education, the real core lies not
in automation, but in reflection, in collaboration,
and in genuinely engaged human interaction, connection.
His theories aren't just relevant today. I'd
argue they're vital for navigating this new educational
landscape. Dooley insisted that education is
fundamentally, at its core, a human endeavor.
And if we teach with that conviction, really
hold on to that, then even in a world increasingly
powered by AI, we can truly preserve the soul
of learning. So maybe the question for you listening
is, what does preserving the soul of learning
mean to you as AI continues to evolve? Something
to think about.