The recently ended India AI Impact Summit both seeded hopes and stirred debates. Eighty-eight countries, including the US and China, signed the New Delhi Declaration. It broadly promised, among others,
specific initiatives on education. The larger question, however, is: will AI transform education?
Historically, new technologies have not upended education. Profound technological advances happened in the past century too. New technologies changed how education is delivered, not what is being delivered. When peace and happiness get irrecoverably shaken, however, education gets changed globally.
Over a century ago, in 1924, a school was founded in Geneva. World War I experiences shaped its pedagogy. “Ecolint” had been created to nurture children to respect all human beings and to promote peace. Civil servants from the League of Nations and the International Labour Organization — and educators — co-founded it. About twenty-five years later, when Marie-Therese Maurette published Ecolint’s experiences, World War II had recently ended. The League of Nations had been disbanded.
The newly formed United Nations replaced it. The Ecolint experiment, however, critically contributed to the future of global education. Stemming from it, the International Baccalaureate emerged in 1968 to create a better, more peaceful world. Today, the International Baccalaureate is a global leader offering education in every corner of the world. Its educational mission also promotes global peace. Yet, after a century of Ecolint’s founding and decades of IB education, global peace remains elusive.
Juxtapose this with the recent 108-day, 3,700-km walk by 19 US Buddhist monks to advance peace. Buddhism emphasises the realisation of inner peace. Collective peace is unimaginable, for those monks, without individual embodiment of it. Sans inner peace, any aspiration for global peace, in their view, would be a mere slogan.
Humanity’s future peace and happiness hinge on such dichotomies. New technology, however intelligent, cannot resolve them. So, education in this century will again be transformed by two questions: should education nurture inner peace or promote global peace? In the age of AI, should education prepare children for labour or empower them to discover innate happiness in leisure? The past century can show us the way forward.
Consider this example. Trump did part of his schooling at New York’s elite Kew-Forest School. The school highlights “Model United Nations” as its top student-led club. Globally, for decades, millions of students have spent a great deal on MUN. But to learn what: global cooperation through competition among elite children?
MUN simulations help children learn communication, diplomacy and negotiation. Yet, it is an elite, competitive activity. Children participate in an exclusive, competitive sport to promote global cooperation. It does not help them experientially relate to almost half of the world’s population subsisting on less than $6.85 a day. In a multipolar, chaotic world, learning to compete more will only aggravate — not alleviate — peace deprivation.
Instead of Model UN, programmes should help children model a united world. Programmes that help children live together, even if briefly, with peers diametrically opposite to them socioeconomically will spur reflections about themselves and the world. It will help them experientially learn to peacefully inhabit a common planet. A MUN helps build outward argumentative capacity. Learning to model a united world — through uncommon, lived experience — will develop children’s inner adaptive capacity.
Similarly, consider happiness. Recently, Elon Musk tweeted 13 words. He had concurred, unexpectedly, with the pithy saying, “money can’t buy happiness”. A soon-to-be trillionaire saying so elicited a massive global response from millions.
But it is myopic to read his tweet only through the lens of his current wealth. After all, Musk was born into a wealthy family. He need not have laboured at all. He could have had leisure aplenty. Yet, he did migrate to the United States in pursuit of happiness. For him, leisure did not provide happiness. Therein may lie the reason for his cryptic tweet.
In the future AI era, common people too will have to face the challenge Musk encountered. The masses will no longer have to labour for leisure. As someone advocating Universal High Income, Musk knows this. The masses will experience more material abundance, less labour and copious leisure. Yet, happiness will be the most elusive.
Twentieth-century education was designed to prepare children for labour. It mistakenly equated the pursuit of richness — through professions or jobs — with the ensuing of happiness. Current education systems do not teach children to creatively let happiness happen in their leisure. With limitless leisure, Gen Alpha and Beta will need cultural and spiritual richness for their happiness.
Take, for example, the “Space-Out competition”. In 2014, South Korean artist Woopsyang — anxious with her own busyness — was desperate to sit idly. She invited others to join her to collectively overcome similar uneasiness. She began it as a challenge. It is now adopted in many countries. Yet, in this novel contest, people struggle to sit idle for 90 minutes. In the age of AI, doing nothing for days together can become the norm for many.
Contrast current global education with different cultural practices. Some cultures teach children to find happiness in leisure. Both Italian “Dolce far Niente” (the sweetness of doing nothing) and the Dutch “Niksen” (to be idle) celebrate nothingness in between bouts of activity. Nothing does not necessarily imply sitting idly. It can be immersion in nature too. Or, as in India or Japan, it can be immersion in meditative, creative, expressive arts. The key is to help children internalise such practices to learn to live without a pursuit. It is time international education draws from the wisdom of many such civilisations.
Neither AI nor the mere banning of technology will fundamentally transform education. The future lack of peace and happiness certainly will.
Satheesh Namasivayam co-authored “Leading without Licence,” and is the Founder of MindVISA. He was formerly affiliated with the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he graduated from. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
