Food for Thought: The need for forward thinking schools

Dear all,

For years educationalists have been talking about the future and how it will be different. Videos like Shift Happens have told us about the number of jobs that didn't exist a decade ago, preparing students for jobs that don't exist yet, having more than 10 jobs by the age of 38, that social media and the internet has changed society and more. But in amongst all the interesting statistics there is a line, 'we are living in exponential times' that takes us much deeper when isolated and carefully unwrapped. Till recently I had never thought about the importance of the term exponential. At the end of last week's Food for Thought I mentioned a documentary that Sir Ken Robinson referred to as being an important factor in the need for transforming schools, Singularity. His words encouraged me to think and research more about the realization that we are facing an exponential growth in technology that is impacting our immediate lives whilst at the same time radically redefining our future existence. The person at the center of this notion of Singularity is Ray Kurzweil. In 2006 he wrote a book, Singularity is Near, and although dismissed at the time by many critics, his predictions that technology would merge more and more with sciences creating new branches such as genomics, robotics and nanotechnology appear to be very much on track. 

Kurzweil predicted that by 2029 computers could mirror the functions of the brain but with far greater capacity for retrieving stored information, solving problems and making human like decisions. We already have computers that learn from mistakes and correct their thinking, in the future they will also have a form of social and emotional intelligence as well. This is only 12 year away and children in Grade 1 will be emerging into a world that without doubt will be shaped by technology and artificial intelligence.

Here is a short 7 minute Bigthink interview with Kurzweil that talks about Singularity.

This is a much longer documentary by Stephen Hawkin, a renowned physicist from Cambridge University, who despite serious physical differences is one of the world's leading scientific thinkers. Hawkin's voice is computerized because of his disabilities. Although not always easy to follow, this 80 minute documentary is  certainly worth listening to because it raises lots of scenarios and questions that most of us have never even imagined whilst also tackling many of the criticisms of the theory. 

Of course it is easy to deny that Singularity will ever happen, just as the Luddites opposed the concept that machines will replace human labour in the factory. But there is little doubt that technology is advancing exponentially and changing our world. Algorithms and computers are already replacing jobs that we thought would be safe from technology. Many of the technological developments that Kurzweil predicts will make humans more intelligent by combining technology and the human brain in ways that were unimaginable even a decade ago. Kurzweil is very optimistic about the future and artificial intelligence but we need to be thinking further ahead to prepare our children for such a world as described in this documentary. 

We will never stop technological progress so it is inevitable that our world will look very different by 2029. Kurzweil predicts that the world after the 2040's is completely unpredictable and it is not possible to know what it will look like because of the exponential transformational progress of technology.

Here is the conclusion from an article in Forbes that further encourages us to redefine the outcomes of 15 years of primary and secondary education and the importance of the soft skills that we are working hard to impart to our ISHCMC students.

"The idea of approaching a technological singularity is both exciting and scary. While the prospects of technologies that are hundreds of times more powerful than what we have today will open up completely new possibilities, there are also inherent dangers. How autonomous should we allow robots to become? Which genes are safe to edit and which are not?

Beyond opening up a Pandora’s box of forces that we may not fully understand, there is already evidence that technology is destroying jobs, stagnating incomes and increasing inequality. As the process accelerates, we will begin to face problems technology cannot help us with, such as the social strife created by those left behind as well as others in developing countries who will feel newly empowered and demand a greater political voice.
We will also have to change how we view work. Much like in the industrial revolution when machines replaced physical labor, new technologies are now replacing cognitive tasks. Humans, therefore, will have to become more adept at things that machines can’t do, namely dealing with other humans, and social skills will trump cognitive skills in the marketplace.
The truth is that the future of technology is all too human. While technologies will continue to become exponentially more powerful, the decisions we make are still our own."

This final short video from Ray Kurzweil certainly supports many of the ideas that we are building into an ISHCMC education. Twice her refers to traditional educational thinking as being obsolete, a term used by Wagner, Zhao, Robinson et al. 

Finally, for this Food for Thought, if all of this has sent your mind spinning here is a link to the Meditation that Paul shared with us in last Monday morning's meeting.

Have a good Sunday and mothers day here in Vietnam,

Yours,

Adrian