Steve Franks

I like this take because it’s actually hot. But here’s the thing. Design implies purpose. So the question is: 1. For what purpose was modern education designed? 2. Was it well designed for that purpose? 3. When did that change? For what purpose was education designed? Modern education - the kind where you sit in class and get grades - was designed to grow the workforce. Capitalism demands a growing supply of knowledgeable workers, and industrialization in particular demanded them faster than the old model could afford. We needed a way to systematically mass produce not-dumb workers. Notice I didn’t say anything about creativity, high intelligence, human flourishing, morality, etc. I said not dumb workers. Was it well designed for that purpose? The thing about mass production is it’s great for quantity, often at the expense of quality. But the workforce (at the time) didn’t demand quality. It demanded quantity. We can argue all day about whether or not a mass produced not-dumb workforce was the right purpose, but we do seem to *have* said workforce. And to Ben’s point, so do many other countries that adopted this model. So it seems modern education was well designed for that purpose, at least at the time. Well designed doesn’t mean perfect. When did that change? Modern education was built on the idea that access to information is scarce, that certain information should be transferred faithfully into the minds of children, and that we know how to do that reasonably well. But today, access to information is abundant, and when compared to teaching, there are much more effective ways of getting that information into the minds of children. Ben thinks AI is the tipping point, and he may be right. One could argue it happened earlier, with the invention of tools like IXL, or perhaps even earlier still with edtech in general, or the internet. But unlike edtech and the internet, AI specifically replaces teaching. And that is certainly an inflection point.. My take Modern education, like monarchy, was a good design for the wrong problem. The question isn’t how to fill the workforce. It’s how to empower individuals. If we had started with that question, we wouldn’t have landed on the modern education model, because it’s horribly designed for that purpose.