The Hunter Gatherers

The fear of losing jobs and becoming redundant today is more real than ever before. When the internet arrived, it democratized information and made it accessible to everyone. As a result, it destroyed centuries-old practices in education. From being the source and somewhat of a gatekeeper of knowledge, the teacher had to evolve into a facilitator who led the way in helping learners wade through vast volumes of information so that they could pick what was relevant and accurate.

When I started teaching in the late 1980s, students would hang on to my every word, make notes, ask me to repeat things so that they could jot down pronunciations as well. In less than two decades, students were carrying mobiles into classrooms, using them to check pronunciations or vocabulary or simple phrases. I had been replaced by a mobile!

I realized how teachers must have felt when the printing press first arrived, centuries ago, making books accessible to everyone. It revolutionized the role of teachers. From being the haloed fountainhead of all knowledge, functioning within cloistered monasteries or royal palace walls, teachers had been reduced to being a competitor of printed matter. They must have felt replaced by books.

Today, it has not taken centuries, but only a couple of decades, for the next education revolution to arrive – Generative AI. Just when we had started settling into our new roles, as facilitators, in the age of the internet, we have been thrown off, yet again. We have been apparently usurped by powerful guides and facilitators like Chat GPT that can help learners search through unimaginable volumes of information (an amount we cannot even aspire to know of, in multiple lifetimes) at mind-boggling speed; be at a learner’s beck and call at any time of the night and day; and handhold learners while they structure and present the information. It doesn’t matter if machines are better or worse at the job, when compared to humans, what matters is the speed at which machines are learning. No point trying to outrun AI, it’s best to think of another solution.

?According to a Forbes article on the future of education and what that means for students and educators, “higher education is facing one of its biggest periods of unknowns.”?So, one solution would be to seek inspiration from those who handled ‘unknowns’ best and lived to tell the tale - the hunter gatherers. These forefathers of ours, survived in a wild, wild world that they knew very little of, except that danger lurked at every corner, threatening their very existence. What were their survival skills? What were the tools? What were the coping strategies?

?How can we, teachers, reconnect with our hunter gatherer genes? The following methods are a take on the six coping strategies suggested by MOU .?

?1.??????Build combat tools: The choice of primitive man was simple – go out there, face the dangers of the wild to hunt or sit inside a cave to die of hunger. Apart from rudimentary weapons, the key tools they carried were an indomitable fighting spirit, an appetite for risk and a tremendous ability to adapt and evolve. Many of the 21st century skills we talk about today - resilience, adaptability, entrepreneurial spirit, - are an upgraded version of those basic survival skills.

?2.??????Know the difference between threat and ally: Early man knew when to hunt and when to gather. Wild animals were killed for food or if man himself came under attack. Not at random. Trees were not cut down in order to get to the fruit, but only to clear a path, if needed, or to light a fire from the wood. Rogue AI tools that violate basic ethical codes (e.g. fake news) need to be ruthlessly cut down or killed. But not every AI tool comes to damage us. They can help provide succour and sustenance as long as we know which ones to consume.

?3.??????Sharpen skills your adversary can’t replicate: Human beings managed to become the master race not because they were the biggest, fiercest, strongest or fastest living creatures, but because they could think. Today, creativity, empathy, critical thinking, decision making and all the executive functions that are associated with the pre-frontal lobe are an extension and enhancement of that basic ability to think. ?

?4.??????Learn to harness what’s available: The ecosystem with its wild animals, jungles, thunder, lightning and water currents must have been quite terrifying for primitive man. One can only imagine what they must have felt when they encountered the destructive power of fire for the first time. But that fire was soon domesticated; used to roast what they had hunted or to keep it burning at the mouth of the cave at night for security. The tools of generative AI that are popping up everywhere to intimidate, overwhelm and threaten us can be harnessed too.

?5.??????Work in groups: Humans were not solitary animals. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have made it in the wild. They lived and hunted in groups; formed support networks and provided safety nets so that individuals survived. Today, we need to find our tribe too: fellow professionals who are struggling, who are going through similar challenges, triumphs and defeats; with whom we can share our worries and to whom we can reach out for support.

?6.??????Never let down your guards: At no point of time, could primitive man let down their guards. The result was simple – death. There is no place for complacency in our lives either. The results may not look as dramatic as death, but they are basically a slow, gnawing version of the same – irrelevance and redundancy. Lifelong learning is the only way out.

?I’m trying to be a good hunter gatherer. On some days, I feel I’m winning. On some days, I feel I’m losing. How about you? Where are you on that road?

?Watch out for the next article in the series. Will we be able to move beyond hunting and gathering?

?In the meantime – wish you a great month ahead!