The next educational disruption? The Educatron

Imagine we were able to create a machine using AI that revolutionized education and personal development. Dubbed the?Educatron, it is able in seconds to transmit knowledge that once took a lifetime to acquire.?

Shaped something like an old telephone booth, with a burnished titanium exterior, there is a silent automatic door that gives access its interior. The device is operated digitally from an internal control panel and can impart all the knowledge contained in the world's libraries, including virtual ones, in about two minutes. In addition, the user can program the machine to teach five languages, four if Chinese is selected, in a few moments. Such is the rigor and extent of this newly acquired expertise that the user would be accepted at any university; in fact, some prestigious institutions have already signed contracts with the company that designed the Educatron.?

What’s more, the Educatron provides a painless learning process with no side effects. The company that has launched the device has not disclosed the technology behind the device, although it claims it has been exhaustively tested and is safe and reliable.?

Imagine reading about this one morning over breakfast. Would you be interested in using this machine, knowing about its formidable and immediate effects, assuming you were able to afford it??

I sometimes put this fictitious case to my audiences at conferences. To my surprise, few people raise their hands when I ask who would use the Educatron, although I suspect this is due more to the fear of attracting public attention than risk aversion, since the typical profile of my audience tends to be composed of executives and entrepreneurs, more prone to adventure.?

The Educatron might seem like science fiction, but we should remember that reality often surpasses fiction, and what we imagine can end up coming true if the right means are put in place. As Archimedes, the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, used to say, with a sufficiently long lever and the right fulcrum, the entire globe could be moved. The challenge with the Educatron would be to find the right lever and the right fulcrum.

In short, the Educatron does not yet exist, but its conceptualization brings it into the realm of the possible. Over the years, any number of novels and movies have anticipated reality by exploring the idea of immediate learning. From Ovid to Kazuo Ishiguro, it’s clear that the literary imagination sometimes falls short, and that many of these inventions and fantasies are implemented with the advance of technology and the passage of time.?

My inspiration for the Educatron was Woody Allen’s Orgasmatron, one of the high points of his 1973 movie,?Sleeper, set in a future world where people no longer engage in sexual intercourse and instead achieve satisfaction jointly in ten seconds through the aforementioned machine. Allen never showed what went on inside, but moans and screams of pleasure could be heard, and the users emerged perfectly dressed, as if nothing had happened. From the plot of the film we can deduce that the use of the Orgasmatron has solved the problem of overpopulation while providing our descendants with a few moments of pleasure periodically.

The second question I usually ask my conference audience is about the idea of being able to acquire so much knowledge in such a short time.

Some reply that the Educatron misses the point of learning, the essence of the learning process. Making the effort to learn is a fundamental part of human happiness, our development and the formation of a personality. We study, attend classes and lectures because the experience of knowing, thinking and understanding is a demanding, but satisfying activity.

The so-called culture of effort, i.e., the view that personal success and happiness depend on the individual, on the exercise of will, on the practice of habits that shape character and perseverance, has its advocates and detractors. Those who are committed to equal opportunities emphasize effort as a fundamental factor in achieving personal goals. Those who believe that meritocracy and inequality impede social mobility detract from the value of effort, and think that not even the most willing are capable of achieving their goals. Both sides use facts and data as the basis for their diagnosis and proposals. As with other polarized debates, there are compelling arguments on both sides.?

One of the earliest proponents of the importance of effort in education was Aristotle. In his?Politics, writing about teaching children music, he notes: "Now it is not difficult to see that one must not make amusement the object of the education of the young; for amusement does not go with learning—learning is a painful process." Aristotle justifies the study of music not for its usefulness or for the purpose of practicing a profession - except in the case of musicians - but for its contribution to the development of character and to enable young people to enjoy their leisure time in a better way. His point is that all learning requires effort, especially in the early stages of a discipline or career, not that the learning process is fundamentally painful in and of itself.?

The learning curve illustrates this very well: when we start studying, for example, a new language, we need to spend a great deal of time and effort, but, as time passes and we acquire more knowledge and skills, the amount of effort required decreases until the next stage begins and the process is once more arduous and we have to spend more time on it. We have all experienced difficulties when starting a new course, until a moment comes when we become comfortable with the concepts being used. At that point we feel satisfaction, a healthy sense of happiness with the knowledge acquired.

One of the most influential thinkers in the world of education was the American John Dewey, who is considered both an educator and a philosopher. Dewey's work can help us understand why devices such as the Educatron are no substitute for the learning process that takes place in schools or universities. For Dewey, the purpose of education is not solely and fundamentally to transfer knowledge, and much less to indoctrinate. Its fundamental purpose is to integrate us into society: "the school, as an institution, should simplify existing social life; should reduce it, as it were, to an embryonic form".

To achieve this, the educational environment must be a replica of what students will find after graduation. Dewey explains that education is a social process, and as such requires interaction with other individuals and the creation of relationships. Through an interactive methodology, one can learn as much from the teacher as from the other students. Therefore, education alone, or the acquisition of knowledge or even the development of skills, as could be done for example in a simulator, would not be sufficient to replicate the social life which takes place in the educational space.

This function of education and learning is also inferred from the teacher: "The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences."?This applies to the methodologies and the meaning of evaluation systems and examinations: "Examinations are of use only so far as they test the child's fitness for social life".

As in other articles in this newsletter section, I would like to formulate some takeaways from this analysis:

?We live in an era characterized by quick, effective solutions. For example, we talk about knowledge pills, summaries and synopses to tackle the understanding of new concepts and ideas. So why reject the Educatron?

• First of all, there are many ways to learn. As opposed to a traditional, uniform and standard educational formula, new technologies and methodologies facilitate the personalization of learning. This is truly the challenge for educational institutions: the personalization of learning, how to adapt teaching to each student, to extract the greatest potential and develop each person according to his or her talents. The Educatron would simplify this process, unless it could also be adapted to the uniqueness of each user, something virtually impossible to pre-program.
• Secondly, one of the characteristics of genuine knowledge is access to the original sources of knowledge. The point of reading Shakespeare's plays directly, rather than the children’s summaries of Charles and Mary Lamb, is to experience firsthand the emotions his language arouses, to work on one's own to makes sense of passages or words that stimulate new and unusual thoughts; producing experiences that are difficult to predict.

You may have noticed that books in Kindle format have underlined passages, the most popular with readers. But surely you will bookmark different ones, and in any case, I imagine that you would not be satisfied with reading only the passages marked by others. What’s more, any author worth their salt would not want their work to be encapsulated in a few quotations.

Similarly, while I think Blinkist-type reviews have their use, which I might consult in deciding which works to buy or read, the experience of reading the original work is unmatched by skimming a summary.

• Finally, you may have wondered why a college degree takes three or more years. My answer is that learning is a social process, one of sharing, discussing, agreeing or disagreeing. Furthermore, my experience is that knowledge, like good wine, matures with time, becomes more moderate, consistent and complete.?

An analogy I often use to explain the ongoing, incessant, iterative nature of learning is the story of Ulysses in Homer's Odyssey. What gives meaning to the Greek hero's journey is not his arrival in Ithaca, his homeland, but his adventures during his voyage. It’s the experiences, lessons, the setbacks and disappointments during study that contribute to the development of the personality, and to our life. As Dewey explained: "I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living".

--------------------

You may visit my INSTAGRAM account here