Category Archives: Blog

Woe Be Unto Those Who Do Not Understand the Alphas – Their Destiny Matters, Ours Is History

Posted on by
Reply

“Demography is destiny.” (August Comte, 1798). Alphas, those born between 2010 and 2025 and are of school age now, need our consideration because they are unlike those who came before.  Alphas add qualitative dimensions to the quantitative game of demographics – they are our destiny.

Using current demographic data to predict the future is in vogue today as decision makers determine which demographic groups and changes in demography to consider in crafting future policy and practice. However, the demos are changing. Millennials replaced Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation in 2020. Non-whites soon will be a majority of the population. The number of workers/contributors to the economy is declining as the number of non-working/retired increases. The ultra rich are richer and the number of impoverished and needy increases. America is decreasingly the world’s Land of Opportunity. Our past and present are a world the Silent, Boomer, X, Z and Millennial generations created. The future lies with the Alphas.

America historically was characterized by the belief life that each successive generation will have a better quality of life than their predecessors. The American Dream inspired people to engage and achieve. If Alphas abandon the Dream, what will happen to America? We need to consider the possibility, probability, and consequences of no American Dream. Hence, we cannot apply past generational assumptions about children to the Alphas and the world they will occupy. Woe be to those who ignore the Alphas.

The American Dream that was.

Boomers were born and raised in the American Dream. Their Dream provided prosperity and lifestyle greater than their grandparents and parents. Post-WW2 economics accelerated Boomers’ employment, civil rights legislation made the Dream more inclusive, and America’s global dominance kept the “good times rolling.” The Dream of stable employment and increasing income, purchasing a home and car, marriage and children were achieved by most Boomers, depending on race. Significantly, Boomers were born to be achievers through perseverance, and they prospered in the pre-technology age.

Gen X sits right on the edge of a changing American Dream. They are half-like Boomers and half-like Millennials and Gen Z. Financially, they are less well off than Boomers and less debt-burdened than Millennials. They are more independent thinking and adaptable than Boomers and more comfortable with technology. While Boomers are work grinders, Gen Xers prefer work-life balance and are less confrontative. The Dream still lives for them.

Millennials and Gen Z, generally, still believe in the American Dream but their reality is not Dream-like. The cost of education, housing, health and childcare have eroded their potential for achieving greater prosperity than the Boomers and Xers. Today only 53% of Americans still believe the Dream is possible. Critically, that optimism fades within age groups. Only 39% of the 18- to 29-year-olds believe the Drean can be theirs and 43% of the 39- to 49-year-olds see themselves in the Dream. The conditions for achieving the Dream are changing and fading for younger Americans in the prime years of the working lives.

Millennials and Gen Z also are caught in the reality that the retirements of Boomers and Gen Xers are depleting Social Security and Medicare. Millennials and Gex Zers will need to work more and longer if they are to achieve their anticipated “golden years.”  All of this becomes increasingly unlikely.

The above comparisons and contrasts of older generations set the stage for why Alphas are significant.

What we should know about Alphas.

For Alpha children born in and after 2010, the world is rapidly and always changing. Comparing Alphas to the Boomers is like comparing Boomers to their grandparents, people born between 1885 and 1900. That comparison sounds outlandish but is truer than not. Recent historic effects will be as important to Alphas as the Great Depression and World War 2 were to the Silent Generation (born between 1924 and 1945).

Consider –

  • The first Alphas were born the same year as the IPad and technologies have shaped their every development. They have no memory of life prior to touch screens and instant and constant access to the Net.
  • Alphas are screen time. They are constantly connected through what they see and hear on their devices. They don’t wait for the news – the news is theirs instantly.
  • The pandemic was more than a disease for Alphas. The death of more than a million Americans was a numbing and then cold statistic. Adult arguments and hostilities over vaccination, masking, school closure, childcare, isolation, and attacks on medical science appeared more important than their childhood. Disease, death, and divisiveness shape their thinking and feelings.
  • As politically hot as diversity is as a topic, the majority of Americans in Alpha world will be non-white, multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and no longer “white America.” Alphas are part of diversity.
  • Violence is just a news story. Gun violence happens and Alphas see adults who do nothing to prevent it, they only respond. Alphas know children will be shot in schools. There is nothing they can do about it.
  • They hear facts, alternative facts, and lies with equal frequency. Alphas have abandoned traditional news outlets and rely on media that is quick, digestible, and somewhat entertaining/controversial instead. An ability to remain objective to understand information has never been greater in greater need.
  • If they do not worry about their mental health, they are told they should. Their adults give mixed messages claiming mental health is a root of many school-age problems but do not supply significant resources to address mental health issues. Mental health issues are real but mental health also is just a labeling and blaming for what happens in the world without real address. It is symptomatic of the hypocrisy Alphas see in the adult world.
  • Most Alphas are raised in childcare centers, attend education in schools of their parents’ choice, and enter adulthood being constantly socialized. Alphas’ ability to think and work independent of group think and influencers will shape their generation.
  • Chaos is becoming the Alphas norm. American politics of 2024-2025 is the story they will talk about in the future not the traditions of democratic stability and community commonwealth. The rule of law will survive only if Alphas have a will to uphold the rules.

And so?

Alphas will make a different world. Hence, educators need to make schooling a different experience for them, especially as Alphas age. Alphas will learn much like children in earlier generations learned in early childhood through the upper elementary grades. They will profit from play-based education, socialization with each other and with school, learning to read, early literacy and numeracy that are the mainstays of primary education. However, as they age Alphas will grow into the above characteristics of their generation. That is when child/student-centered teaching and learning is essential.

  1. Alphas require maximal active engagement, because trust of adults and adult/institutional thinking will not be a given for Alphas. In the pre-pandemic eras 70 to 80% of a student’s day was dominated by teacher talk or demonstration. This pattern changed dramatically as children returned to many but not enough post-pandemic schools. Pandemic use of Google Classrooms, virtual meetings, flipped models of teaching/learning responsibilities, and a reluctance of children to return to pre-pandemic rules and forced teachers and schools to change instructional delivery and student relationships. We need to sustain and extend the flip so that 75% of a student’s day is active engagement and 25% is watching and listening.
  2. Alphas require real world technologies in school. Alphas need to productively use the technologies they use outside of school inside the school. Our past habits of forbidding students access to non-school tech alienates all students, especially Alphas, and have failed to create a student-centered learning environment. Perhaps Alphas will follow the Boomer/X pathway into post-secondary education. Internships, apprenticeships, tech schooling, and “gap yearing” will become their new patterns. Hence, our heavy college tracked curriculum must change. We need new course sequences that prepare Alphas for their future not our out-of-date past.
  3. Alphas are diversity. Current machinations to negate diversity programming does not match their realities. Non-whites are becoming and will be the majority of our population. Alpha education must prepare them for living diversely.
  4. The Alpha world view will be global not national only. Their technologies do not know national boundaries neither will their interests.
  5. Alphas will be multi-lingual. Schools that are dropping for language instruction due to costs need to reprioritize their programming. Alphas need to be fluent in their languages of choice.
  6. Education cannot be debt-creating. It must be universal and free.

The Big Duh!

Soon, Alphas will assume adult roles and responsibilities in our communities and world. If we continue to educate them for a Boomer and X world, they will flounder and founder. Our current educational programming is not prepared for their demographics. We need to make changes today that our progeny will thank us for in the future.

Atlas is Shrugging

Posted on by
Reply

Think Ayn Rand and then think 2025. Think John Gault and then think the American commonwealth. Think the consequences of industrial leaders shuttering their talents and then think the American people shuttering their care factor. Think the tenets of democracy and then think the pettiness of empirical rule.

When a slim majority of our electorate believes an egotist will elevate their status and cure their woes, what happens if everyone else shrugs? We are finding out.

Fellow educators, we shall not shrug.

Rousseau, Come Back

Posted on by
Reply

“Education is an opportunity, and children should make the most of it. You can never have too much education.” Guilty as charged. As a principal, superintendent, and school board member, I overloaded children aged 5-18 with too many education requirements and compelling programs.  School was an open frame of time, and I led educators in prescribing as many things as we could for the education of children. We labeled our programs as curricular and extracurricular opportunities and were proud of the total education available to our children. Even after traditional academics, activities, arts, and athletics, we wrapped our arms around atypical school activities, like sailing, bowling, archery, trap shooting, biking and hiking, and electronic gaming and made then school sponsored. Schooling was the full Monty.

Seldom did we experience an existential moment, notably “what am I doing and why am I doing it”, the answer always was “this is good for kids.” Today I am no longer convinced of that answer. I would do it differently. Rousseau, come back!

Nature or nurture should be nature and nurture.

Adults have forever wrestled with the question of the best way for children to learn about the world. Do we let children explore and experience the world and from their natural learning prepare themselves for adult life? Is education the child’s responsibility? Is self-education a natural and adequate phenomenon? Or do we create, pre-plan, and program their education to ensure they learn what we want them to learn? Is education the adults’ responsibility? Does education require direct nurturing?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau helped us understand the value of allowing children to explore and learn naturally. In writing Emile (1762), he created an educational philosophy aligned with the physical and mental development of a child and their exposure to experiential learning. He said that children learn best through direct interaction with a natural environment that optimizes their curiosity and exploration. Learning should be hands-on and active. He was opposed to adults lecturing children, rote memorization of information, and mandatory school attendance. To Rousseau, experiencing life and its consequences taught children critical thinking, moral, and social lessons that were superior to didactic lessons in a school. Life is full of problem-solving needs and children develop skills to match and meet their needs.

Rousseau’s philosophies live in Montessori, Waldorf, and outdoor education programs. They are apparent in school curricula that uses problem-based, project-based, and inquiry-based education. And they are apparent in early child education’s play-based learning curricula.

Horace Mann provided the contrary view; the education of children is a public responsibility and should be regimented. Mann is labeled the “Father of American Public Education.” He espoused universal, free, compulsory education of all children. At a time when a lack of social and economic status barred children from education, Mann led the movement for common schools that would meld all children into a more unified and democratic society as adults. Mann’s schools were taught by professionally trained teachers and used a standardized curriculum focusing on reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and science. He embedded teaching of common morals, civic responsibility, and character development. Schools were funded by local taxes to ensure that all families could afford to enroll their children. Mann created our educational industry.

Regardless of political leanings today, most adults hold to these as the purpose of universal 4K-12 education.

  • Democracy requires educated citizens, and public education equips children with the basic knowledge necessary for informed decision-making, civic engagement, and understanding their communities.
  • Economic self-sufficiency requires foundational skills for personal and professional growth that contribute to the economy and self-support.
  • Public education instills shared values, tolerances, and cooperation necessary for diverse people to live in a stable and unified society.

Mann’s philosophies live in the WI statutory requirements for teacher preparation and subject area curricular requirements. A quick review of any public school’s vision and mission statements and district policies demonstrates Mann’s influence today.  

Why revisit Rousseau?

We have forgotten to balance the fundamental elements of nature and nurture for the best education of children. We are ambushed by these very misleading and disruptive arguments.

  • The education of children is a national priority that ensures the international dominance of the United States on economic, scientific, and political issues.
  • Through public education we shape the ideological thinking of the next generations. They must be taught the right ideology.
  • Because education is funded with public tax dollars, we demand that all children achieve our predetermined outcomes.
  • Public education is the primary daycare provider for children in the United States. The state has a responsibility for the total welfare of children while parents work.

Each of these is balderdash if we believe that the primary and fundamental purpose of education is to cause children to develop into wholesome, inquiring and thinking individuals who are prepared to participate and thrive in a democratic society. To achieve this purpose, we need to provide balance between nature and nurture.

Too much nature creates a Lord of the Flies scenario, and too much nurture creates a totalitarian scenario. As we bent toward too much dictum in the education of children in the last 30 years, we need to take our adult hands off the throttle and allow children opportunities to learn from their innate curiosities and wonderment.

In the argument of nature versus nurture, who speaks for children?

In my late career thinking, I observe that few adults speak for children. We speak from self-evident biases and for our self-serving needs. Almost all, if not all, critical decisions about the education of children are made by the political negotiations of adults. There are no children at the table or in the room.

In our post-pandemic data, it is clear that when children do not see themselves and their needs being met in their public education, they bail out. The major dilemma we face in this decade will not be the loss of academic achievement and the onset of socio-emotional problems in youth. The problem will be that as children matriculate into middle and secondary education, they lose faith in the efficacy of the education adults deliver to them. Our issues today are not lack of achievement but lack of engagement. We need to reassess the overwhelming manner in which we dictate schooling and life for children and reincorporate more of Rousseau. We need to rebalance the virtues of nature and nurture in the educational development of all children. If we do not, we will stand alone in classrooms that children have fled.

Hortons Hear Teachers

Posted on by
Reply

“I am here. I am in this classroom. I am responsible for teaching these children. I am here – does anyone see me? Does anyone care?” When the bell rings and classroom doors close, even though there are children in the room and there are other teachers in nearby classrooms, every initial educator feels alone on the job. And their feeling of being alone does not stop after the first day. Being the only adult in their classroom is their new daily reality. It is not until their Horton hears their silent cry with an “I hear you and I see you and I care,” that they will breathe easier and settle into being a teacher.

Hortons are professional teacher friends.

Ask teachers about their long-term teacher friends and most will name and describe a teacher or small group of teachers they met in their first days and months as a classroom teacher. Many say their friends found them, they did not find their friends. An early teacher friend is a Horton, just like the Seuss elephant who singularly heard the microscopic community of Whoville. A teacher Horton hears and sees starting teachers and connects with them. But not every teacher is so lucky as to have a Horton.

Hortons and professional teacher friends are different than friend friends. Hortons and teacher friends band together, like kids from the same neighborhood who create invisible understandings that withstand the tests of time. Through their common moments of joy and tribulation, teacher friends make teaching a wonderful career.

Some teacher friends will be other starting teachers, and some will be veterans who “clicked” into a friendship with a young teacher. Many will be job alike teachers – people who teach the same subjects or the same grade levels or share other similarities in their teaching assignments. A Horton is a particular veteran teacher who makes a unique professional connection with a newcomer teacher.

Very few Hortons are school-assigned mentors. Mentors fulfill assignments, Hortons fill needs.

Starting teachers who do not have PTFs typically do not last long as teachers. Although low compensation, extra hour work, and low public esteem are listed as the major reasons for early career resignations, the lack of PTFs is a significant contributor to job dissatisfaction. Consider teachers in your school who resigned in their first years. Did they have Hortons? Bet they did not.

Hortons are just Hortons doing what Hortons do.

Hortons come in all shapes and sizes meaning there is no singular characteristic that describes them.

I saw a Horton knock on a new teacher’s classroom door, walk in, introduce herself, and at once strike up a friendship. Until Horton’s retirement, they were professionally and personally inseparable.

Another Horton watched a new teacher for several days, found a seat next to the rookie at a meeting, and without fanfare began to help a new colleague to understand and interpret information that was being presented. Sensing a willing veteran opened the rookie to sharing his trepidations about school and listening to professional guidance.

Some Hortons view a new teacher as a team member knowing that a strong teaching team requires strong teachers. They prioritize making a rookie part of their team. They also have the insight to coach toward best practices not just talk about them. Their soft explanations and demonstrations exemplify professional collegiality.

Athletics, arts, and activities provide easy Horton connections. Teacher shortages also beget coach and director shortages. Many first-year teachers accept or are assigned extracurricular contracts as part of their employment. Being part of a coaching or theatrical staff or being an activity advisor connects a new teacher with other school adults and creates a unique relationship with school parents. Coaches, directors, and advisors are visible, and extracurricular visibility creates teacher visibility.

Most Hortons are persistent. They know a first-year teacher faces many challenges and will have good and not so good days at school. By recognizing and acknowledging a rookie’s good days, they make a newcomer more receptive to consolations and suggestions when improvements are needed.

Hortons are more likely to be Hortons out of school as well. If they are parents, they help to lead and guide the activities their children join. They join and attend community activities. Their capacity to share is internally not externally motivated and reinforced.

Schools create solitary teachers.

That reads a bit harshly, but it is a true statement. School isolates teachers, starting teachers especially. It happens in these two ways.

First, school principal attention to a new teacher lasts a proverbial ten minutes after the teaching contract is signed. Administrative assistants and school secretaries take care of new teacher onboarding. The principal quickly shifts to the search and hiring of other vacant teaching positions or to any other crisis that dots an administrator’s daily calendar. Once a starting teacher is shown to her classroom, she is on her own.

This is not a criticism of principals. The pandemic and post-pandemic responsibilities of a school principal have changed significantly. The stress of finding and keeping faculty and staff is only one of many, though it may be their most important task.

Second, classrooms are “black boxes.” Most teachers close their classroom doors because what happens in their classroom is their business and no one else’s business. Visitors to classrooms are rare because every other person in the school has their own classroom or job responsibilities. Everyone in school does their job in relative isolation to each other. A math teacher is her classroom is as invisible as a custodian sweeping halls or cleaning a toilet during class time. Exceptions are in the school kitchen; the hustle and bustle of preparing student snacks and lunches requires constant teamwork.

How and why does this happen?

New teachers are easily lost in late August, September, and October. Everyone at school gets into the hype of a new school year. Teachers have new assignments of children to teach, and all fall sports and activities garner the enthusiasm of new seasons. Excitement surrounds and sweeps up starting teachers, but it does not overcome the isolation of their black box work. First-year teachers drift into the backwaters of a new school year.

Doing a good to exceptionally good job in the first year decreases visibility. Problems get attention, but doing well gets no attention. A first-year teacher who is poorly prepared, communicates badly with students and parents, and has trouble with school deadlines, especially if these deficits reach the school board, will have frequent and pointed conversations with a principal. A rookie whose peer, student, and parent relations are okay to good, even exceptionally good, will sail into the second semester without drawing notice. They fit into the expectations of veteran teachers and are lost in the overall impression of “no problems with that one.”

Schools are stingy with accolades and positive reinforcement. Consider the news releases about your local schools to confirm this statement. Athletics get the most press. School musicals and plays come next. Upside academic performances are overshadowed by the downside state assessment news releases. And most teachers humbly avoid the limelight. Good news reflects on students not teachers.

January and February are important months for first-year teachers. Statutorily, teachers who will not receive a continuing contract must be given written notice by the school board. This may be the first time a board member has heard the names of first-year teachers who were not associated with peer, student, or parent problems. At the same time, Boards consider next year’s budget and school staffing. If layoffs are necessary, the order of layoff is “the last hired is first fired.” Some teachers are one-year teachers in multiple school districts when school financing is lean across the state.

Invisibility looks and feels like this.

A first-year teacher is a mailbox in the school office. Communications come to the mailbox not the person. A rookie has more conversations with the school secretary and custodian than any other teachers.

Invisibility breeds hesitancy. First-year teachers are slow to speak in department, grade level, or school faculty meetings. Few veterans call on them for an opinion. As new teachers, they are silent and viewed as peers-in-training. They go to meetings silently, sit silently, and leave silently.

Most arrive at school early and leave late because they are new to their curriculum and need time to prepare lessons and lesson materials. As early/late people, they do not mingle with their coming and going colleagues.

They eat alone in their classrooms. Being alone breeds loneliness.

The Big Duh!

There is a happenstance when a Horton hears, sees, and connects with a new teacher. The number of teachers who resign their positions in the first three years of their career tells us there are not enough Horton connections. Sadly, there are excellent potential teachers in those resignation – they find success in their next careers.

If we intend to build a high-quality teaching faculty in every school, we are required to close the happenstance ratio. I suggest that we keep retiring Hortons, those in their last years as classroom teachers, to serve as post-employment Hortons. Let’s just label them as Hortons, a new, very part-time faculty position. Hortons will not teach students, they will teach teachers how to acclimate to productive, active faculty members. Unlike mentors who may fulfill assignments, post-retirement Hortons continue to fulfill needs.

Let’s set a goal of reducing early teacher resignations by 20% by hiring Hortons.  A Horton will pay for herself in the savings the district will not need to spend on constant turnover replacement costs. More importantly, Hortons will save teaching careers that otherwise end too early.

AI Is Icarus Deja Vu

Posted on by
Reply

The decision to use or approve the use of AI in school is not difficult. Yet educational journals are littered by the debate. As school people, we like our rules to be clean and definitive. “No running in the halls” is one of those dictums we uphold. Yet, when the weather is too cold or the ground is too snow covered for the track team to run outdoors, they run in our hallways after school. Most rules are two-sided coins. “Do not” on one side and “do when” on the other.

Thus, we need a two-sided rule for artificial intelligence. The right rule “of thumb” is — AI is approved when the goal is investigative, consensus building, problem solving, and efficiency AND AI is not approved when the goal is original thought, critical thinking, and skill development. Using AI should not be generalized to all student work but attached to the goals we are teaching children to achieve.

Human and artificial intelligences – what do we know?

In the annals of homo sapiens, intelligence has guardedly been a human characteristic. Scientists acknowledge that certain animals display specific kinds of intelligence. Dolphins and whales communicate with each other, dogs are trained to sniff everything from humans buried in snow to traces of drugs and explosives and to be empathetic to humans, and parrots can parrot human speech. We acknowledge that birds and other migratory animals travel great distances returning to seasonal, ancestral locations. Being trainable or being guided by inbred DNA is not intelligence.

Until recently we reserved intelligence for humankind. We defined our intelligence as “… the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new and trying situations: to reason or use skilled reason; the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria: or mental acuteness.”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intelligence

The term “artificial intelligence” was the stuff of science fiction. AI was Hal, the master computer in Space Odyssey 2001, that helped manned space travel so well that it took control of its human passengers. It was “brainy.” We labeled smart computers as artificially intelligent and placed AI below human intelligence.

Ooops! Humans made AI intelligent.

Icarus lives to fly again. The hubris of our species created algorithmic machines that successfully meet our definition of intelligence. Was it inevitable? Probably. In some ways we are too smart for our own good.

When asked a question, AI finds an answer. Asked if A is better than B, AI will evaluate and judge the two. Asked to assimilate, assess, and evaluate data using the questioner’s values, AI provides an informed and weighted response. AI is better than sliced bread!

When I asked AI to provide me with an outline for writing this blog, within seconds my screen displayed a concise statement of pros and cons and suggestions for reconciliation between the two. Yet, I write on.

Artificial intelligence has been a contradiction in school. Our tradition is to foster human intelligence along the continuum of our academic, activities, arts, and athletics curricula. We strive for educated and mentally nimble children who will become intelligent adults. While intelligent thinking and problem solving has always been human, we are long accustomed in school to using scientific calculators for higher math and science problems and computer-assisted modeling, engineering, and manufacturing. We want the preciseness and ease of the CAD CAM systems we program in our maker labs. We want to do the thinking and use machine intelligence to do the work.

As teachers of academics, we want children to remember and use facts. Yet we, and they, reach for our smart devices to Google information we cannot recall or investigate the facts of a question we cannot offhandedly answer. Googling is both part of our vocabulary and accepted practice in our real world.

I recently had robotic surgery and accepted that my surgeon sat at a computer console to manipulate machine arms and hands cutting and sewing inside my abdomen.

The old lines between human and artificial intelligence seemed clear but now are blurred. We need to deblur the lines between our intelligences.

Which fork should I use? Contextual applications.

When I sit at a formal dining table, I recognize the various silverware. In the Emily Post setting, there are five forks – oyster fork to my right, dessert fork above the plate, and fish fork, salad fork, and entrée fork to my left. Each is designed for a specific use, yet my mouth and stomach do not know which fork I used once I am chewing and digesting my meal. However, prying oysters from a shell with the forks to my left would be difficult and messy. There is a purpose for each fork, and we abide with those defined purposes.

The uses of intelligence can and should be associated with educational purposes and contexts.

Definitions of purpose:

  • Think about human intelligence when the teaching/learning goal involves original student thought, critical thinking and judgement, defined skill building, and personalization of outcomes. Human intelligence, like physical conditioning, requires purposeful and continuous mental and emotional exercise. As educators, we build student capacity for originality, critical judgements, and value-laden decisions when we pedagogically teach these. The arts give significant examples of separating humans from artificial intelligences. AI has a difficult time with “beauty” and “that painting appeals to me.” In student work, we attach words like integrity, honesty, and ethical when we want to ensure human ingenuity and avoid plagiarism or “cut and paste” submissions. Beauty and integrity are in the eye of the human beholder.
  • Think about artificial intelligence when the teaching/learning goal is efficiency and the outcomes not the process for achieving outcomes is the priority. AI can ethically be used as a tool for gathering, assimilating, and cataloging information. The speed at which AI can assemble and categorize information is beyond human ability. AI can ethically be used to suggest and consider the best solutions. AI can ethically be used to gather and categorize samples of art, music, and poetry but leave it to human intelligence to enjoy and appreciate them.

The Big Duh, Icarus!

Real world — In the real world, few people care how a person can remember, recall, or find information. The issue is “what is that information?” In their out-of-school lives, students use Google and AI naturally to get access to information, directions to where they want to go, and conduct comparative shopping. Using artificial intelligences for these tasks is part of their real world.

In their real world, our graduates are learning use and work and prosper in AI-assisted careers. As educators we need to be well-informed about how AI is changing the world around our schools and even our personal lives.

School world — In school, we hold artificial rules about artificial intelligence. And this begs the question of why? Part of my answer is that I do not want our students to become Icarus-like flying too close to a modern-day Hal and now know they have succumbed to the great fall. As educators we need to keep Icarus flying but not too close to the sun. We need to teach students to use and build their real-world AI contexts in school AND we need to teach students to use and build their human intelligence contexts in school and in life.

To further mix metaphors, the genie of AI is out of the bottle. Children need to use their AI-genie constructively, positively and contextually in their real-world and school lives.