Forget smartphones and wokery. There's an even greater threat to our children's education

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2 days ago

Given that today's children appear to spend much of their time in school being taught that the Vikings were champions of diversity and that human beings should be encouraged to choose between one or more of 72 different genders, you may fear that educational standards in this country are slipping somewhat. But perhaps we should be grateful. Because, believe it or not, things could actually be worse.
Say, for example, we were to follow a radical proposal made the other day by Daniel Susskind. Dr Susskind is an eminent economist, as well as the author of a book entitled A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond. And, speaking at the Hay festival, he argued that the traditional school timetable should be ripped up, so that children can instead focus on learning to use artificial intelligence.
'We should be spending a third of the time that we have with students teaching them how to use these technologies,' he declared. 'How to write effective prompts and use these systems, get them to do what we want them to do…'
I appreciate that Dr Susskind is an exceptionally learned and intelligent man. None the less, I for one think his proposal sounds horrifying. We often talk about the need to ban smartphones in schools. Which is fair enough. But my priority would be to ban AI.
The fundamental purpose of education, after all, is to teach children how to think. AI, however, does the opposite. It teaches them that they don't need to think. Because it will do their thinking for them.
For proof, look at what's already happening in universities. In April, The Chronicle of Higher Education – an American journal – reported that ever-growing numbers of students were essentially outsourcing their studies to AI. When a professor at New York University tried to prevent his students from using AI to complete their assignments, he was met with consternation. Some students protested that he was interfering with their 'learning styles'. Another complained: '[If] you're asking me to go from point A to point B, why wouldn't I use a car to get there?' Meanwhile, one student asked for an extension to a deadline, 'on the grounds that ChatGPT was down the day the assignment was due'.
Still, I suppose we'd better get used to this sort of thing. It seems that a new educational era is upon us. One in which teachers get AI to set homework, pupils get AI to complete it, and then teachers get AI to mark it. Soon enough, there will be no need for human involvement at any stage of the process.
So, as schools will effectively be superfluous, the Government might as well just shut them all down. In fact, I urge it to do so as quickly as possible. Such a move would immediately free up tens of billions of pounds a year. And since, in due course, AI will be taking all the jobs that today's children could have grown up to do, we'll need the money to pay their benefits.
Heartfelt thanks to Ash Regan, the Scottish nationalist and one-time candidate to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister. Because on Sunday, she provided us with the one of the most memorable political quotes of the year. Even if not necessarily on purpose.
Ms Regan was being interviewed by The Herald newspaper about her plans to clamp down on prostitution in Scotland, by criminalising the buying of sex. Wasn't there a risk, asked The Herald's reporter, that these plans might inadvertently drive prostitution underground?
Ms Regan scoffed. Plainly she'd never heard anything so absurd.
'If you even think for one second, you cannot possibly drive prostitution underground,' she snorted. 'If you had a lot of women in underground cellars with a locked door, how would the punters get to them?'
Having digested these extraordinary words, we can, I believe, draw only one conclusion. Ms Regan is 51 years old. And yet, during over a half a century on this planet, she has never heard – or at least, never understood – the phrase 'driven underground'. And so she'd taken it literally.
After the interview, we must hope, a kindly aide will have taken her to one side, and gently explained that the expression is purely figurative. Otherwise, I fear that, despite Ms Regan's initial scoffing, she'll begin to worry that the reporter had a point – and that Scottish pimps really will take to opening brothels deep beneath the Earth's surface.
If so, we must wait to see what revisions Ms Regan might make to her plans. Perhaps she will recommend that the Scottish NHS supply all prostitutes with free vitamin D tablets, to make up for the lack of sunlight they'll be getting.
'Way of the World' is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines while aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 6am every Tuesday and Saturday
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