Also, learning is a process that is sometimes antithetical to getting results.

Also #4

Greetings from my warm and sunny classroom where I’m thinking about something Pranjal asked me a couple of weeks ago: what does it mean to have learned something?

Before you can answer that question, you have to answer this one: is it the result that matters or the process¹? Learning, by academic definition, is knowledge and experience repeated until something becomes ingrained².

Fall is settling in nicely here; there’s a Japanese word just for photos like this - komorebi - which means sunlight filtering through trees.

The answer to those questions makes a huge difference in how you use AI tools.  If the result is all that matters, asking the AIs to write articles or create illustrations³ becomes just another tool in the toolbox.  If, on the other hand, it is the process that is important, and we stipulate that using these tools is unavoidable at best and mandatory at worst, then learning how to guide the AI so that it can help us brainstorm, iterate, draft, revise, and, eventually, produce finished work becomes paramount.

For teachers, this process vs. result debate is as old as teaching and, largely, depends on the subject and its level of granularity.

I’m currently engaged in studying how students feel about the ethics of ChatGPT et. al.  My suspicion (i.e. my research question) is that there will be a gap in what students perceive to be ethical use and what teachers perceive to be ethical use.  Largely because of process vs. result.  Teachers want students to learn and understand the importance of process; students just want to get their work done so they can get on with life.

My own emergent, nascent thoughts on this is that schools can’t just avoid the problem.  Like, the tech is here to stay at least until the sun has a fit and knocks out all our 21st century communication tools.  Which means that we have to teach students how to use them to aid the process rather than fixate on the result.  And that means a lot of re-thinking the curriculum and goals for classes and programs around the world.

We’ve been here before⁴.  Read the archives of any newspaper or journal published during the advent of the personal desktop computer - it was going to destroy jobs, change education, and radically re-invent how we work.  And it did, just like the telephone before it and the typewriter before that.

My friends talked me into going hiking around a nearby lake the other week. It was nice. I might actually, someday, learn to appreciate all this nature stuff.

The story I like to use to illustrate my thoughts is this:  When my wife and I attended pre-natal classes at the local hospital, I was the only first-time dad-to-be in the room who already knew how to change a diaper.  And I knew this because high school had explicitly prepared me for just this situation.

The town I grew up in had a significant teen pregnancy problem.  One of the solutions was to teach all us high schoolers sex ed and home ec.  The idea was that if we really understood just how much of a pain in the ass children are, we would be a lot more careful when getting up and getting off.  And it worked, mostly.

Part of the home ec. class was caring for a “baby.”  In my case, a sack of flour I had to cart around all day, sharing parenting duties with my “wife,” a lovely girl named Amy who deserved a much better partner than my dumb ass.  So, we carried our baby and folded diapers.  Twenty-five years later, and, voila, I’ve graduated to the big boy class of having to do it for real.

Now, here’s the thing:  if I had had a li’l robot friend who could do the nasty chore of changing those diapers for me, would I have used it?  Good Christ yes.

But what would I have missed out on?  The struggle, the talking, the bonding, the experience of helping my child, all of which, once gone, is impossible to replicate or replace.  Now, I’m not saying that I miss stinky diapers or anything like that.  I’m saying that changing those stinky diapers and being that intimate with my infant child was an important developmental, fundamental bonding experience that I’m glad I went through and did not foist off onto the machines.  Because the process was important, not the result.  Well, not only the result.

Kids in Japan go through a “Moral Education Class” starting around first or second grade and continuing through junior high school.  These classes are focused around how to be human - what is the kind, moral, right, just thing to do.  And, not for nothing, I think these classes are part of what make Japan such a nice place to live.  At the same time, I think these classes are also part of what makes Japan such an insular, stifling place to live.  Treat everyone well, yes, but also don’t get outside your lane and don’t be too different from those around you.

The objection to moral education in any culture is, of course, that the line between moral education and indoctrination is razor thin.  Not only that, but whose moral and ethical system are you building your curriculum on?  Confucious?  The Bible?  The Quaran?  Decartes?  Nietzsche? (He gets my vote by the way, nihilism for the win!).  Even then, once you’ve decided that most fundamental question, how do you teach it?  Oh, and, yeah, while you’re at it - which is more important, the process or the result?

If we teach to the results, we end up with a list of rules - this is good, this is bad, do this, don’t do that.  But if we teach to the process - teaching kids to determine what is the most ethical course of action and why, well, we might end up with some really interesting results.

1. For that matter, is there a difference in informational learning or experiential learning?

2. This is commonly discussed as moving information from short-term memory to long-term memory through repetition.

3. I just want the AI to watch the ballgame and have a beer with me.

4. This has happened before and will happen again. So say we all.