Imagine this: it’s two-thirty p.m. on a rainy Sunday and my kid asks me a question I can’t answer. So, in that bright, innocent, utterly devastating way all children have, she suggests that I ask Google-sensei. Google-sensei. As if I, a teacher with decades of experience bullshitting my way through any and all questions need to rely on <shudder> Google-sensei.
Google-sensei did not originate with my kid; it’s a fairly natural, tongue-in-cheek expression in Japan and reflects how both the culture and the language anthropomorphize inanimate objects. Partly this is animistic (in Japanese Shintoism, literally everything has a spirit or kami) partly this is just habit formed from assigning everyone the correct honorific (you know ~san and probably ~chan at this point, but there are dozens more.). And I, like you, perhaps make heavy use of Google-sensei, right along with YouTube-sensei and ChatGPT-sensei1.
And, of course, in this particular case I, uh, consulted with Google-sensei regarding how to keep our houseplant from dying and all was fine. Aside from the damage to my ego, my way of life, and my very existence on this planet that is.
Now, I’m not sure whether this is happening in English, whether American or British or Australian kids are referring to Mr. Google or, gods forbid, Mr. ChatGPT, when they go to look something up, but the idea of Google-as-teacher and, by extension, AI-as-teacher is one that is equal parts intriguing and alarming. Because, if the machine is the teacher, where does that leave us as students?
Student is another exception to the old-words-have-lots-of-meanings rule as it comes to us more or less unchanged over the course of several centuries, from latin’s studium through to English’s student, which enters English in the 1300s as “one who studies.”
Learner…implies a degree of freedom or self-directedness
Before we continue, let’s address the synonym in the room. Modern academia prefers the term learner to student mostly for appearances. Because student implies hierarchy and structure while learner, a derivative of learn, which comes to English at about the same time as student with the same meaning only via proto-Germanic rather than Latin, implies a degree of freedom or self-directedness.
This is especially prevalent in autonomy focused pedagogy, which posits that when learners take an active role in their own education, the result is not only better assessment scores but more satisfaction on the part of the student.
So, from a university perspective, students are just there to be taught, while learners are there to participate and to be proactive in their own education. It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s there. As it is, every academic paper published regarding pedagogy has to choose whether to refer to the…pupils in question as students or learners and what that might suggest or imply about the research in question. It’s a maddening yet persistent bit of pedantic drudgery that has results far outside the scope of the question.
Which is, if Google is the teacher, what are we? Or, to put it another way, in this age of AI, are we learners or merely students?
I don’t have any answers. Truthfully, it’s one of the things my research team and I are struggling with. Two of the three of us learned how to do research and to write up the results before Google even existed. Even our third member learned to do research writing well before generative AI was a thing that existed outside science-fiction. As we work on our current research, the question of where is the ethical line with using generative AI? Not using it at all feels a little too much like not going anywhere because you refuse to even ride in a car much less drive one. But none of us want the AI to do the writing or thinking for us either. It defeats the purpose of doing the research in the first place.
So, as authors and teachers in this age of AI are we still learners? I hope so. After all, every author and every teacher can tell you story after story of what they have learned in the course of trying to teach - either from students, from the preparations, or even just the act of teaching itself. Everybody is and should be a learner2.
And yet.
If, by asking Google-sensei or ChatGPT-sensei or some other future-tech-sensei becomes less about the process and more about the end result, something is lost. Learn, in its earliest form contains a strong element of continuity - someone who is learning is actively striving to understand and to think about their subject. And someone who is actively engaged in their own learning makes a hell of a good student no matter who, or what, their teacher is.
Earlier this issue, I made reference to Mr. Google only because Mr. is my default title. I’d like to take this opportunity to state unequivocally and for the record that I have no issue with any other title or pronoun anyone else cares to use. As a linguist, I love the idea of people trying on new pronouns until they find the ones that fit. As a humanist, I support whatever it is that people need to do to make themselves comfortable, engaged, and supported in the space in which they live, love, and…learn.
Happy Pride Month. Enjoy it, wherever and whomever you are.
Stay curious,
Joel
Bing-sensei can sit in the corner and think about what it’s done.
The entire premise of this newsletter is that we are all learners, all the time, all throughout our lives.