How should we think about education in a world overcome by A.I.? Is there a future for post-secondary education?
One of the common questions that will arise for people who are looking into school is “What do you hope to do when you are older?” When a person is getting a degree, we ask, “What do you hope to do with that degree?” The fundamental reality communicated by these types of questions is clear—people today see education as a means to a career. It is meant to equip people to do something. To make them money. To get them a job. But I would argue that a central component to education, something that has been mostly lost today, is less about what it will enable us to do and more about the type of people it will help us to become.
As I taught through the history of Western philosophy again this last fall, I was overcome again with the realization of how twenty-first-century Canada has become hopelessly materialistic, pragmatic, and individualistic. The primary concerns of our day are how to make money, purchase material possessions, and live comfortably. The way to do this is through a good education. Or at least that was the case at one point. Now, as A.I. poses a significant threat to the future of desk jobs, people are wondering if post-secondary education is worth it at all. Besides, even for those who do enter school, they can now get their ticket to a job faster with A.I. writing their papers for them.
But this fundamentally misses the point of education. Education cannot become purely about pragmatics, purely about skill acquisition. It has to be about more than that. We also should look at education as the road to shaping us into the types of people we are created to be.
In the history of philosophy, this pursuit of knowledge has been directly connected to the pursuit of wisdom and virtue. We learn in order that we can know, and we know to understand the truth, and the truth shapes us into virtuous people. As Christians, we know that Truth and Wisdom are revealed most perfectly in Jesus Christ, and our pursuit of knowing Christ is the greatest means by which we become who we are meant to be. As we are educated in the truth, we are shaped by the truth, and this truth enables us to live lives that we were created by God to live.
As we are educated in the truth, we are shaped by the truth, and this truth enables us to live lives that we were created by God to live.
But things in our society have changed. While theology used to be the “queen of the sciences,” universities today are often embarrassed to have any form of theological department at all. Similar things can be said for departments of classics, philosophy, and history. What can these degrees help us do? Certainly not get us a job, at least not a good-paying one. Instead, our universities emphasize the hard sciences—the places where jobs can be landed, the places where futures are born. The problem is that these programs help us to prolong bodily life, but they speak nothing to the virtuous life. They speak nothing of the soul.
And why is it that the hard sciences speak nothing of the soul? Because their methodology does not allow for immaterial realities. They uphold a materialistic, natural universe. The hard sciences view humans as nothing more than material beings that need to be kept alive and comfortable. There is nothing more to the human person. So why think about a world beyond the physical? Why think seriously about a spiritual realm? If all is material, what is the point?
And if there isn’t a world beyond the material, there isn’t a point. But as Christians, we believe there is a spiritual world. We believe the human person is both body and soul. And therefore, we should think about education as addressing more than simply material beings. We need to think about how education shapes, or deforms, our souls. Such education has been at the centre of much of education in the past. Education is important for shaping us into people with purpose, vision, and happiness. However, it may not be great for getting us a high-paying job. But where do our priorities lie?
Evangelicals have not been known for being intellectuals. We are often known for being people of passion and zeal, but not for contributing to the intellectual world. As our society quickly loses the intellectual pursuit as something of value in and of itself, we as Christians should look to reclaim education for the sake of something more than skill acquisition. We can view education as a means for people to become who they were created to be. Such a vision demands that we go beyond the purely material. It calls us to see education as formation rather than simply as skill-based learning.
If we are to survive the rise of A.I., the replacement of people by machines, we need to focus on becoming more human, not less. Machines are materialist; the hard sciences are materialist too. We, as humans, are more than that. We are both material and immaterial, and we should be educated accordingly. We need to learn about the spiritual world, to think deeply about that which goes beyond our sense perception. We need to think about the classics, about history, about philosophy, and about literature. And most of all, we need to think about God. And as we reflect on the world that is beyond the material, we will be further grounded in who we truly are. Not simply materialist beings who need skills for a job. But humans who have been made in God’s Image to reflect God in body and soul. We need to educate in light of this aim. We need to educate people as humans rather than machines.
