Annalee Newitz in New Scientist:
In 1907, US historian Henry Adams first started circulating a memoir that would go on to be a smash hit in 1919: The Education of Henry Adams. Given Adams’s illustrious family – both his grandfather and great-grandfather were presidents – you might expect it to be a self-congratulatory tale of the wonders of US education.
Instead, it galvanised audiences with the bold claim that everything Adams had been taught in 19th-century schools was useless. Immersed in religious studies and the classics, he was ill-equipped for a world of mass electrification and automobiles. If education was supposed to prepare him for the future, he argued, it had failed.
Nearly 120 years later, Adams’s critique is once again relevant, especially in the US. New technologies are upending the traditional ways that students learn. The problem isn’t just the rise of AI models, though. It is also ideological. The US government is depriving universities of billions in federal funding while it demands more control over curriculums and admissions. The future of education is in chaos, but it isn’t dying; it is changing to meet the moment.
More here.
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