How to teach the next generation in the era of AI
The Pisa results sound the alarm on the disastrous impact of tech on our basic skills
And here, we must draw a red line: if we do not confront this decline in literacy and numeracy, it will be a disaster. It is bad in itself. But in preparing the next generation for the age of AI, the loss of these basic skills is catastrophic.
To begin with, literacy and numeracy are not only “basic” in the sense that they are simple, but also because they are the building blocks for all more advanced capabilities — creativity, judgment, reasoning, problem-solving, whatever they might be.
It is impossible to predict the future of work — what jobs will exist, which advanced skills will be in demand. But whatever the latter turn out to be, they will build upon these basics. If the next generation is to flourish, they must have these foundations in place.
And there is another reason to worry about falling literacy and numeracy: AI capabilities are uneven and likely to remain that way. Yes, these systems are magnificent at certain tasks. But at others they are either confidently wrong or simply make things up. If humans are to tell the difference, we must keep our understanding of the fundamentals razor-sharp. It is not enough to use AI — we have to use it critically.
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And there is a sad irony in this Scottish and Welsh disaster: by explicitly trying to prepare young people for the future, they have become distracted by woolly ideas like “21st century learning” and “future-oriented approaches”, letting the very things required for the coming generations to flourish in the age of AI — numeracy and literacy — fall into disrepair.
