Dr. Bob's Blog

“…when discovery and exploration and curiosity become your path – then basically, if you follow your heart, you’re going to find that it’s often extremely inconvenient….”

A well-known Buddhist nun wrote those words. A former teacher, her sentiments are essential to understanding modern life and, as it turns out, current challenges in education.

You see, once there was education, quite different from today, with almost no technology (unless you count reel to reel and overhead projectors). No computers; no big screen at the front of a classroom and no screen on every desk. There were just books and pens and paper and, well, education. It was more the path of discovery, exploration and curiosity. But, that process was demanding, so messy, so time consuming and all together inconvenient. So streamliners emerged and promoted personal computers for all. It was the start of the EdTech revolution. Nobody bothered to figure out its effect on education, but it sure was profitable…and convenient.

Here is another example. College students today cannot quite imagine a college lecture without publisher-produced slides. These polished presentations cram data onto a large screen as the class frantically keyboards it all into notes upon their tiny computer screens. Professors mumble on, only partly heard. You see, slides in many undergraduate courses relate to texts and both come from the same corporate publishing house. Text and slide based lectures tend to have little variation and always the same author perspective. This amounts to an unfortunately narrow view of the subject for both teacher and student. But it is terribly convenient!

Of course, some teachers try to address the problem. They hand out copies of the module slide deck for note-taking (but a slide is still a slide). Some, thank goodness, limit the data presented on each slide into a sleek visual like a Ted Talk. Still, for those of us who remember the pre-slide era, nostalgia rules like the once ubiquitous chalkboard (precursor to the whiteboard). Chalk dust, like a tiny cloud of floating ideas, emanated from intense cracks and scratches at the board. Not static like a slide, the chalkboard allowed for spontaneous contributions by students and new ideas from teachers in real time. Erasure and rewrites were common as was a sudden turn from the board to engage the class. Engagement!

This nostalgic view should be tempered by the fact that some classes then as now were not so good, just as then as well as now, some teachers are not so good. As a famous Buddhist teacher once stated “nostalgia for samsara is full of shit”. Samsara cycles birth, death and rebirth fueled by ignorance. This short essay cannot resist a tangential analogy to that publisher based college course birthing, dying and birthing yet again each semester.

Today colleges face a new temptation for ultimate convenience: artificial intelligence. Looking for short cuts, student’s copy and paste questions and prompts into ChatGPT which generates a discussion reply, essay or term paper…instantly. No thinking required! Similarly, online examinations are completed with near perfection and with elapsed time less than would be required to actually read each test item. This practice appeared to emerge during the Pandemic when education was thrust online with little forethought and no guardrails. Using AI in school became standard practice for many otherwise honest students. So convenient!

The practice continues despite persuasive research findings that show AI use results in student “cognitive off-loading” and a diminishment of critical thinking. After all, learning to write is essential to learning to think. Writing is a primary tool for cognitive development. The struggle for clarity and precision of the written word, for the reasoned argument, is the struggle to become a clear thinker, a critical thinker. But becoming a critical thinker is quite inconvenient.

Most professors lamented AI use among students. Some of them resisted with in class writing or sharing drafts toward a final, original submission. But others rationalized their own use of this tech to produce lecture notes, (sadly) more slides and even as a means to grade papers.

Think of it: An AI generated essay scored by an AI generated rubric. Both students and teachers freed from the learning process at long last. Education had become entirely convenient!

What about the overseers? College Administrators were in a quandary. Long ago, most colleges had adopted a business model for education where students were consumers and the customer is, as they say, always right. Investments were made in great auditoriums and stadiums but mostly toward student convenience. There were trigger warnings and lots of handholding. There were interactive white boards, virtual reality simulations and AI software. Convenience sells.

The administrative goal was to fill seats and generate income. A good chunk of that revenue was devoted to hiring more and more Administrators who were not so much on the side of real teaching and not so much on the side of real learning. Most were, understandably, on the side of the college business model. They believed they could not stop AI use so they hired Consultants to rationalize that AI use in college was actually a very good thing.

But learning grows in the muck of inconvenience. “No Mud, no Lotus” as Thay famously said. Consider again bygone days and how we best learn, digging into research and being challenged by contrary ideas; composing and re-composing a paragraph; even a sentence…or the exquisite agony of finding just the right word.

Groundswell movements emerged to challenge the convenience of technology. Phones were banned in many classrooms. Computers too. Some evidence shows that physical books and handwritten notes foster learning so much better than EdTech. Quiet keyboarding gave way to loud conversation and exploration. Let Them Grow movements arose. Children and teens were persuaded to interact with each other and solve problems without a phone or parental interface…a great prep for higher education and life.

Maybe the chalkboard will make a comeback too.