The education crisis is not AI – it is a meaning

By: Ashima Shukla, editor

In the era of IAThe effort has become optional. As a student, we no longer need to browse manuals or reread the chapters. As a homework application requires: “Why scroll 100 pages when AI can summarize the most important things in 10?” In classrooms and countries, education is underway reshaped by the buzzing insistent of generative AI models. But AI has not only appeared in class; it was guest By institutions wishing to modernize, optimize and compete.

For example, international artificial intelligence in the education society (Iaied),, based In 1997 and now including members of 40 countries, for a long time positioned itself “at the borders of the fields of IT, education and the psychologisty. “THrough Major organizing research conferencespublish a leader newspaperand presenting various AID ApplicationsIAEED is essential to the discourse and the development of AI in education. He too reflects a broader trend: between 2025 and 2030, the AI ​​industry should to grow From 6 billion to more than 32 billion US dollars. 83% of higher education professionals from a diverse range of institutions believe “The generative will deeply change higher education in the next three to five years.” Silicon Valley giants are not only innovating these tools. They are also pressure for their integration into the school system. It is a transformation supported by capital, coded by companies, and approved by desperate institutions to follow.

And it works. A McKinsey survey found that 94% of employees and 99% of leaders in the C Suite C know the Gen IA tools, while 47% of employees expect to use AI for almost a third of their daily tasks. And universities listen. Offer lessons to students to become fast engineers And Ethicians of AIInstitutions are preparing them for jobs that did not exist five years ago but now reflects the priorities of a business world obsessed with efficiency. But who benefits from this transformation and at what price?

It is not only a educational,, workOr environment problem, as important as these. It is something more fundamental to human nature: the erosion of curiosity and critical thinking. As dopamine The thumbs dance on infinite rolls, we lose the silent patience necessary to analyze the meaning of a paragraph. The problem is not the capacities of the AI ​​but our desire to leave the companies dictate The objectives of education – and life. When our only objective is maximum productivity and minimum resistance, we delete learning friction, and therefore its meaning. After all, if someone can “generate” a paper, what is the interest of writing?

In this reality more and more tangle With technology, we expect answers – and dopamine – to have been delivered immediately. Students start to internalize that if something is not fastit's not worth TO DO. However, education should be a practice to cultivate, not one Creation of purchase identification.

Inasmuch as recent study Found that the more people are confident in AI capabilities, the less they rely on their own critical thinking. Likewise, a study On “cognitive unloading” has shown that the frequent use of AI is correlated with lower problem solving skills. This suggests that when people get used to immediate answers, they lose memory of the mental struggle. Young students are particularly vulnerablegrow in an environment where boredom is pathologizedcuriosity is optional, and learning is gamified. What we learn is how to think but how shortcut.

“”For all the content and knowledge at hand, we do not have time to sit alone, to ask good questions, to chase the rabbits in the holes without knowing where they will go. »»

Day beforeN before chatgpt, researchers warned That students do not benefit from homework when the answers are easily available online. Now when entire missions can be completed without reflection, professor of Stanford Rob Reich request The question of whether what is at risk is to move the AI ​​of the very act of thought. After all, writing is not only a way to communicate but also a means of creation awareness. The very act of fighting with an idea, seated with uncertainty, fails, reformulating and trying to try, is what shapes the intellect.

And yet, the platforms that take advantage of it are the empowerment of preaching. They claim democratize access, support learn, and to safeguard time. But what exactly is the time? Even moments that develop resilience? We have Mastered the art of never being bored and, in doing so, forgot to wonder.

It comes with a heavy psychological toll. As a deputy teacher of Stanford Chris Piech commonA student broke down in his office, convinced that years of learning to code were now obsolete. Anxiety does not concern incompetence, it is non-record. When we are told that our skills are made unnecessary, we do not lose confidence, we lose a sense of objective. Because, what is learning in a world of infinite answers?

We are told to be productive, efficient, optimized. As if the real value of the human being comes from what we can produce and the speed at which we can do it. But the best ideas often come from wandering, game, slowness. The real understanding takes time. Sometimes you have to fail. Sometimes it takes boredom.

We are drowning the data but we are hungry for connection. For all the content and knowledge at hand, we do not have time to sit alone, to ask good questions, to chase the rabbits in the holes without knowing where they will go. In this environment, the most radical thought we can learn to do is to slow down. To reinvent education not as a product to consume, but as a process of coming. It may be time for fewer conferences and more laboratories, fewer tests and more conversations. It may be time to value peer collaboration,, Iterative writing,, reflectionand the types of assessments that ask students to apply knowledge resolution tasks.

The antidote to the AI ​​crisis in education is to remember that education is not a product; It is a process. Models like the Four p of creative learning (Projects, passion, peers and game) offer a plan. Instead of treating students as users or consumers, we must see them as meaning co-creators. How could our relationship with learning change if we were encouraged to betterNot just succeeding faster? The objective goes from the production of measurable results to the culture of a deep curiosity and an adaptive thought.

Learning should not consist in acquiring answers. It should be a question of learning to ask better questions. Chatgpt can help you answer questions, but that cannot teach you how to understand or apply it in the real world. Faced with great technology, recovering learning as happy, frustrating and significant is a radical act of resistance. To learn to learn and love it. To recover our passion, we must unlearn the stories sold to us by companies of $ 1 billion and build new rooted in slowness, struggle and sacredness of thought.

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