Same Fear, Different Monster

Fiona Verity theorises that when it comes to AI in education, our fears remain rooted in the days of Mary Shelley, and posits that what saved humanity then, can save us again.

With many anxious that the proliferation of AI and exponential growth of new technologies will eventually lead to the demise of the humble teacher, how much do we need to fear a bot-based classroom?

When faced with the perpetual onslaught of new and evolving technologies in the world of education, it’s easy to feel to feel like a dinosaur. Overhead projectors and floppy discs now a distant and rose-hued memory, this brave new world of edtech can leave the more seasoned professionals among us feeling a bit out of their depth. (I’m sure even those more recently qualified counterparts have cringed at accidentally dishing out a class full of detentions on the newly acquired behaviour app that nobody quite knows how to use yet.)

And, as this struggle continues, a new threat seems to be appearing on the horizon: AI.

Artificial Intelligence. It can read for you, write for you, draw for you, do your homework for you. It can teach you difficult concepts within seconds. It could even write this article…it didn’t, but it could. With the sudden proliferation of AI in our world, it begs the question, will there still be a place for teachers in the future?

Can educators compete against the oncoming momentum of this impending peril, or will the asteroid eventually hit?

Of course they can. Because teachers can provide what technology can’t: authentic human interaction. The most powerful exchanges that take place in the classroom are rooted in emotion.

The shared experience of reading a book and collectively wanting to know how it will end cannot be replicated by technology. The passion for a poem exuded by the teacher is uniquely human. The subtle observation of how the learning is, or isn’t being absorbed, coupled with a shift in approach or explanation, is an artform that cannot be matched by a computer.

Teaching is also about more than just the exchange of knowledge. Having recently moved into career pastures new, as a trainee psychologist I am now more clear than ever about the value of what is known in the counselling world as the ‘core conditions’. Active listening, empathy, unconditional positive (coined by Carl Rogers, the father of Person-Centred Counselling) are just some of the elements thought to be essential to therapeutic change. Yet, when I look back at my career in teaching, I realise that it was these elements that really impacted educational change too.

Helping young people learn how to relate, identify complex emotions within themselves, within texts, within others, unwavering support from the teacher within the classroom space, was where the real value lay. It seems difficult to imagine a world where these human skills would not have a place.

However, with my newly acquired psychologist’s hat, it would be remiss of me not to fully evaluate the issue and explore why such a fear of technology might exist within educators in the first place. The answer feels quite simple; a fear of the new, of change, of the unknown, seems to lay at the heart of our technological terror.

It’s a tale as old as time. We only need to look back to the days of the Industrial Revolution to bring to mind Luddites smashing up machines or Victorian Romantics penning their monstrous fears of a world where scientifically armed humans can play God. This is not a new problem.

But what would happen if, for a moment, we put our fear to one side? If we stop to consider what a collaboration of artificial intelligence and authentic human interaction can do side by side, then the possibility arises that it doesn’t have to be one or the other, that maybe a coalition can occur.

If AI can save me countless reading hours and give me an answer in seconds, maybe I have more time to do the human stuff? If it can offer me a writing model, a springboard from which I can generate my own ideas, it can boost productivity and esteem. If I see it as not my enemy but my friend, then perhaps educational evolution, rather than extinction, can occur, and dinosaurs like me can plod around for a little longer.

Fiona Verity, once an English teacher with almost 20 years of educational experience in Secondary School and FE sectors, is now training on the Counselling Psychology Professional Doctorate programme at York St John University. She is also currently blending skills new and old in the world of research, working on a qualitative into study into the delivery of psychological treatments for those with tinnitus.