Parents and teachers are beginning to realize that cellphones and AI are not going away and, like handheld calculators, may eventually be integrated into school classrooms. As history and current events illustrate, resistance to new technology ultimately fails. Banning cellphones and AI is analogous to the efforts of churches to suppress the use of the printing press to prevent the widespread publication of “heretical writings” in the Middle Ages and the recent blocking of internet sites in Nepal, an action that ultimately led to their government’s overthrow.
In a recent Boston Globe interview on the adverse impact of cell phone use in schools, psychologist Jean Twenge reminded those “helicopter parents” who use the child’s cell phones to monitor them: “You’re not raising children, you’re raising adults.” That same message applies to teachers and politicians advocating bans on cell phones, social media, and AI. When students leave high school and enter adulthood, they will have cell phones and access to social media just as adults do now. If cell phones are a problem in school because they are a distraction, or because the internet is full of disinformation, or because students use them to get onto social media sites that minimize their self-worth, how does a six-hour-a-day ban help? And how does a six-hour-a-day ban from cell phones prepare them for adulthood?
As AI technology and cellphones provide students with boundless information, synopses of every book in the Library of Congress, and responses to essay questions, how should schools respond? In such an environment I believe schools need to change their traditional emphasis from the accumulation and regurgitation of information to the development of three inter-related skills: discernment, self-awareness, and self-discipline.
Discernment helps one separate what is truthful and accurate from what is disingenuous or false. In the 20thCentury, before the internet was widely available, information largely filtered through intermediate sources like newspapers, broadcasters, and experts in various fields. In today’s world, information is abundant and unfiltered. Given this flood of information students need to learn how to determine what is “true”. To do so, teachers need to compel students to question all information they receive, to fact-check all sources, and to seek out diverse perspectives on contentious issues. Students today not only need to read and comprehend information, they need to determine the reliability of the source of information and understand the source’s perspective.
Discernment requires self-awareness, which Stephen Covey defines as “the capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies”. A self-aware individual understands how their thinking affects their perspective on the world. As systems theorist Peter Senge notes, individuals who constantly question what they think they know can gain a clearer understanding of how their ownthinking filters the information they take in, a crucial component of discernment.
A fully discerning and self-aware individual must also possess self-discipline, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “the ability to control one’s feelings and overcome one’s weaknesses; the ability to pursue what one thinks is right despite temptations to abandon it.” Self-discipline is linked to self-awareness– the ability to understand one’s feelings and weaknesses, and discernment– the ability to identify what is right and wrong.
We are increasingly faced with far more information than we can absorb. One easy way to filter abundant information is to believe that one source of information or one dogma is the only source of “truth”. A discerning, self-aware, and self-disciplined individual will dig deeply for the truth by listening to more than one expert, checking into more than one source, and seeking to understand more than one dogma. They will avoid taking short-cuts by using AI to write an essay or by using AI search results the sole research resource.
Bans on cell phones, bans on social media, and bans on the use of AI are an easy way-out for politicians. It enables them to sidestep controversies over academic freedom, DEI, and free speech. It allows them to avoid regulating search engines like Google, who recently declared it is emphasizing “free expression” over “factual accuracy” or banning addictive social media sites. And last, but hardly least, it allows them to deny any responsibility for the oversight of AI.
In “Scapegoating the Algorithm”, Cambridge University philosophy professor Dan Williams asserts that if we want to make a change in our political landscape we need to make a change in our approach to schooling. He contends that contrary to today’s conventional wisdom, social media is not creating a “breakdown in our country’s collective capacity to agree on basic facts, distinguish truth from falsehood, or adhere to norms of rational debate”. He buttresses his claim by offering detailed examples of the collective ignorance of voters, conspiratorial groupthink, and polarization in the distant and recent past. In examining our history, Williams suggests our country’s greatest challenge to understanding and thinking comes from “deep-seated political and cultural divisions that are largely reflected on social media not created by it.”
For better or worse, we are preparing our students for an adulthood where cell phones and AI are givens. In such a world, the purpose of schooling needs to be more than the accumulation of knowledge. Such a world requires adults who are willing to dig deeply to find responses to ambiguous and complex questions, adults who know their own strengths and weaknesses, and adults who seek to understand the perspectives of their neighbors, even those they disagree with. In such a world it might be possible to agree on basic facts, distinguish truth from falsehood, and adhere to norms of rational debate. In such a world, democracy could be restored.