Helping to save humanity: A teacher's responsibility
Imagine further that teachers understand the classroom is first about who the students are, what they think, what they care about. This allows for absorption. Instead, were the teacher to focus only on having her students receiving her delivered package to be regurgitated later on a test is not education. It shuts out what could have been, what would be more meaningful. Everyone knowing the same thing at the same time is not only who we are in the classroom. Each student––and the teacher––is one of a kind. Unique.
Think of little children whose minds have, in Alison Gopnik’s term, “lantern consciousness,” absorbing, taking in everything around them. Fully engaged in the world. Think, later in their lives––in our lives––times when absorption returns, perhaps when we are bored and let what happens come in. It’s being human. It’s what makes us who we are.
Being in a classroom without AI, humans are human with each other. Teachers presenting lessons enact another Gopnik term, “spotlight consciousness,” top-down, goal-oriented, decision-making. But good teachers also allow time for “lantern consciousness,” to give time for students to explore, ponder, reflect.
When teachers allow for absorption, students can be inside themselves, finding their wonder, imagining anywhere their minds and bodies take them. What will they think? Imagine? What will the teacher think? Nobody knows. But thinking, imagining, pondering, it will be.
We humans are wonderful creatures who give and take away. At our best we are creative, thoughtful, imaginative, interesting. Human actually. Remember, AI is not human despite its vast knowledge and presence. If we allow it to be present and succumb to its ways, humanity will take a back seat. But only if we allow it.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward” (Kierkegaard)
I write to bring ideas and methods from my life as a teacher in the latter half of the 20th century to help teachers and the public to “live forward” in this century. My latest book, Teacher in the Rye: Doing It My Way is available on Amazon. And I welcome comments here on my Blog or by email at frankthoms3@gmail.com.
