By: Thomas Varacalli
Originally Published by Religious News Service
(RNS) — In his 1939 essay “Learning in Wartime,” C.S. Lewis posed the question of whether it was still worthwhile to study while one’s country was at war. His audience was full of young men with a sense of foreboding for the safety of their country, the lives of their friends serving in the army and their own possible enlistment.
As a Christian thinker, Lewis answered in the affirmative, arguing that it was very appropriate for men to continue their studies while they could. “Life has never been normal,” Lewis writes, and therefore, the belief that education should occur only in times of normalcy is unfounded. No war can ever eradicate our pursuit of truth, meaning and happiness. Therefore, he argues, these should be pursued vigorously, even during times of imminent danger.
The advent of artificial intelligence brings similar feelings of foreboding and disruption. Some Americans fear they might lose their jobs to AI. Teachers, parents and administrators are urgently discussing how AI might change the classroom. Some view AI as a harbinger of welcome efficiency, whereby students can avoid the thankless grunt work of memorization and other tasks, enabling them to use their newfound time for more creative output. Others fear that AI could unleash a lazier, less literate society, more dependent on technology and less likely to engage in independent thinking.
While the future remains unknown, I’m more inclined to credit the less optimistic AI prediction.
I do not fear AI, nor do I doubt that AI can have some benefits. But I think AI is more likely to harm education than help it, even if it is used simply as a supplementary tool to a traditional education, and I fear the level of trust some are placing in it. There are certain educational pillars for the young — such as grammar, memorization, composition, recitation, discipline, endurance and the general trial and error of solving a problem — that reliance on AI and its shortcuts is likely to weaken.
In this time of uncertainty, we should look to Lewis as our guide. Lewis’ defense of education was not antiquarian. He didn’t encourage his students to continue their studies simply because that was what previous generations had done. He wanted his audience to continue learning because it was better for their souls. Centered on the pursuit of the true, the good and the beautiful — a reflection of God’s own nature — genuine education was directed to a higher end. If his students were to be drafted, and the prospect of death loomed even larger, then they would be able to face death armed with a good education. To Lewis, this meant a classical education.
In its substance, classical education consists of the seven liberal arts: the trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Grammar describes the world through the symbols we call words, making all the arts communicable. Logic disciplines our reason to decipher between true and false, so that we can make rational, rather than emotional, decisions. Rhetoric teaches us how to persuade, so that we can engage in political life civilly and peaceably. The quadrivium, meanwhile, explores number, space, harmony and order, coming to know reality in its truth, goodness and beauty through essential, knowable structure.
In its aims and essentials, classical education is the best that a student can receive. It is a comprehensive education because it consists of both a distinct perspective on human nature alongside a sophisticated, matching framework for the liberal arts. Classical education upholds an objective reality knowable through human reason. It affirms a right and a wrong, a good and a bad, a true and a false. Ideally, it inspires virtue through the witness of moral teachers and through a culture that habituates students to courage, moderation, prudence and justice. It upholds the rationality of human beings and teaches that the passions and emotions are subject to reason. And in contrast to today’s increasingly common assumption that diminishes the dignity of personhood, classical education views human beings as a composite of body and soul, with the soul as supreme. Just as there is order in the universe, students must find order in themselves by developing their intellects and wills to act in accordance with nature.
The Christian tradition grounds classical education even more deeply: Human beings are made in the image of God. Our capacity for reason, moral judgment, creativity and love is not an accidental evolutionary feature but part of our created nature. Education therefore cultivates gifts that belong properly to persons, not machines.
When we consider what AI lacks in light of this, the prospect of bringing the technology into education becomes troubling. AI doesn’t know the truth; it merely compiles data, which may or may not be accurate, from the range of texts at its disposal. It cannot possess wisdom or moral judgment. It does not reason. It has neither intellect nor will. It does not even have the sentience of an animal. Lacking both body and soul, AI cannot wonder or understand; it cannot pursue or comprehend any of the seven liberal arts.
Following Lewis’ example, I want to avoid antiquarian arguments in expressing my skepticism about AI. I don’t oppose it on the grounds that it is new, or that it represents a departure from previous ways of learning. I want students to receive the best possible education, and I am concerned that AI shortcuts will impoverish learning. After all, it is better to know how to spell a word unaided than to need technology to spell it. It is better to memorize the state capitals and be able to recognize them than to be ignorant of basic geography. It is better to compose a five-paragraph essay from scratch than to need structural tips from a bot. It is better to spend the time learning long division (even after several mistakes) than to rely on AI to make the calculations. It is better to sit still in class, reading a paper book, than to stare at a screen with its inbuilt distractions, and it is certainly better to read a book than to access an AI summary.
If students who don’t use AI in school need to use it in future employment, they will have the immense benefit of knowing how to do tasks both with and without AI assistance, as educated adults know how to do long division with and without a calculator. And as AI disrupts job markets, those who can reason well without its aid have the most to gain.
What makes AI so dangerous is that it appears to be wise, rational, volitional and sentient. As human beings, we are too easily duped into attributing these characteristics to what is, essentially, only sophisticated pattern recognition and reformulation. To think critically and probingly about artificial intelligence, we need first to have adequately reflected and contemplated our own nature. Classical education is the way in which we, as human beings, can best come to know ourselves. Therefore, as Lewis warned us, let us not be too distracted by the manmade noise of our era, but instead direct our gaze to those things that are eternal.
