What shall I teach my son?

What is the purpose of education in the age of AGI?

在通用人工智能（AGI）时代，教育的目的是什么？

Yesterday, the title The End of Education by Neil Postman called to me from my bookshelf, whispering that it might be the right book at the right time. It was. Published in 1995, it was surprisingly appropriate balm for the soul of a confused programmer and soon-to-be father.

昨天，尼尔·波兹曼（Neil Postman）所著的《教育的终结》（The End of Education）一书从书架上向我招手，仿佛在低语着它或许正是当下最适合阅读的书籍。事实确实如此。该书出版于1995年，对于一位困惑的程序员兼准父亲来说，它竟成了抚慰心灵的良药。

My wife and I are expecting our first child. My economically valuable skillset – programming – suddenly feels less valuable. What shall I teach my son? And to what end?

我和妻子即将迎来第一个孩子。我那曾经具有经济价值的技能——编程——突然间显得不那么值钱了。我该教儿子什么？教这些又是为了什么？

Mr. Edison says That the radio will supplant the teacher. Already one may learn languages by means Of Victrola records. The moving picture will visualize What the radio fails to get across. Teachers will be relegated to the backwoods. With fire-horses, And long-haired women; Or, perhaps shown in museums. Education will become a matter Of pressing the button. Perhaps I can get a position at the switchboard. – Quoted in The End of Education by Neil Postman, quoting Teachers and Machines: The Use of Technology Since 1920 by Larry Cuban

爱迪生先生说，收音机将取代教师。人们已经可以通过留声机唱片学习语言。电影将把收音机无法传达的内容视觉化。教师将被放逐到偏远地区，与救火马和长发女性为伍，或者被陈列在博物馆里。教育将变成按按钮的事。也许我能在总机那里谋个职位。——引自尼尔·波兹曼的《教育的终结》，转引自拉里·库班（Larry Cuban）的《教师与机器：1920年以来的技术应用》

In Edison’s own words: Books will soon be obsolete in the public schools… Our school system will be completely changed inside of ten years. – Thomas Edison, The New York Dramatic Mirror, 1913

用爱迪生自己的话说：“书本很快就会在公立学校中被淘汰……我们的学校系统在十年内将发生彻底改变。”——托马斯·爱迪生，《纽约戏剧镜报》，1913年

Back in 2013, I boldly predicted that MOOCs would upend education. Ah, my past self, you sweet summer child.

回想2013年，我曾大胆预测慕课（MOOCs）将颠覆教育。啊，过去的那个我，真是个天真的孩子。

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has helped me appreciate the staying power of staying power, sometimes called The Lindy Effect. Merely staying alive implies some anti-fragility to adapt and survive. Consider that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were founded to educate the clergy. From The End of Education:

纳西姆·尼古拉斯·塔勒布（Nassim Nicholas Taleb）让我领悟到了“持久力的持久性”，有时这被称为“林迪效应”（Lindy Effect）。仅仅是存活下来，就意味着某种适应并生存的“反脆弱性”。想想看，哈佛、耶鲁和普林斯顿最初都是为了培养神职人员而建立的。摘自《教育的终结》：

In the Western world, beginning in the thirteenth century and for five hundred years afterward, that God was sufficient justification for the founding of institutions of learning, from grammar schools, where children were taught to read the Bible, to great universities, where men were trained to be ministers of God.

在西方世界，从13世纪开始后的五百年里，上帝是建立教育机构的充分理由，从教导儿童阅读《圣经》的文法学校，到培养上帝牧师的伟大大学，皆是如此。

Schools survived what happened to religion. It should be no surprise that they’ve survived the radio, motion pictures, and the internet.

学校在宗教的变迁中存活了下来。因此，它们在收音机、电影和互联网的冲击下依然存在，也就不足为奇了。

We typically confuse why something claims it exists, ie to glorify God, vs the forces that actually perpetuate it, which are subtler, we’d prefer not spoken aloud, and more prosaic, ie endowments, prestige, and needing someone to watch one’s kids.

我们通常会混淆某事物宣称的存在理由（例如荣耀上帝）与实际上维持其存在的力量。后者更为微妙，是我们不愿大声说出来的，也更为平庸，例如捐赠基金、声望，以及需要有人帮忙照看孩子。

It has been a surprisingly good bet that schools will continue to exist in roughly their current form for many years to come. Ironically, there also seems to be some staying power to technologists boldly (and so far incorrectly) doubting the staying power of schools! I myself have contributed to this grand tradition multiple times, and find myself at risk of doing it yet again.

事实证明，押注学校在未来多年内将以目前的形式继续存在，是一个出奇稳妥的选择。讽刺的是，那些大胆（且迄今为止并不准确）地质疑学校持久性的技术专家们，似乎也表现出了一种“持久力”！我自己也曾多次为这一宏大的传统做出贡献，而现在我发现自己又面临着重蹈覆辙的风险。

Surely this time must finally be different, right? We have captured intelligence in a bottle, and you’re telling me that “Ok class, turn to page 17” and “Does anyone know how to solve for x” are still going to be around in the 2030s?

这一次肯定会有所不同，对吧？我们已经把智能装进了瓶子里，你却告诉我，到2030年代，“同学们，请翻到第17页”和“有人知道怎么解x吗”这种话依然会存在？

There are many shifting purposes to education, which underpin how it has survived this long. As the times change, so do its purposes shift and adapt, such as: become a good citizen; make the world better.

教育有许多不断变化的目的，这正是它能存续至今的基础。随着时代变迁，其目的也在不断调整和适应，例如：成为好公民；让世界变得更美好。

I once tried to come up with a single-word purpose for education, and I landed upon the word “resourceful”, because I reasoned that if you “were able to use arbitrary resources to uncover and solve problems”, you had no more need for schooling. In the age of Google, email, and the internet, a person was educated when they could wield them. But now I see my vision of resourcefulness perfected in the AI agent and its tool loop. Maybe resourcefulness will go the way of the Dewey Decimal System which in turn supplanted memorization and an oral tradition.

我曾试图用一个词来概括教育的目的，最终我选择了“足智多谋”（resourceful）。因为我推断，如果你“能够利用任意资源去发现并解决问题”，你就不再需要学校教育了。在谷歌、电子邮件和互联网时代，一个人只要能驾驭这些工具，就算受过教育。但现在，我看到我所设想的“足智多谋”在人工智能代理及其工具循环中得到了完美体现。也许，“足智多谋”也将步杜威十进制分类法的后尘，而后者曾取代了死记硬背和口头传统。

Imagine education as a table held up by its many purposes. I didn’t realize how centrally important “the ability to earn a living” was for me until it started to wobble. A big reason is because I’m looking for a more objective arbiter of “good” in education. Education’s own tests and measures can feel stifling. The market offered a counterpoint. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were college dropouts, but the market deemed them good. Now that I think of it, apparently Einstein was a mediocre student, but his contributions to science were his way out. With recent advances in AI mathematics, both of these paths to glory are under fire. Clara Collier makes similar points in her exceptional essay “After Work, We’ll Have Each Other.”

试想教育是一张由多种目的支撑的桌子。直到“谋生能力”这一支柱开始动摇，我才意识到它对我而言有多么核心。很大程度上是因为我在寻找一种更客观的教育“好坏”评判标准。教育自身的测试和衡量标准有时会让人感到窒息。市场提供了一个反例：史蒂夫·乔布斯和比尔·盖茨都是大学辍学生，但市场认为他们很优秀。现在回想起来，爱因斯坦似乎也是个平庸的学生，但他对科学的贡献成了他的出路。随着人工智能数学的最新进展，这两条通往荣耀的道路都受到了冲击。克拉拉·科利尔（Clara Collier）在她那篇出色的文章《工作之后，我们拥有彼此》（After Work, We’ll Have Each Other）中也提出了类似的观点。

If AI takes our ability to contribute, what’s left for our children?

如果人工智能夺走了我们贡献价值的能力，那留给我们孩子的是什么？

Neil Postman offers a few suggestions for positive purposes for education that I found heartening, not mainly for their content, but for the fact that it’s possible to make up new purposes for education and advocate for them. My favorite suggestions of Postman’s are: Spaceship Earth – we’re all in this together; let’s take care of each other and our planet. The American Experiment – let’s revive our sense of wonder, curiosity, and responsibility about what America is and can be. The World Makers – as a student of McLuhan, Postman would be remiss if he didn’t invite students to make the tools and narratives that thereafter make us.

尼尔·波兹曼为教育的积极目的提供了一些建议，我觉得很受鼓舞。这不仅是因为内容本身，更是因为我们确实可以为教育构想出新的目的并为此倡导。我最喜欢波兹曼的几点建议：地球飞船——我们同舟共济；让我们照顾好彼此和我们的星球。美国实验——让我们重拾对美国是什么以及能够成为什么的好奇心、惊叹感和责任感。世界创造者——作为麦克卢汉的学生，如果波兹曼不邀请学生去创造那些反过来塑造我们的工具和叙事，那将是他的失职。

At the risk of going too meta, I do strongly believe in Postman’s point (in his other education book, Teaching as a Subversive Activity) that “the medium is the message.” That the way we teach what we teach is often more important than the what. And likewise, I believe in Dr. Alfie Kohn’s notion that we should relate to our educational charges as humans, not objects – “doing with” vs “doing to”. Thus, I believe it may be most honest and effective to invite our children to help us craft the purpose for their education as we figure it out together.

冒着过于形而上的风险，我确实深信波兹曼（在他另一本教育著作《教学作为一种颠覆性活动》中）提出的观点，即“媒介即讯息”。我们教授内容的方式往往比内容本身更重要。同样，我也认同阿尔菲·科恩（Alfie Kohn）博士的观点，即我们应该将受教育者视为人类而非客体——是“与他们一起做”，而不是“对他们做”。因此，我认为最诚实且有效的方法，或许就是邀请我们的孩子参与进来，在我们共同探索的过程中，一起为他们的教育制定目标。