Cynicism is the New Reality, Education edition

 I recently found myself in the position of defending standardized tests. Well, once I take a step into that slide to the depths, I might as well start exploring. I have been thinking about education and the educational process so allow me to think out loud. If you don't allow me, I will type more quietly.

a few underlying questions -- 

why is college important

why is any formal education important or useful

how do we measure intelligence or success

I started with the issue of the random college's needing to compare students from 2 disparate locales and high schools and contended that only through their taking the same exam can they be stacked against each other. However, I realize that we are moving into a post-mandatory-standardized test era. More and more schools are making standardized tests either optional or useless (test optional vs. test free admissions) which means that the one tool through which a school can "objectively" judge and compare students is being done away with. Then I heard about this story. NOTE -- I am not linking to or invoking that story to comment on the question of quotas or affirmative action. I'm simply pointing out that high grades and standardized test scores are becoming less of a factor in college admissions. I don't know anything else about the student (recommendations, extra or co-currics, essay or whatever) just that, clearly the testing and formal education part of the record is not necessarily persuasive. [See here for a question and some stats about being rejected even with perfect scores]

Let's go back to the ending -- what do we think the role of college is. What do students ever need to learn? The three general categories are

1. skills

2. facts

3. methods

Pre-professional tracks should be hallmarked (which is now a word) by number 1 mostly and number 2 secondly. I find too many programs that are heavy on 2 and less so on 1 but I'm beyond complaining about that. Liberal arts programs are all about 3 ("critical thinking" seems to fall in that category -- the content is secondary but the approach is valued). This is not to say that critical thinking (that is, a process of questioning to develop ideas instead of memorizing ideas) is absent from other programs, but the practice of questioning is less vital in those disciplines. 

Now we have a bunch of topics to address. First, what are the skills that we want students to have when they get into the workforce, and how can we best prepare them for that. If we think that comfort relying on technology, or a sense of collaboration is important then we should train them for that and assess their competence in that area. If we think that they need to know how to compute the area of a prism, then, heck, let's teach and test that.

For the most part, workers today need the skills of a very limited set of disciplines and the only reasons we have a broad high school curriculum is either because we figure that students don't know what they want yet so they need a foundation in a variety of areas, or because the act of learning and thinking is independently important and exportable to any field. Otherwise, why did I have to take chemistry? I knew from a young age that, come hell or high water, I wasn't going into any field that required the sciences. But I had to go through 3 years of science classes in high school. And I did poorly. My college admissions chances were tainted by the lower GPA impacted by poor science skills but none of that had any effect on my success or lack thereof after college. I didn't learn any thinking skills in history class either, so even though I learned facts and names and dates, unless the need is for me to dredge up a memory of a piece of history, my time was wasted once I got into the workforce.

Am I advocating dismantling the established curriculum? Well, once we come to terms with what students need the curriculum for, we can determine whether our current approach is relevant. With the advent of various technologies, it seems less useful to force students to read books or write most anything. Does anyone discuss Pride and Prejudice on the daily? Are we jamming poetry down their throats because we want a culturally literate population or isn't that just self-fulfilling as we are requiring that they know things because other people know those things even if the things have no inherent value! I mean, what's the point of so much of what we teach if not to require that students grapple with the unfamiliar and prepare for tests and learn to communicate what they understand clearly? If it is just to be useful workers, then let's just teach skills. If it is to be thinkers, then let's value learning as a process and assess whether students can think and produce ideas. Yes, this requires memorization and immersion and a rigor which goes beyond "doing" but if that's what matters, then great.

But what do colleges want? With the elimination of mandatory standardized tests, and the knowledge that local school curricula and grading policies make comparing number grades perfectly useless, how can a college know if an applicant has whatever the "it" is that that college is looking for? Unless the college creates a local assessment, checking whether a high school student can succeed in a very particular way, what does the school use? Does playing an instrument, learning a sport, or participating in some other club really give insight into a student's ability to succeed in any school or later in life, at a job? I think not. Plenty of students pretend to be in the Finance Club or to have glamorous summer jobs to make themselves attractive but few, if any of these claims are tested by schools or the 4 years at college. The application essay is, as often as not, written by committee and the recommendations make each student out to be Gandhi, Einstein, Michael Jordan and Shakespeare. Every kid is perfect, angelic and brilliant and if the teacher can't say that, ask a different teacher or tweak the recommendation to make it so.

So let's recap. Most curricular classes in high school (and, honestly, college) are useless in that they don't generally prepare one for the real world situations that will be encountered. (the guild/internship system is more effective) The criteria by which students gain entrance to "elite" colleges are useless -- they don't really tell anyone anything about the student and are often dishonest, not comparable between applicants and not relevant. Sure, there will be a need in the future for a few highly specialized and skilled people but that cream can rise to the top in any setting. If we want students to follow their passions, and we want them to gain what they will need in the real world then we either have to take the rough and tumble approach and say that they need to learn to persevere, struggle and vanquish, so having them face rigorous classes with the specter of failure is important, or we think that they will spend their lives aided by technology, reliant on their support network and an internet of friends (look -- a new collective noun!) then we need to teach them how to succeed at that and we shouldn't hold them accountable to the base skills of foundational thinking and facts acquisition.

So either we need to double down on tradition and demand excellence in all areas, or we need to reinvent the entire educational system into either a highly focused set of courses which include real-world practice and an ignoring of anything not geared to ultimate real-world professional success or a system of courses leveraging all technology to the hilt, abandoning classical disciplinary (foundational) content and based on collaboration and general market skills that rely on the outsourcing of anything not deemed advanced enough to be worth the human's time.

And what will this do to the established system of higher education? Right now, firms and institutions hire students from Harvard not because Harvard has the best education which best prepares the students, but because Harvard started by admitting the best students in the first place. If Harvard has no way of judging the "best" anymore, then there is no reason to strive to get our children into it or other similarly selective schools, or even value a college education/degree. 

In the meanwhile, we are perpetuating a series of lies. We start children at a young age learning stuff that ultimately they won't need, so that they can get into schools that will get them into the next set of schools by teaching things they don't need and assigning high enough numbers to ensure that their reputation for warehousing excellence remains unmatched. Then the students get into and through the right colleges and into the firms that will give them the most money even if the students are not necessarily the best at what they do -- they just work at the right place and haven't gotten fired yet.

Just some songs

 I need to keep this list somewhere so I'm posting it here. You can listen to these songs if you want but you don't have to. This is for me, mostly. There is something about the mix, production, instrumentation, tone (emotion) or something else about these songs that puts them into a group.

Sole Survivor -- Asia

Turn up the Radio -- Autograph

Turn Me Loose -- Loverboy

On the Loose -- Saga

Fight the Good Fight -- Triumph

Magic Power -- Triumph

Tell Me What You Want -- Zebra

I sense that there should be a song by Survivor on here but I can't think of a fitting one.

Also, Styx could have either Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man) or Best of Times on this list. I'm not sure.

Updates as I think of them

Vayishlach, take 1

 I need to write a dvar torah for Vayishlach and this was the first try. I don't like it so I'm just putting it here.

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As we wander through the world, we aren’t generally aware of all the impact we make on those around us for good and for bad. We serve as role models whether we want to or not, so it is important that what we impress on others is always the most positive message, and we have to be aware about how our actions can be taken and used as precedents even for the wrong things.

Ya’akov Avinu’s life is marked by deception, or at least, the use of hidden methods. He secures the birthright by impersonating his brother and he increases his flock by using a trick to impact the genetics of the sheep. Of course, this is because he is surrounded by others who also use underhanded means to get what they want. Lavan deceives him as to which daughter Ya’akov will marry first (and the two sisters conspire to keep this secret) and Rachel hides the teraphim that she took from Lavan. And yet, the meforshim work hard to recontextualize all of Ya’akov’s behaviors as defensible and hallmarks of his role as a paradigm of honesty! So he, surrounded by dishonesty and pursuing courses of honest which could be labeled as dishonest is assigned a position as the quintessence of uprightness. This makes sense as his role models (father and grandfather) each had to lie about their wives’ identities, and yet they are not accounted as liars.

This continues throughout Parshat Vayishlach. When pursued by Esav, Ya’akov presents a series of tributes but separates them to create the impression of a larger gift and appease Esav’s greed (כְּדֵי לְהַשְׂבִּיעַ עֵינָיו שֶׁל רָשָׁע according to Bereisheet Rabbah 76). He then presents children with their mothers in order to psychologically inspire the mothers (by invoking a strong maternal bond which would drive them to defend their own). At their parting, Ya’akov says he and his family are headed to Se’ir when that is not the case. What does such a constant practice of (apparent) dissembling and situational manipulation do to the children who grow up seeing it? Are they able to see the “good” in terms of motives or the underlying “honesty” which can only be discerned if one reads through the events with the lens of Ya’akov’s being an inherently truthful person?

At the time of the meeting with Esav, Re’uvein was a few days past his twelfth birthday according to the Ibn Ezra (he was born, according to the medrash Yalkut Shimoni 162, on the 14^th of Nisan 2195, with Shimon born a month and a half later, Levi 3 months after that and Yehudah, 2 months later). Six more children were born within the next 5 months so many were on the cusp of adulthood at that point, able to watch and learn from their world. But what is the next event to befall the family? The abduction of Dinah, which is resolved when Shimon and Levi take advantage of the incapacitated state of the Sh’chemite males and kill them. Even had there been no murder, the request that the males get circumcised was a trick to keep them from protecting Dinah so the other brothers could rescue her. When confronted with a challenge, the sons fall back on using deception (mirmah in 34:14), and Shimon and Levi capitalize even further on this situational manipulation and kill all the men but THIS upsets Ya’akov. There are many commentators who explain that their behavior was righteous under certain understandings but Ya’akov just sees that they took improper advantage through the deception. So while his actions need to be looked at in the most favorable light, he reacts to the killings in the most negative way, not giving his sons the benefit that is extended when understanding all of HIS actions!

There is a narrative gap – Binyamin is born (and Rachel dies) 13 years later and nothing really “happens”, but the next textual ”story” highlights another seemingly improper behavior. After Rachel dies and Re’uvein moves his father’s bed from Bilhah’s tent to Leah’s. While the text uses strong language to describe the behavior, again the commentators find ways to explain his behavior as properly motivated.

It seems that Ya’akov impacted his children at a series of formative moments. They were influenced to see that the solution to a problem was to use underhanded means and cover themselves – they sell Yoseif and lie about it to their father! Could Ya’akov have anticipated that his example would be so comprehensively followed? Maybe the lesson here is that even when our motives are proper, others can see our actions as examples which might lead to less than honorable ends.

Cultural AIppropriation

  

In 1997, there was an outcry when ad people made an a commercial in which Fred Astaire danced with a vacuum. It seems that in the real life filming event he wasn’t actually dancing with a vacuum, but with a cane (!) so people didn’t like the idea that a computer system could fabricate images. Now, in the era of deep fakes and the like, the problem has, as you might expect, disappeared. Aging and de-aging actors so that they can play other stages of life, and using CGI to insert actors who died have become acceptable ways of generating relevant cultural content. I also keep seeing ads on my various feeds for a service that can create voice-over avatars, inventing the semblance of a pretty face who can lip-sync my words.

And then I saw this https://typecast.ai/learn/ai-voice-cloner/#:~:text=AI%20can%20clone%20and%20modify,custom%20voice%20perfect%20for%20projects.

This system can, apparently, take my voice, clone it and have it say things I never said. The ethical questions are staggering:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2022/07/02/ai-ethics-starkly-questioning-human-voice-cloning-such-as-those-of-your-deceased-relatives-intended-for-use-in-ai-autonomous-systems/?sh=4110e3ad4882

While I know that there is much to argue regarding the morality of manipulating people by impersonating their loved ones, but I am going to stick to an application of a recent issue – that of appropriation.

I am a fan of the Simpsons and I have been since before the first episode (I was a fan of Tracy Ullman). One character in the show is named Apu and he was voiced, for a long time, by Hank Azaria. In 2020, Mr. Azaria decided to stop voicing the character because his imitation of accent was considered offensive. For you Family Guy fans, feel free to retell this story just using Mike Henry’s voicing Cleveland Brown until he didn’t anymore. Now, on one hand, I can rail against this because actors’ impersonating characters from other places is pretty much standard. Heck, on the Simpsons, Bart’s voice is rendered by Nancy Cartwright and Erin Chase has voiced Charlie Brown (and Dan Castallaneta who voices Krusty is not Jewish). Watching the spate of British actors (Hugh Laurie, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Holland, I’m looking at you, mostly because you are all really good looking) play Americans or Jared Leto play an Israeli, Oscar Isaac don an imperfect English accent, Toby Jones pretend he is Swiss or Sacha Baron Cohen play most any role is part of the suspension of disbelief. But on the other hand, an outcry is an outcry, right?

Now, this isn’t really all that new. Remember that Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, 2 white men, played the voices of black characters Amos and Andy. But times are apparently different now, as they often are.

So, first, let’s consider where we draw lines. Blackface is out. Jewface is in. Womanface is in, but only sometimes. Appearances are still in flux. Authenticity (that is, the actor’s matching the character’s particular characteristic) is highly variable. A straight man playing a gay character and vice versa? I think that’s still acceptable but I could be wrong. A Hispanic actor playing a non-Hispanic historical personage is OK as long as the entire story is a treatise on race and ignores the actual reality behind the story. ScarJo cannot play a Japanese character as non-Japanese. Anne Boleyn was not black but casting Jodie Turner-Smith is ok. And at this point, I’m not sure if Nick Fury is black or white.

But be all that as it may, and it may, my question today is about the use of AI to play roles or present voices that are inauthentic for about a million reasons. Can a voice-cloning AI use a celebrity voice to play a role? What about an effected accent or a comedic take on a voice? Could a programmer use the past performances of Mr. Azaria to create a new performance of Apu for future episodes? Who would get the credit and who the blame?

If a computer cloned a pidgin or a dialect which is less than/different from the king or queen’s English, who would be committing the offense? The programmer? The person who spoke in the sample that the computer ate in preparation for spitting out new words with the old voice? Beyond the issue of intellectual property laws which would come into play if a company uses a voice without permission, creating the impression that a famous person endorses what he doesn’t (this has already happened with celebrity impersonators) or the voice of a dearly departed celeb (without permission of the estate) there are the questions of that confounded authenticity. The AI isn’t Jewish, Hispanic, Asian, Brooklyn-ish or whatever. Would an AI vocal performance employing the stereotypical affectations which make our pap culture palatable be criticized for relying on the same shorthand that our actors employ? Can computers be attacked for appropriating the culture of others, any others – because a computer has no native culture? What if the programmer is of that culture?

We need to hate someone and the AI isn’t a someone and this might prove a problem when we try to channel our righteous indignation.

 edit -- https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/let-the-beatles-be/ interesting comments on AI's taking over a voice

Book 'em

So let's just say this right out front -- I'm not in favor of book banning. But, truth is, I don't think most people are. I believe that there are a number of other approaches to books that require analysis but aren't as absolute as forbidding a book's being published, or collecting books that exist and eliminating their presence from the greater universe.

I think that if you were to get together a large group of people who are "liberal" minded, whatever that means, and ask them if it is appropriate to hand an 8 year old "Tropic of Cancer" most would agree that the book is not intended for, nor healthy for a child of that age. We can agree that some things are appropriate for people of a certain age. For the most part, people won't object to the "voluntary" rating of movies. (I say "voluntary" because IIRC an unrated movie will have a harder time with its mass-market distribution so most movies made for the public-at-large really HAVE to submit to the MPAA to be commercially viable).

So if we can agree in principle that some things are ok, or are not ok for people of a certain age, then the rest is just a matter of working out details. Trust me -- this sounds horrible and, as a younger man-child I was appalled at the efforts of the PMRC to "rate" music. But as a parent, it has become clear that I would rather my child not hear certain words and concepts masquerading as music so some sort of advisory on the outside, letting me know what the child is getting in to is a good idea. Additionally, content warnings on TV shows (and the ability, theoretically to adjust a V chip or equivalent so that youngsters can't watch stuff), and even age confirmations on web sites, or filters all are good things.

Now, maybe I'm not understanding the attempts made by certain forces so I'm using language differently, but I think that an equivalent rating system on books is desirable. We have quantifiable standards that allow experts to decide what music, tv shows and movies are appropriate for what age. Why not have the same standards established (violence, adult themes, language etc) for print texts? And, yes, then I think that a school library might choose either not to hold a book which would not be something for children to read, or to have the books that are for certain ages be kept in different locations in the library apart from those for more tender eyes.

But shouldn't the parents have the right to decide what their children read? Sure, just as an adult can walk an 8 year old in to an R rated movie, an adult can buy a book, or take it out of the local library. But that doesn't mean that an R rated movie has to be shown in the school. And then the question becomes "why do my taxes support a public library that stocks books X, Y and Z?" and to that, the answer is that we don't have line-itemization in taxes and my money goes to all sorts of local functions and programs that I might not otherwise support. Our libraries don't stock every book -- some things are, indeed, too (insert controversial content here) and librarians and their communities have been making judgments about what to have and not have for a while now.

So, again, I'm against anything akin to a complete ban, but I do think that all stakeholders -- parents, teachers and even politicos can help determine what is properly accessible to whom and what isn't so that in certain contexts. Will we all agree in each case? Can we set certain universals (ideological issues aren't subject to ratings -- we limit to descriptions of violence, sexuality and scatalogical imagery maybe?) as a working-starting point? Will it be easy? Will it be quick? Will it be free?

But does a challenge mean we don't try if there is an underlying point of agreement?

Aging out

 

I never thought I would be the guy who wrote about defending standardized tests, but here we are. I also never thought I would appreciate Taylor Swift, but, like an alligator, she has her time and place.

My usual position is that standardized tests

a) have test maker bias built in

2) can't assess for process

iii) can't assess for skills (or assess only for a narrow range of demonstrated orders of skills including "test taking)

four) assume all students develop identically

⬠) allow grading bias (for free responses)

0110) reward an economic class that can afford in time and money effective tutoring

and I'm sure some other problems. But here's the thing -- I also recognize their utility. As I explain to my classes, X University has no way of comparing a public school student from Duluth and a private school kid from Paramus unless both sit for an identical assessment. Our curricula differ. The socio-cultural values and influences differ. And on and on.

So, flawed as they are, standardized tests, if used properly and considered properly are useful. OK, file that away.

I also believe that a person's age is important in deciding maturity and readiness for a variety of things. Is setting a particular age-limit on anything just begging for exceptions? Yes, but on the whole, it is clear that a 13 year old isn't ready to drive, or get married, or judge candidates maturely enough to vote and a 23 year old is. So we dicker over specifics but agree in principle. I think that the same should hold true at the other end of the spectrum -- we already do this by having, in some industries, mandatory retirement age. This not only allows an organization to phase out higher-earning veterans and cycle in new, cheaper hires, but, theoretically (and a bit less cynically) it establishes the notion that competence wanes over time. And for certain skill areas, I think we all agree that this is true. 

The fact that it is biblically precedented need not be mentioned here, so I won't.

So it might be reasonable to say that, because of the majority of cases, jobs that require heavy lifting are not for people over whatever age the experts in the field see a person's needed strength ebbing. And I don't make that judgment. The age parameters need to be established by experts in the field because I don't want someone whose peak performance is limited by the frailty of age performing a task that could mean the difference between life and death for me. Or some people I know, even.

Therefore, I am proposing age-based testing for a whole lot of stuff. Let's start easy -- driver's licensing. In the same way that you need to take a written and practical test to earn a license, starting at a certain age, testing to maintain licenses should be required. Vision, hearing and response time. 

Is there concern over the thresholds that can be established for competent performance (and aren't they rendered moot by the advent of self driving cars)? I think that baselines can be set up by conference of medical and performative experts. We have a limit called "legally blind" so we know what you need to be able to see to drive. We can determine what one needs to be able to hear when driving, and set that as a limit (if there is no current standard requirement for hearing when driving, then scrap this branch). I think we can also create a standard for response time (I know it is tested to show people who are under the influence the difference between their response time and a sober driver's). 

Is there a concern over cost and implementation? There need not be, not because we already have an infrastructure built, that for road-tests for new drivers, so we could just put people of an age or higher through the same process, but because we also have new technologies. Simulators can be used effectively here because the goal isn't to assess the fundamental skills of driving, i.e. the rules of the road, but just reaction time and critical judgment skills. I assume that this will knock certain people out of contention for holding a license which will drive down insurance rates for everyone, take car-impediments off the road and increase work for drivers of the Uber sort.

Next up, gun licenses. I think that beyond a certain age, when the same (2 or) 3 components degrade, one should risk forfeiture of licensure. And I think that vision, hearing and cognition should be tested to ensure the safety of everyone else. Heck, we should be testing for mental competence from the get go but I don't know how that plays in.

Do we want a policeman, or a fireman, or an EMT who cannot carry, run, see, hold steady or judge a situation properly anymore? We work from the list of desired outcomes we want to check on and work backwards, designing practical (and theoretical) scenarios to ensure continued ability. And, yes, I think the same holds true for politicians. While vision might not be the same sine qua non, the health-physical should be complemented by a mental-acuity assessment yearly to make sure that memory and discernment are still up to snuff. Supreme court justices, at a certain age, aren't thinking as clearly as they once did (though their positions are as much the function of blind political ideology or the efforts of their clerks as they are of the justices' own input so they can stay in their jobs longer because, ironically, less is demanded of them).

Look, I'm aging (EVERY DAY!) and I know that at some point I will be nothing more than an adorable teddy-bear in the classroom, not able to think as quickly as my students, not able to command their attention or handle the physical, emotional and mental rigors of my job. I also know that while the risk to students is limited and that the real crime is defrauding parents of their tuition dollars by sticking their kids into a room with someone unable to provide any return on investment, still, my usefulness in the classroom will eventually be in question. So is my job "safer" for an older person than a job in the field of "bomb disarming technician"? I would assume so. But I'm not looking for a sinecure in which I can do least harm because parents should be looking to fund that. Will I hold on to certain skills even past my freshness date in the classroom? I assume so. The idea that those who can't do, teach, is not wrong. Someone who is past his prime physically can still transmit experiences and lessons learned through mentoring, so there are still spots for those who are not field-strong anymore.

So, yeah, I think we need a combination of age-gates and standardized assessments. I know it will cost money to create and implement and that the results will (as with all assessments) be inexact. But we will also be working to make sure that the productive engine of society continues to be strong.

More, LOTS more

  

Back when I was but a boy, still optimistic about my ability to learn math, my teachers taught us the concept of “estimating” (also known as “guestimating”). The idea was that we could approximate what the answer should be like before we did any computations so we could compare what we got with what made sense and that way, we could see if our math was completely off base. At the time I felt like the estimate should have been enough because, even then, I knew that there was precious little use for math in the world. Leave that up to the professional mathetizers and I’ll stick with the lottery winners and hire them mathetizers to do the work.

As I aged (for lack of available and desirable options) I recognized that the value of estimating is that it reinforces an understanding of the relationship between numbers. Once you see how the answer SHOULD look because you have a sense of how the pieces operate, you stand a much better chance of seeing why a potential answer is wrong. If you know the answer should be a negative, or has to be more than either of the parts, then an answer that doesn’t fit that schema can be discarded.

This type of understanding of numbers is rudimentary, but, more importantly, it is fundamental. If I go to the local fast fooderie and pay with cash, I don’t want my server to take my cash and give me change without considering what, approximately, my change should be. I want to hear him or her say “that can’t be right!” Otherwise, typing errors or other tech-interface mis-actions will be believed regardless.

Why do I mention this? I’m glad I asked. I’m also glad I didn’t wait for you sheep to ask because I can’t always count on you people to wade in and find your voice. So I’m here for you. Mostly because I’m awesome.

I was having a conversation with someone recently about the value of math instruction and he pointed out that he didn’t like when, when he was but a wee lad, his teachers forbade the use of a calculator during assessments because, in their words, “you won’t always have a calculator handy.” He laughed at them in retrospect and reminded the huddled masses that he always has his phone with him. Har har we all chortled (chortling is the cool way to laugh kids). And secretly I cried inside.

What I predict is that people in the service industry, doing the kinds of basic work that serves as the backbone of any society will start doing worse and worse jobs. The guy basing his fee on the square footage of my living room floor will use his phone to measure and then compute and if the resultant acreage (It’s a big room) is illogical, he will trust the technology. The guy figuring out how many miles I can go before my next oil fill will mistype a number into his device and I’ll end up on the side of the road next to a flaming hunk of imported metal.

The same can be said for teaching spelling – understanding WHY words are constructed the way they are not only helps sharpen the memory, but allows people to intuit the meaning of unfamiliar words by looking at roots and affixes. Relying on AI to “correct” words will lead to the wrong words’ being used (the “Damn you autocorrect” syndrome) and the wrong message’s being conveyed. We cannot dress up laziness and call it “the future” and turn it into a positive.

The Lower Order Thinking Skills which I value so highly, having been subcontracted to technology will disempower the sectors of society which are based on those skills and there will be no intuition – no developed memorization skills, no experience of spotting the error, and no understanding of the relationship between values. There will be no practice of approximating a proper answer because “who needs to do basic math?” There will be no insight into WHY math works the way it works and therefore there will be no critical sense willing to question when an answer doesn’t fit, on its face.

We will not be taken over by robots, technology and AI. We will be (and already are) handing over the keys to the kingdom in a slow regression that we call progress. We will become reliant on technology and so convinced that our deeper analytical skills are so developed that we needn’t worry about the basics. And the robots won’t have to do much but exploit our foundational stupidity and we will go to our doom in neat and orderly lines.