On Education

I grew up in a working-class town (Waterloo) in the Midwest (Iowa) of the United States. Waterloo grew around a couple of industries - originally a center for trade and transport, since it was situated on the Cedar River. It became a center for manufacturing when John Deere built its first tractor factory there in 1918. It has also long been home to several meatpacking plants, originally the Rath Packing Company, and later the Tyson Foods plant. Waterloo has a long history of immigration, and a long history of racial tension and de-facto segregation. Waterloo is a community whose struggles and successes represent those of most communities across the United States. It is comprised of normal folks who work hard, love their families, and want nothing but the best for their children.

Rath Packing Company Administration Building, Waterloo, Iowa

The public schools I attended had large class sizes and limited resources. Like most (all) teachers, ours cared deeply about their students, but one person only has so much time and attention to spread across 30-40 energetic and diverse learners. Each child in each of those classrooms came from very different home lives, though as is often the case with children, deviations from the norm were often met with criticism and bullying.

For the "average" student (I'm not actually sure if this person exists, but bear with me), this system seems, at best, adequate at conveying basic information, reading and writing skills, and an opportunity for physical activity a couple times a day. For an industrial society, work is structured around relatively homogeneous manufacturing and service jobs. This system produces a workforce capable of performing these basic tasks.

For students who fell outside this narrow band of "average", teachers were faced with a dilemma. Taking time to individually address the needs of students who came from less-advantaged homes meant that not only would the median student be unable to cover as much material, but those who were lucky enough to have more resources at home would be left bored and listless.

On the other hand, if teachers focused on addressing the needs of students who were not challenged by the material, then the other two groups would likely struggle to keep up. I feel fortunate to have had sufficient resources, time, and attention from my parents, since it meant that school was rarely a challenge for me, and I never had to worry about my home life.

However, I feel the solution that was provided to us at the time was to simply ignore the problem. The "Expanded Learning Program", as it was called in our school district (which is similar to things like "Gifted and Talented" programs elsewhere), really only served as a way to move disruptive students who were bored by the standard material out of the classroom for an hour or two a week. We'd play pretend at doing research projects (writing 2-4 page papers on various topics of our own choosing), "Silent Sustained Reading", which was simply a space for us to read anything of our choosing in silence, and other notionally educational activities.

These patterns obviously started to change a bit in High School, when students were allowed some degree of freedom when choosing classes, and much more in college. I wonder often, though if the system is still fundamentally flawed. We no longer have large swaths of the population going into manufacturing - even in Waterloo, where John Deere is to this day the largest employer (~5000 employees as of 2024, ~half of which are in production and maintenance), most folks living there do not work in manufacturing. Automation has replaced much of this work, and with the advent of LLMs and other AI tools, automation will only continue to subsume other portions of the job market.

I really don't want to make this site/blog entirely a place about AI, though it is a substantial portion of the current zeitgeist. I do wonder, as models improve, and our ability to use them becomes more efficient, if there is an opportunity to leverage educational patterns long ago adopted by the wealthy in our society. Individual tutelage by experts on topics of interest to the student has been the way of education for "elites" for centuries at this point. Alexander the Great, for example, was tutored by Aristotle. Master composers and musicians were often tutored by other masters, and the same was true for painters, sculptors, and other artists. It feels as though, with the ease of access of information that the internet provides us, and the completeness of conversation that LLMs provide, there is a great opportunity to give every student access to a tutor for any topic of interest.

In a model like this, the teacher then becomes a guide for students, helping them navigate information and ideas, providing feedback on their work, and allowing them freeform exploration across a much broader and deeper range of topics. Schools become symposia for students to discuss with each other, socialize, and learn from one another in much more meaningful ways than just being told information by a teacher (who is almost certainly not an expert in any of the topics a student might ask difficult questions about).

There may also be a middle ground between the current system and the model I'm describing here. It's certainly important for students to have a common foundation of knowledge and understanding of the world around them. Perhaps that should continue to be taught in a similar way as today, but with dedicated time for students to explore threads of those topics of their own interest, in their own time, with the help of (AI or otherwise) tutors.

There is an important caveat to make here. All of these observations come from an experience which concluded almost 20 years ago (I graduated from high school in 2005). I've heard quite a lot of surface-level information about how this same education system is changing over time (and has changed), but I'm currently not familiar enough with these changes to make any informed statements about them. I do plan to follow this post up with another one after I've done more research into what these changes look like. From what I've heard, though, much of the direction of these changes has been towards more school consolidation rather than less, which at least on the surface feels directionally incorrect.

I'm sure I'm being overly idealistic here, and it's very possible the current system works for a lot of folks, but judging by the critical-thinking skills of large swaths of our population, I'm not sure it's doing a great job. This might not be the solution, but, provided we all survive the water wars, and that we actually continue embracing renewable energy sources, I think we have a tremendous opportunity to shape the future of thought and learning in a way that is much more useful for the future of our society (and, hopefully, the fulfillment and joy of individuals as well).