My vision for the future of education

When we talk about the future of education, it is easy to get into a technical discussion on all the tools we will be using as teachers in the next decades.

And yes, I am excited about the opportunities ahead. I love using online quizzes and games to keep things entertaining in class.

I have been playing with a custom GPT that I feed all my teaching material, to see if it could help my students with studying and with checking their level of knowledge. I understand how deeply personal learning is, and how limited I am as a single person to cater to the wide range of learning needs of my students.

At the same time, I think we should never forget the basis of teaching. If there is anything the pandemic has taught me, it is how important interpersonal connections are in teaching. Seeing the student as the full human person in front of us, who is confronted with the material for the first time, is key.

So I have been returning to the basis. In class, I lean heavily on the Socratic method. I always keep the image of Plato’s school in the back of my head when I teach. My core values are compassion, excellence, and creativity, and I consistently think about how I can put my personal core values front and center in my teaching. I teach from first principles, and I abhor teaching cookbook recipe engineering.

To conclude: while I think technological advances can be of great help in the future of education, I think we should never forget about the basis of all of this, the interhuman connection of teaching.

What do you think that lies at the basis of good teaching? How can we balance modern advances with the centuries’ old basis of teaching?