Katherine Rundell is a highly regarded author of books which are mostly for young people (although they can be read by anyone of course). She also visited our school a few years ago, and spoke about the process of writing the book 'The Explorer'.
She has a piece in today's Guardian on AI and education.
AI is not for children and not for young people. It risks becoming an iron curtain that comes down between a young person and their potential for thinking, for experiment and conquering frustration, for stamina and for invention – and thereby, between the young people and their freedom. It risks halting learning before it can take flight.
And on the value of the Humanities.... she says:
I asked a contact who is the president of a billion-dollar tech enterprise, what would you teach your sons? He said he wouldn’t teach his children to use AI, because it will prepare them for nothing. He would teach them the humanities. Teach them who we are, who we have been, what we can make. The FT’s Gillian Tett reported that a senior financier’s New York firm now seeks out humanities students, because “AI-native” Stem graduates are entering the job market with “alarmingly shallow ideas”.She concludes by saying that we need reading for many reasons, and one of them is power.
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