Technology is a great enabler, but we must not let it do all the thinking for us.
We rely on calculators or spreadsheets to do our maths, but we need to be schooled in mathematics to understand the output.
We run spelling and grammar checks in word processors to correct our English, but we need to understand the rules of writing to both send and receive communications clearly and succinctly. We must learn to handwrite before we learn to touch type and use dictation services. These skills are foundational building blocks for our lives.
We use search engines to find answers to questions we forgot, but only a good grounding in critical thinking will help us to understand the answers and critique them.
We can ask artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to write essays for us, but we still need to know the subject to fact check the response.
I am a father of two school-aged children.
Everything has changed since I was at school. I was lucky to have one computing device in a classroom. Now every child goes to school with a computer under their arm.
Nothing has changed since I was at school and, at the same time, everything has changed.
The next generation still needs to learn the classic subjects English language, mathematics, and science.
They need to understand how things work and become creative.
The more vocabulary you have in the arts and sciences, the more interesting thoughts you will have, the more relationships you will build, the more emotions you will feel.
We are called to be creators, not just consumers. For that reason, learning the fundamental subjects and everything else that I learned at school is still super important.
We need English, maths, and science, even though we are not going to have to apply them in the way that we did previously because the machines will step up. But we need those things so that we can participate in and grow from a creative process, to make sure we are not simply consumers of something else's creative process.
- Ben Judge is a senior consultant at Waikato software specialist Company-X.