This past week I had the pleasure of attending the 60th annual Association for the Advancement of International Education (AAIE) conference in Toronto, Canada. Over 400 Heads and Principals gathered from around the world to share best practices, seek advice from experts, and ponder the great educational questions of our time. One such question was posed by Dr Ulcca Joshi Hansen, author of the seminal work The Future of Smart: How Our Education System Needs to Change to Help All Young People Thrive: what is the future of human capacity in an AI-saturated, VUCA world?

For those unfamiliar with the acronym, VUCA may sound like the final, punchy utterance of a voodoo hex. In all fairness, it may sound that way to those familiar with the term as well. VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. Though the term reared its ugly head in the course of the pandemic, its origin actually dates back to the tail end of the Cold War, when it was used to describe significant shifts in the global order. Geopolitical shifts are scary. They are even more scary when AI seems poised to overtake many of the essential functions we humans have taken for granted since the dawn of time.

Published over five years ago, Dr Hansen argued in her book that education systems were broken because they failed to cultivate the whole range of human experience. As a result, societies had become more fragmented and individuals both less likely and less able to connect with themselves and with others. Instead of grounding ourselves in what it means to be human, and in so doing optimise our intelligence along with our capacity for greatness, we have opted for artificial means of connection, outsourced ways of knowing.

There are many legitimate fears associated with an AI-saturated, VUCA world. And yet, there are also many reasons for hope. Another term for AI is non-biological intelligence. Unlike us humans, AI bots are not born into the world in tiny, fragile bodies kicking and screaming. They do not scrape their knees, have first kisses, blush from embarrassment, or yearn for love. As a species, our cognition is embodied, situated, and distributed. This is a source of strength. Collectively, we are able to use common sense, exercise discernment, engage in ethical reasoning, and apply strategic thinking – all areas in which non-biological intelligence glaringly falls short. For the majority of us, the sometimes painful, often uncertain, almost always clumsy, and yet exceedingly euphoric learning how to be human takes place mostly in schools. What an awesome responsibility for educators. May we all turn more and more to wholeness, connectedness, and embodiment at a time when we need it most.

In partnership,

Gabriel Di Mauro
Secondary Principal
Interim ex-officio Head of School