Roy Andersen is a distinguished educationalist, well recognised for his easy style of writing that enables all to fully understand the complications of education and learning. He is the author of 18 books that explore the intricate relationship between society, education and the evolving world of Ai. Email: roy@andersenroy.com, www.andersenroy.com

If school had a formal subject to the development of thinking/reasoning skills, students would think better, learn better and score higher in their examinations. So, why is there no such subject in the curriculum? To understand this, we need to know that the original purpose of school was to produce a general citizen who would think only to the level of the jobs they were needed to do, but not to reason too much on the factors that controlled their life.

To achieve this, school designed a way of processing its students based on language skill, but seen to be largely dependent upon intelligence. Since intelligence was reasoned to be inherited to some lesser or greater degree, depending upon the politics of those involved, it and so aspects of it such as thinking and learning, were seen to be a factor of nature, which was beyond the responsibility and finances of the school. Not only did this enable the processing of students to be largely determined by their language skills and social background to maintain the status quo, but it also provided school with the excuse that any low learning by students was said to be the responsibility of nature (the biological parents) or the social environment, which the department of education, a specific school and its teachers could excused from.

By this manner, students were raised in school on dualistic thinking, which is basically to think in terms of yes or no and to largely accept information as it was provided to them. Sporadic ideas to develop critical thinking does not alter this. Thus, as a later citizen they were to largely accept the information fed to them through media sources and not to too much question the validity of this information or the political design behind it.

According to this design, those students who scored sufficiently high in examinations, largely on account of their social preparation in language skill, mental stamina to hold to strenuous learning and having the character to avoid the many distractions that would pull their mind away from their learning, were funnelled to university. Here they were to be taught higher reasoning skills, deprived at the school level, to enable them to be more responsible leaders in society and industry. This is the manager/managed design of society and school.

Although, advancements in technology and the social changes they brought caused school to seek better ways for children to learn, so they could be better workers, all these were set about the concept of intelligence, as we see with the philosophies of Piaget, Bloom, Gardner and even Kolb’s learning styles. However, since learning development is not based on intelligence none of their methods caused any difference in improving student learning. The same proportions of leaner ability remained in the class, which satisfied the basic criteria of school in the quality of the citizen it was to produce. 

In view of the dynamic social changes A.I. is predicted to bring upon us, it is vital that school now creates a formal subject to the education of reason. In fact, this need has never been as important as it is now, because a new term has arisen in education known as digital dependency disorder or DDD. This condition arises when a student, for whatever reason, is unable to obtain a response from AI when they are in a competitive environment. Faced with the concern that other students will find the answer faster and better because they can access AI when they cannot, has caused some students to exhibit serious levels of frustration. Teachers, I am told, have noticed mood swings in children and even violent outbursts through this frustration. In fact. we are now aware of how AI is actually reducing the intelligence of our students in school, which has serious implications to the human species in an evolutionary sense.

I try to offer suggestions how we can combat the decline of intelligence in our students in the books I have written. The following books discuss in great depth all we have covered in this short article and how we may better proceed as those who have the responsibility of mankind in our hands.
 

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