Last week, the White House published a Fact Sheet about an executive order “incorporating AI into education.”
Teaching is dead. Long live the art of learning.
I can deliver a lesson plan as effectively as anyone on Earth. I’ve been honored to work with a number of amazing educators who can make the same claim. But today’s learners need more than scripted, standardized content, and they most definitely need more than digital tools.
Curriculum and instruction initiatives come and go every few years – new math, BEV, smart boards, 1:1 devices, blogs, AR, Common Core – the list goes on and on. The initiatives are often well-intended, the tools are bright and shiny. But apart from the relatively rare awesome exceptions that prove the rule, the classroom stays the same.
Open-Source Learning is yours. Free.
What has changed since the public internet is that young people often have a more clear-eyed understanding of the world around us, including the tools of our age.
My daughter is a 15-year-old high school sophomore. She is taking AP courses and starting to think seriously about college options and career paths. She and her friends hate AI. “It’s just a way for people to pretend they’re better at understanding and expressing ideas by creating more content faster,” she told me. “Plus I’m tired of hearing how the next cool thing is supposed to make everyone’s lives easier. It doesn’t. And if your work is too hard for you, maybe you should find another job.”
I love that kid. And she’s right. Neither learning nor schooling has ever been substantially improved by the use of tools designed for automating content creation or feedback. I’m grateful to Audrey Watters and others who have documented this history and fought the good fight against mechanizing education. It doesn’t work. In fact, because many educators do not have a deep understanding of computing, technology often creates a toxic environment of abuse.
In 2012 I gave a TEDx talk in which I said, “If Enzo Ferrari, God forbid, had focused on a screwdriver the way today’s educators and policy makers focus on tools, we never would have gotten the car.”
So where does that leave us? As my mentor Jim Bruno loved to say, “In chaos there is profit.”
Now is the time for educators to break the right rules to become more humane, more creative, and more passionately, openly curious than ever. Learners need lead learners. In order to stay relevant and provide the next generation with the mental, physical, civic, spiritual, and technological fitness they’ll need to survive and thrive, teachers need to become artists.
Art is not easy. And real art cannot be done by AI.
There is a story about Jackson Pollock being stopped on the street by a man who called out the abstract expressionist artist for his lack of skill.
“All you do is drip paint on a canvas,” the man said. “My five-year-old can do that.”
Pollock was a raging alcoholic with a legendary temper, but on this occasion he took out a piece of paper and a pencil and wordlessly drew the street scene in front of the man. It was photorealistically perfect.
Then Pollock tore up the paper.
“Wha…,” the man stammered. “Why did you do that?”
“Because,” Pollock answered, “That’s not art.”
What exactly is art? The word art represents a conceptual category of ideas – and in that realm, just like other often-used-but-poorly-understood words like learning, or happiness, or internet, the term can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
However, even though art (the word and the thing itself) is subject to interpretation, it is too simplistic to claim that art is subjective.
Objective criteria exist that help us distinguish Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans” from Campbell’s soup cans littered by the side of the road.
Art doesn’t happen by accident. Art requires intention.
Intention is not enough to produce art. An artist must possess the vision, materials, and skill to manifest an object or an experience that reifies their ideas and feelings outside themselves, in the world where others can experience it.
When art transcends the source and stands on its own as something observable/visible/audible in the world, it becomes the focal point of a relationship based on meaning between the artist, the idea, the experience, and the audience. When I read a book, listen to a song, watch a movie, or look at painting, for example, I create meaning from the experience. I think a thought or feel a feeling that I didn’t have just a moment before. Somewhere in my brain, a neuron fires and connects to another neuron. I am changed.
It’s important to remember that what we think or feel about art does not determine whether a work of art was skillfully produced. You may not like opera or sushi, but that’s a very different conversation than evaluating the quality of a contralto’s aria or determining whether the Otoro on your plate is Premium Grade.
Meaningful application of objective standards — the currency of criticism — applies to every artistic discipline, and gives us a shared language to discuss and learn more. We can analyze how a painter employs chiaroscuro, how a saxophonist plays with the Circle of Fifths, or how a facilitator tactfully dignifies a wrong response while scaffolding or backfilling a new concept in group discussion.
One question remains: Why would Pollock tear up a drawing that so clearly demonstrated his skill?
All artists begin as students, but only those who become learners fully realize their potential. Students are passive. They imitate and follow the rules of the masters. They draw inspiration from peers and the world around them. (Note: Jackson Pollock himself did not invent the drip style. Janet Sobel pioneered that technique, and Pollock was clearly inspired by her work – you can read more about Ms. Sobel here.) Being a student is a good thing in the beginning. These are necessary first steps in perfecting any craft. But what sets true artists apart is their ability to learn the rules well enough to break them and create something new.
Entire genres of painting – impressionism, pointillism, cubism, and abstract expressionism are just a few – were invented in this way. And when they were first introduced there was always someone around to call them ugly or primitive or failure. Impressionism was named by the French art critic Louis Leroy, who wrote of Claude Monet’s Impression: Sunrise, “I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it… A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more finished than this seascape.”
Innovators and early adopters are often met with derision and scorn. People don’t understand their newfangled nonsense and stick to what they know. The black-tie-and-ball-gown audience in Paris rioted when Stravinsky debuted “The Rite of Spring.” The Newport Folk Festival crowd howled when Dylan went electric.
Evoking a response – action from learners, dialogue from community stakeholders, even resistance in the face of ignorance – is exactly the work educators need to do right now. There is never going to be a better time. In fact, if educators don’t engage now, and AI and/or the government encroach any further on conduct and content, there may not be much of a chance later. We need courage and the confidence of our convictions. It’s really OK if a parent, assistant principal, school board member, or journalist asks questions or even openly critiques practices they don’t yet understand – those are teachable moments.
Educators have a professional and very non-AI obligation to empathize and adapt. To be authentically human and learn from mistakes in full view of the community. Teachers: don’t settle for being an attendance clerk and teaching to the test. Redefine your role.
What if every teacher decided to learn something new by asking a big question and launching their own interdisciplinary exploration? Educators can become lead learners who create spaces and experiences where learners reciprocate by taking the leap. Not only does each individual benefit, but the community evolves into a supportive, collaborative, high-performing network.
I know this is possible because I’ve done it. And I’m not special. I’m writing about it today because I know everyone can do likewise, in their own ways. Maybe you already are. More of us need to do it out loud. Consider it a peaceful, happy rebellion against becoming automatons. Do it until today’s extraordinary examples of active, engaged, joyous learning become the new normal.
I designed and practiced Open-Source Learning as a customizable framework that is supported by research, experience, and a community of practitioners. In the beginning, not everyone understood what I was doing; some of my colleagues even complained that I was breaking the rules. That’s how I knew I was doing something right.
Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.
Welcome to the art of learning.
Have you ever broken a rule or done something you hadn’t seen done before, and in the process created something new and amazing? Drop me a line – I’m curious!
Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription.
Here is a taste of what I’m reading, watching, and thinking about.
What I’m Listening To –
For the first time in over 10 years I bought a new pair of noise-cancelling headphones for an upcoming flight. My, how times have changed. Sony's WH-1000XM5 arrived in compost-friendly packaging. The QR code led me to download an app, which helped me pair the headphones with my phone. There was an upgraded “sound experience” that I didn’t select, because now that I have headphones I can’t afford any more monthly subscriptions – I actually cancelled a few to justify the purchase – but the sound is amazing either way. So is the fact that I can control call and music functions by touching the outside of the earpiece. And the fact that the headphones automatically adjust the level of noise cancellation to the sound level in the surrounding environment. I don’t get on the plane until Wednesday, but now I’m more excited to fly. You can see more info and specs in PC Mag’s review.
What I’m Reading –
The other day a client described the impact of economic tariffs and changing weather patterns on her business. “David,” she said, “I love what I do, and I think of myself as a resilient person, but this isn’t sustainable and I can’t change the big picture.”
She’s not alone, of course. Many of us are wondering what the near future will bring and trying to figure out how we can adapt. Her comment came back to me when I read these excerpts from Nicholas Triolo’s The Way Around: A Field Guide to Going Nowhere on Longreads:
“How do I come back to a planet in equivalent disrepair? How do I come home to a place I’ve never left? The pit’s invitation is subtle: Don’t look away. Come closer. Slow down. Look beneath. Now get to work.
“Maybe that’s what makes a home worth living in, to turn toward both its beauty and its trauma, to hold them in the same animal heart, and to have the staying power to endure.”
Our intentions and our ability to learn our way through changing circumstances will determine whether we survive and thrive. It is indeed time to focus, slow down, look beneath, and get to work.
Quote I’m pondering —
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
– Oscar Wilde
To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste. It's easy to disgust someone; I could make a ninety-minute film of people getting their limbs hacked off, but this would only be bad bad taste and not very stylish or original. To understand bad taste one must have very good taste. Good bad taste can be creatively nauseating but must, at the same time, appeal to the especially twisted sense of humor, which is anything but universal.
– John Waters
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Best,
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David Preston
Educator & Author
Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE
Header image: Pollock-Krasner House studio floor via Wikimedia Commons
