Ashley Rogers Berner

We’re constantly told by tech bros & education impresarios that “the age of AI” demands less focus on traditional academics and more on “soft skills” like “communication” and “collaboration.” Harvard’s Howard Gardner predicts that, by 2050, children will need just a few years of “reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic, and a little bit of coding” because “most cognitive aspects of mind . . . will be done so well by large language machines and mechanisms that whether we do them as humans will be optional.” Instead of academics, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman advises students to pursue a “deep familiarity with the tools” and “sort of evolve yourself with technology.” Economist Tyler Cowen says “the curriculum itself is now radically obsolete” and filled with “wasteful instruction.” TL;DR: Academic content is out; skills and learning “how to think” are in. If this all feels familiar, it should. The purveyors of 21st Century Skills have spent decades insisting that it’s foolish for students to spend so much time learning academic content when there are so many more valuable things for students to learn. Two decades ago, in the 2006 TIME Magazine cover story on “How to Build a Student for the 21st Century,” Deborah Stipek, the then-dean of Stanford University’s esteemed Graduate School of Education, mocked the idea that students should still learn South American geography, Civil War battles, or the periodic table of elements. Why? As she put it, “You can look it up on Google.” Harvard’s Tony Wagner has gone even further,declaring, “Knowledge has become a commodity. Free like air, like water . . . available on every internet connected device. There is no longer a competitive advantage in knowing more than the person next to you because they’re going to Google it and figure it out just in time.” The impulse isn’t new, but it was terrible advice then and it’s terrible advice now.