In “Education in a Time Between Worlds,” Zak Stein reminds us that the essential purpose of education is “intergenerational transmission”— ensuring humanity remembers what it has learned, so it can flourish rather than repeat fatal mistakes. The belief that education exists to create and share knowledge in service of society is at the heart of my own mission as an educator and a father.
I was reminded of that mission’s importance during a sweltering July trip to Manteo, NC, where my son, Aidan, and I set out to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony. Field journal in hand, he was determined to figure out how those people vanished.
ONE FAMILIAR BUILDING
At the blacksmith’s shop, the questions began: “What’s an anvil? Why did horses need shoes?”
When I explained how people traveled then, he paused, compared it to his own minivan-enabled mobility, and logged Hypothesis #1: Maybe they couldn’t move around fast enough.
In the clothier’s shop, Aidan traced the sequence from sheared wool to loom to treadle-powered stitching. “Dad, it took all this work just to make clothes?” he asked. In his world, warmth comes from a quick ride to Walmart for a Star Wars sweatshirt. Hypothesis #2: Maybe they couldn’t get warm clothes fast enough.
At the bakery, observing grain milled, separated, kneaded, and baked in a fire-stoked oven, Aidan’s incredulity increased even more. “People really had to make bread this way every day?” Hypothesis #3: Maybe they starved to death. Nobody can survive without sliced bread!
On our way to get a Coke, Aidan pleaded to visit one final building. I braced for another barrage of questions. Instead, silence…and then, “OK, Dad. I know what this is. It’s a classroom. Let’s go.”
That’s when it hit me. Technology had transformed transportation, clothing, and food systems beyond Aidan’s recognition, while our classroom model of education has remained frozen in time.
That realization should stop us cold. If the function of education is to carry forward humanity’s hard-earned knowledge, what happens when every sector in society has transformed beyond recognition, except the very one charged with enabling humanity itself to adapt?
If educators continue to cling to outdated learning orthodoxies, intergenerational transmission will be outsourced to generative artificial intelligence (AI), abdicating our responsibility to steward human flourishing and placing the future of our species under machine control.
If this happens, the next “Lost Colony” may be humanity.