In my sanctuary week I read nearly every post in On Education. Journal for Research and Debate- Issue 2 entitled “human, all too human?” transhumanism, posthumanism and the “end of education”. I quite literally choked on my coffee when I read the following excerpt about ideas for future educational development in Klichowski et al. 2018.

 

Nanotechnology: Robots the size of a single atom will be implanted in human organisms to replace traditional methods of teaching. They will create (without the process of learning) new neural connections in the human brain to represent the knowledge and skills desired (Kurzweil, 2013; Wolbring, 2008).

Biotechnology: Genetic engineering strategies will improve the human DNA and make it possible to breed humans who will be so excellent that they will not need education (Wolbring, 2008).

Information Technology and Cognitive Science: The human-machine interface will make it possible to upload everything from the computer memory to the human. Any knowledge or skill will thus be uploaded to humans who therefore won’t need education (Hof, 2013; Tennison, 2012; Saniotis, 2009; Wolbring, 2008).

 

Whether those ideas will stay within the realm of science fiction or become a reality, they certainly raise the question of ethics.  When does enhancement become unethical?  Education, it could be argued, is itself a form of enhancement.  “According to transhumanists, there is no ethical difference between the processes of enhancement and education”, (Blackford, 2010) cited by Klichowski et al. 2018.

Lance Armstrong, when he can finally came clean about his performance-enhancing transgressions, calmly explained away his behaviour by citing the  “level playing field” on which he was playing.  According to Armstrong, all the top names were at it.  Even the lovely Bradley Wiggins so it seems.  

Technology has been used to “level the playing field” as Armstrong put it, in my own classroom.  The use of “performance-enhancing drugs” (Ritalin, amongst others) have become increasingly more prevalent.  I use the term “performance-enhancing” in this context because in my experience the use of medication has come about due to perceived or actual poor performance in academic assessments.

The ethics of medicating school children are a hotly debated topic.  In my search to understand the question of ethics in using this technology to enhance a child’s academic performance.  I found myself thinking about what drives the demand for performance enhancement.

The sporting metaphors and the connection I made to professional cycling are not accidental.  A google search of “leveling the playing field in education” returns 219 000 000 results.  When did education become a playing field and students become competitors?

In my own experience as a class teacher in primary schools in South Africa, I have observed first hand this metaphorical playing field, where students compete with their peers for academic achievement.  Academic achievement seems to have become the primary focus of all stakeholders in our education system and this focus presents all of us with a range of adverse consequences.

One consequence that particularly troubles me is when children connect their sense of self-worth and their value within the school community to their level of academic achievement.  These children then shift their focus towards assessment and to some extent away from where it should be; learning.

In my own professional practice, I have felt that by being required to focus on measuring the effectiveness of my pedagogical practice, the “means” of educating,  that the “ends” have been deprioritised.   

This week in my search for redemption I found Gert Biesta and his article, “Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education”. (Biesta 2009)  As he put it so succinctly, we are valuing what we measure and not measuring what we value.   He goes on to say that when we assess the outcomes of education we are not questioning whether the outcomes themselves are desirable.   This, he says, is a matter for value-based judgement. We cannot make those judgements simply by measuring the effectiveness of how we achieved those educational outcomes.   Those judgements should rather be informed by what he calls ultimate values: values about the aims and purposes of education.

To take this back to my original question about ethics, if the aim of education in schools is to achieve a qualification then it could be argued that when the time comes we should inject our children with nanobots.  In this way they can all be qualified and we can, in good conscience, say we have done our best for the children.  Yay for Transhumanism!

Defining the purpose of education is not a simple task, one that Biesta attempts and I don’t feel well enough informed to comment on that yet.  But I do know from experience that school is about much more than qualification despite the current focus.  The question of ethics surrounding technological enhancements can’t really be addressed in the absence of purpose.   Why are we seeking to enhance performance in education and perhaps even more importantly is that enhancement even necessary to achieve the true aims of education?

 

Adamczak, Z. Agacinska, J., Bialecka, O., Bogacz, U., Carewicz, K., Chudy, O. … & Klichowski, M.1 (2018). We do not like it: A likert-type scale survey on the attitudes of a young population towards the transhumanistic theory of education. On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.17899/on_ed.2018.2.6

Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education Educational Assessment Evaluation and Accountability  21: 33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9

Feb 21, 2019