It would be difficult, if not impossible, to capture the essence of this interesting book in a short review. Nonetheless, I will do my best, at the risk of oversimplifying it. The book is based on five basic premises. First, mechanical versus creative labor is inherently undesirable to people. Second, most of this undesirable work will go away as intelligent machines replace humans. Third, as machines produce the goods and services we need, people will have more leisure time. Fourth, people will need something to do with that leisure time, and education can help address that. And fifth, the focus of education should shift from instrumental education (that is, job skills) to authoring education that focuses on creativity, self-actualization, and the pursuit of meaning. I would encourage the reader to neither accept nor reject this book based on my summary--the text itself provides much to think about and discuss, as it is more of a collection of ideas than a prescription for the future of education.
The first premise regarding mechanical versus creative labor is not as simple as it may seem. Within the walls of academia, one is more likely to encounter people for whom this is true. However, the average worker (if there is such a thing) does not like having to find creative solutions to problems they encounter. They prefer to follow prescriptions developed by somebody else. I should hasten to add that this is my experience and others may have quite different experiences. But, either way, this premise is not universally true.
Most people would agree with the second, third, and fourth premises, although it would not be a great burden to do pros and cons for each, or to use them as debate prompts. They might even serve as prompts for a class discussion, although there are currently widely popular opinions on them which may or may not be true. Further discussion of these premises would be valuable.
The fifth premise, while thought-provoking, is not new. From the first universities in the 12th century until the later part of the 19th century, most universities followed a curriculum based on the seven liberal arts, more commonly known as medieval scholasticism. In the parlance of 1960s pop psychology, we would call this “people building.” Near the end of the 19th century, as science and mathematics took a larger role in university curricula, the champions of the seven liberal arts were scandalized as they saw this as a shift in focus, that is, universities were turning away from people building and toward job skills or “instrumental education.” The debate over people building versus job skills continues to this day.
The problem with medieval scholasticism was that it provided education for the very top tier of society so they could serve as lawyers, politicians, doctors, or clergymen. The rest of the citizens went without education. This is the problem I have with the author’s recommendations. I do not think that a large segment of the population is interested in self-actualization and creativity, although I would be thrilled to find out that I am wrong about this. Thus, the future of education, in this scheme, would be a return to education for the elite. Even that may have its merits if one believes that society should be more class structured. But either way, it does not solve the basic problem of what to do with large numbers of people with way too much time on their hands. It seems to me that the author’s answer is “let them eat cake.”
Even though I have my disagreements with the author’s proposal, I would still strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in either the future of education or the problems brought on by intelligent technology eliminating a large chunk of existing jobs without providing replacements for the displaced workers. The false hope that the newly unemployed will “learn to code” is naive and out of touch, if not ridiculous on the face of it. So is universal basic income. We need to talk seriously about these things, and this book provides an informed opening for that discussion.
