Author's Note:
Sorry for not writing content for a long time. I have been focusing all my energy on work, and my hobby of writing has been put on hold for a long time. Recently, ChatGPT has been very popular, from version 3.5 to 4.0, and it has been a highly discussed topic on the internet. Various thoughts have emerged from this, including increased productivity, paradigm shifts in production relationships, and future employment crises, among others. I will not go into detail about these thoughts.
In this article, I want to discuss another perspective: ChatGPT is likely to cause significant changes in the education system. This is deeply related to each and every one of us, and even includes future generations. If this article can inspire you to reflect on education and apply it to yourself and your children, then I believe that you and your children will benefit from it.
Main Text:
Prussian Education and Social Talent Demand
Firstly, it is important to understand that the current modern education system is derived from the Prussian education system. In simple terms, the characteristics of Prussian education are an emphasis on division of labor, discipline, and standardization. In modern terms, this can be described as exam-oriented education or rote learning.
In the past, when the education system was outdated and educational resources were scarce, this education system worked fine. However, with the development of social productivity and the rapid iteration of job demands, there has been a significant gap between the talents produced by exam-oriented education and the needs of society.
For example, many introductory textbooks for computer majors in China still use Tan Haoqiang's C language. The core indicator in actual teaching tasks is grades and scores, rather than programming thinking and coding skills. This is even more evident in compulsory education, where there are entrance exams in middle school and college entrance exams in high school, and the core indicators are all based on scores. However, these scores do not necessarily align with the needs of the broader society.
What society needs from talents is more in line with job-specific skills, and the iteration speed of these skills is much faster than the knowledge taught in schools. Of course, this is another topic of "lifelong learning" that will not be discussed here.
Based on the above, this has also led me to think about the relationship between ChatGPT and education.
What has the modern education system taught? Can it be replaced by ChatGPT?
From my perspective, the modern education system (up to compulsory education) imparts more general knowledge. This includes subjects such as history, language, English, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, and almost all subjects. For example, mathematical formulas, physics formulas, chemistry formulas, memorizing poems, grammar fill-in-the-blanks, major historical events, etc. The so-called general knowledge, in my personal understanding, refers to widely shared knowledge among human populations and has a strong replicability.
In plain terms, as long as you participate in compulsory education and are willing to learn, everyone can acquire the same knowledge. And this knowledge is widely applicable among human populations and does not change due to geographical or social changes.
Correspondingly, there is another form of knowledge, namely experiential knowledge, which I understand as non-general knowledge that exists only within a small range or even within individuals and heavily relies on personal experience.
In simpler terms, experiential knowledge is more like a rule derived from personal experiences. The replicability of this rule is limited. For example, the experience of handling government affairs in Shenzhen may not work in Hong Kong. In the case of compulsory education, it means summarizing the rules of college entrance exam questions by repeatedly solving past exam papers, which can improve the chances of success but is almost impossible to replicate exactly. Or in history and language textbooks, students are asked to summarize the lessons learned from a historical event or their understanding of a text, which falls into the category of non-general knowledge.
After understanding this basic classification, you will find that the modern education system mainly focuses on general knowledge education. However, this type of widely shared knowledge among human populations can naturally be replaced by ChatGPT or, more accurately, by large-scale language models.
This type of general knowledge can be obtained within seconds using ChatGPT, but it has become the core KPI (Key Performance Indicator) of modern education: the more you memorize, the more questions you answer, the higher your score. Talents produced by this rote learning education system are unable to meet the rapidly evolving demands of society.
The large language model behind ChatGPT will perfectly replace the teaching of general knowledge. It is a global, human knowledge base that surpasses any individual human in terms of general knowledge. Not to mention the inefficiency of the modern education system and its heavy reliance on the motivation of individual students, all of which result in lower-than-expected educational efficiency and quality.
Of course, I am not advocating for everyone to stop learning general knowledge. Instead, I believe that the future trend of education will be to reduce the proportion of teaching general knowledge, increase the teaching of experiential knowledge, and cultivate creativity and imagination.
For example, individuals can use ChatGPT to quickly acquire more general knowledge based on their own interests. The depth of knowledge they acquire is likely to surpass that of any individual teacher. Then, they can learn from these experienced teachers what ChatGPT cannot provide: experience, creativity, and imagination.
The education model after the popularization of ChatGPT may be like this...
With the emergence of use cases for ChatGPT, I am confident that it will eventually force a complete reform of the education system. I am certain of this future because there are already cases of entry-level positions being replaced by technology. Once talents produced by exam-oriented education are no longer recognized by society, and ChatGPT demonstrates its great potential, those entry-level positions are likely to be replaced by individuals skilled in operating ChatGPT. The pressure of employment will be transmitted back to the education system, forcing it to undergo reform.
The future education system will place greater emphasis on experiential education, creativity education, and imagination education.
Now, let me conclude with a vision of the future:
Imagine that you are currently a student in compulsory education, and you aspire to become a programmer and are very interested in this field.
Your learning mode is completely driven by your own interests. Therefore, you use ChatGPT to quickly learn computer-related knowledge, and ChatGPT connects you to many related subjects, such as advanced mathematics and discrete mathematics. ChatGPT helps you quickly analyze formulas, and you no longer need to memorize them. Instead, you focus more on problem-solving and problem-solving approaches.
Your teachers will also focus more on cultivating your creativity and imagination, inspiring you to solve problems from multiple perspectives, rather than choosing the longest option in a multiple-choice question. In order to foster more diverse creative thinking, teachers will actively learn the latest and cutting-edge technologies and knowledge in the market, summarize their experiences, and impart them to you. No one will care anymore about whether you can recite the entire "Tengwang Pavilion Preface" or "Lanting Collection Preface," or when the Soviet Union disintegrated or when the Bretton Woods system collapsed. All internet-connected devices can provide answers to these general knowledge questions within seconds. Instead, the focus will be on what experiences you can draw from these historical events and classic texts, and the quality of the experiences you gain and your personal insights will become the standards of education quality.
The exams you face will no longer be about how many ABCD options you choose correctly, but will depend on the novelty of your problem-solving approach. Because you provide additional problem-solving approaches, even interdisciplinary approaches, you achieve excellent results in the college entrance exam. Finally, you successfully enter university for more advanced and in-depth studies, making your own contributions to advancing computer science.
This is just a speculative vision of the future education system after the popularization of ChatGPT.