Author's Note:
I'm sorry I haven't written any content for a long time. I've 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 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 won't go into detail about these thoughts here.
In this article, I want to discuss another perspective: ChatGPT is likely to have a significant impact on 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 you and your children will benefit from it.
Main Text:
Prussian Education and Social Talent Demand
First of all, 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 emphasizing division of labor, discipline, and standardization. In today's terms, it can be described as exam-oriented education or rote learning.
In the past, when the education system was backward and educational resources were scarce, this education system worked fine. However, with the development of social productivity and the rapid iteration of social 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 high scores in exam-oriented education do not necessarily meet the needs of the broader society for talent.
What society needs is more professionals 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, it 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 limited perspective, the modern education system (up to compulsory education) imparts more general knowledge. This includes subjects such as history, Chinese language, English, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, and almost all subjects. For example, mathematical formulas, physics formulas, chemistry formulas, recitation of poetry, 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 simple 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 personally understand as non-general knowledge that exists only within a small range or even within individuals, and relies heavily on personal experience.
To put it simply, experiential knowledge is more like a rule derived from personal experience. 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 examination questions by repeatedly solving previous years' exam questions, which can improve the chances of success but is almost impossible to replicate exactly. Or in history and Chinese language textbooks, students are asked to summarize the lessons learned from a historical event or their understanding of reading comprehension. These fall into the category of non-general knowledge.
After understanding the above basic classification, you will find that the modern education system mainly focuses on general knowledge education. However, this widely shared general knowledge can naturally be replaced by ChatGPT, or more precisely, by large-scale language models.
This type of general knowledge can be obtained through ChatGPT in just a few seconds, but it has become the core KPI of modern education: the more you memorize and 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 in terms of general knowledge, not to mention the inefficiency of the knowledge taught in the modern education system and the significant impact of individual students' learning motivation. All of these will result in lower-than-expected educational efficiency and quality.
Of course, I am not advocating that we should 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 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 very certain that the future will force a complete reform of the education system. I am confident in this future because there have already been cases of primary-level positions being replaced. Once talents produced by exam-oriented education are no longer recognized by society, and ChatGPT demonstrates its immense potential, those primary-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, I will conclude this article 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 is completely driven by your own interests. Therefore, you use ChatGPT to quickly learn computer-related knowledge. ChatGPT connects you with many related subjects, such as advanced mathematics and discrete mathematics. It helps you quickly analyze formulas. Instead of rote memorization, 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 for "three short and one long" or the shortest option for "three long and one short" multiple-choice questions. 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 "Preface to the Pavilion of the King of Teng" or "Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection" in full, or when the Soviet Union disintegrated, or when the Bretton Woods system collapsed. All networked devices can provide answers to these general knowledge questions within seconds, and you will focus more on what experiences you can gain from these historical events and classic articles, as well as the quality of the experiences you gain and your personal insights. These will become the standards for educational 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 examination. Finally, you successfully enter university for more advanced and in-depth studies, making your own contributions to advancing computer science.