Zhuhai curiosity

It's raining warm rain. But I've replaced my Manchester coffee shop with a Chinese coffee shop. It's funny how little we need to feel relatively at home anywhere in the world! What would I do if I didn't have my computer and all my work carried with it? It's hard to imagine how the world has changed. A couple of days ago I was in the middle of the sea on the Hong Kong to Zhuhai-Macao bridge...

One of the things that is striking me about this visit is the extent to which things are changing, and will change further in the wake of technology. I've often been accused of being over-enthusiastic to claim revolutions in education. But I'm finding the mood here a bit downbeat - people are tending to say "Nothing will change. Education will remain (basically) Victorian.", perhaps on the grounds that the internet didn't change education - apart from making it more bureaucratic. And perhaps the regimentation and bureaucracy of Chinese education (and education worldwide) is a sign of that (where did they get that idea of how to organise education from? - Learning outcomes and assessment criteria have become a kind of global disease).

But that is really what has changed. Education has scaled-up and become more bureaucratic and more regimented than it was 40 years ago. Technology facilitated upscaling of universities, but at the price of the quality of intellectual relationships that could be supported by the system. Or rather it created scarcity of high quality relationships, for which students believed they had to pay a premium and pass exams to gain access. 

I fear that for the majority of academics now working in universities, academia is not about ideas, but about assessment criteria, exam boards, publishing papers, and marketing. Intellectual development, criticism and challenge have retreated. All of this is because the system cannot handle the variety that is presented to it. When the internet came along, it was seized upon as a means of attenuating the variety of learning, rather than handling it in different way - so surveillance and massive amplification became the norm. "Personalisation" became about algorithmic adaptation to the institution's "scheme", not about curiosity and personal inquiry. 

So now we have very high variety, personal technology which doesn't even need the internet (AI). How will institutions deal with this? How will individuals deal with it? Of course, institutions can still brainwash students to believing that their success in life depends on compliance to the institution's scheme. But it really is brainwashing, and strong-minded bright young people will see through it, I expect. Maybe this new technology will be enough to encourage students to see through the institution's game. 

But then maybe it will be hijacked by powerful actors in institutions who seize an opportunity to make a quick buck. Those people are always around. I was asked in China about creating a bot for the university department. My heart sank. I noticed the university of Hong Kong has bot too. I would have hoped they'd know better! There's a grimness to all this. And frankly, the world is grim enough without this. 

There are sparks of interest in deeper things from my students in China. It's hard for them because there are expectations they have of education, and I'm breaking the rules a bit. But they are bright and they are thinking. It's all about the relationships and their curiosity. 

What is the curiosity about? It's the same thing that happens when we fall in love. That's why curiosity evades explanation. In fact I think sometimes we see that students fear asking deep questions because they have a sense of trepidation about treading on sacred ground, or venturing into an unknown relationship. It's not because they're stupid. Their reaction is entirely authentic - but the technology might help them to find a path. And then there are moments of serendipity when things just fall in place. What are those moments? They are moments of harmony in the universe. We might talk of planetary alignments (Sun, Venus, etc) as if its a kind of magic, but many quantum physicists will insist on the importance of harmony. We see this in our relationships, and in the way we pursue our curiosity and learn new things about ourselves and each other.