In the library of Harmony Elementary School in the state of Georgia, first class children are busy building houses from colorful plastic blocks. Teacher Shanaz Lakhani shows the plastic toy and asks, ‘This is our ‘user’. We have to build a strong house for it, which will not collapse even in an earthquake. The teachers here are teaching heavy technical terms like ‘user experience’ and ‘AI applications’ to the children. Colorful triangles of data science and programming are drawn on the whiteboard. But these innocent 7-year-olds don’t care what connection it has with AI, they are just enjoying sitting on their teacher’s lap and building a toy house with their friends. Imaginations of the future often show schools where robots are teaching and children are talking to chatbots. But, in reality, this school is based more on human connection than technology. Real education is where personal guidance of teachers, mutual connection of children and ability to think on their own are important. This high school was designed after looking at the ‘Jobs Changing’ report of the World Economic Forum. Former students Mohammad Rizwan and Joseph Schrag said that the claim of ‘AI School’ was different from the reality. He said that we do not use AI that much. Except for some classes like robotics, the rest of the studies are done in the traditional way. In language and history, teachers make children write essays by hand so that they cannot take help from AI. When a student, who was making a big spinning game out of cardboard in the mechanical engineering room of the school, was asked whether he used any AI tool or chatbot for this? So his answer was, ‘No, I am just using my brain.’ Teacher Casey Holycross guides students as they answer questions from the chatbot in history class. Parent Lydia Clark says, ‘Our children are progressing not because of technology, but because of the safe environment of the school and the human connection of excellent teachers. Salman Khan, head of AI software manufacturing company ‘Khan Academy’, has admitted that it was very disappointing for many students to study with AI tools, because machines cannot understand the mental confusion of children like humans. ‘ School officials also finally admitted that for them AI is not just about teaching coding, but about preserving those ‘durable skills’ (like moral thinking, mutual cooperation and creativity) which machines can never learn. Importance of mutual discussion, activity so that original thinking can be maintained. Stanford University, after studying more than 800 research papers, has warned that AI tools help in completing the work immediately, but in the long run, the ability of children to think on their own is lost. Scientists have called this ‘cognitive surrender’, where humans leave their decisions to machines. Harmony School is emphasizing on ‘human touch’, while the main focus is on mutual discussion, physical activity and guidance of children.
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