Education Needs Humans, Not Just Apps

Apps are insufficient to provide students with a rich, comprehensive educational experience, and human and physical elements will always be essential.

Responding to: Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn’s appearance on the No Priors podcast

The core disagreement: The deepest purpose of education is to help students become wiser, more capable, more virtuous people. That cannot happen in isolation from other human beings or physical reality.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT

AI-enabled learning tools like Duolingo can be extremely effective for teaching skills and facts. They incorporate the most up-to-date scientific understanding of how learning and memory work to ensure retention and comprehension, including effective use of repetition, sequencing, and instant feedback. They’re also excellent at using gamification and competition to motivate students through each lesson. These tactics, as well as AI’s ability to individualize and scale learning, make these tools a great supplement to any education.

WHERE THEY GO WRONG

Good education is more than just skills or facts transmission with a side of childcare. To be sure, both are obvious features of our modern industrialized education system. And this factory model might well be replaced by a well-furnished childcare center where children, each with a tablet and headphones, log in to their individualized AI and video learning plan.

But both modern schooling and von Ahn’s vision of an AI future are missing essential human and physical elements. This artificial, impersonal model forgets that the purpose of learning includes not just career preparation but moral formation and preparation for citizenship. Both of these ideals presuppose living, working, and enjoying leisure time within a human community. We are all designed for relationship with others and with the transcendent. We are also embodied persons, designed to use our hands–not just our brains. These are essential elements of the transformative process of a true education.

THE REAL STORY

A meaningful education is more than just facts and skills; it is the transformative formation of the whole person. This transformation can only happen through strong relationships, the cultivation of virtuous habits, and engagement with physical reality and human society. Education worthy of the name requires teachers who model character, classmates who ask questions, and communities that shape students into thoughtful citizens and responsible adults.

It also requires interaction with the physical world. Illustrations abound of how traditional methods improve learning outcomes. For example, reading paper books increases comprehension. Taking notes with pen and ink is better for memory and learning. Conversations can improve critical thinking. Hands-on learning can increase long-term recall of material. These are not nostalgic preferences; they reflect how human beings actually learn and mature.

WHY THIS MATTERS

As C.S. Lewis explained in his 1943 essay, “Men without Chests,” education should not address reason and intellect alone. It must also train students’ habits and sentiments to resist the natural temptation of bad instincts and vices. Lewis says that teachers must “inculcate just sentiments,” because, “by starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes.” Students “without chests” make poor citizens and neighbors, lacking both “virtue and enterprise.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

AI is a wonderful tool that offers many possibilities for enhancing education. But it cannot replace teachers, classmates, books, pens, paper, conversation, or experience. Luis von Ahn rightly understands how AI can improve and scale one part of education: the acquisition of skills and facts. But those skills and facts must be paired with just sentiments and meaningful experience to educate whole persons and future citizens.