How AI Could Drive an Educational Renaissance

As AI’s breakneck advances fuel worries about students outsourcing their brains, one educator says it could drive an educational renaissance, but not for obvious reasons. In a piece about this for the National Catholic Register, Dartmouth provost Santiago Schnell argues that AI has pushed old educational dilemmas to the fore, such as rewarding performance instead of understanding, fluency rather than depth, and polish above genuine engagement.

“That may be its most unexpected gift. If this disruption forces us to recover what education was always for — the formation of minds capable of real questions, careful judgment, and responsibility for truth — then the age of AI may prove, paradoxically, to be an age of educational renewal,” Schnell writes.

He points to John Milton’s claim that education is meant to “repair the ruins” of sin. “Education, in that view, participates in the restoration of what sin has obscured. No machine will ever repair those ruins. That restoration is finally God’s work before it is ours; yet, aided by grace, we must still undertake the human labor of attention, judgment and love.”

Schnell offers practical tips and guidance for parents and educators. Read Schnell’s piece here.