Kim Man-gon's Education Column Let AI Reset School Functions

I overheard a conversation between two people while visiting a shop looking for the owner. When a visitor said, "This profession will be permanent," the owner seemed satisfied. The visitor unfortunately added, "The first profession to disappear will be teachers," because the work teachers do can easily be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI).

What grounds does he have for saying such a thing? Does he view AI as a panacea? As a former teacher, it was uncomfortable to hear, but I didn't feel the need to jump in and argue. After finishing my business, I found a conversational AI on the street. "Will the teaching profession soon disappear?" Yes! No! There were conditions, but it's a profession with very low risk of disappearing.

Why? Because the value of creativity, problem-defining ability, critical thinking and verification ability, communication, collaboration and emotional intelligence, AI utilization ability (AI literacy), and complex strategic decision-making ability are becoming increasingly important, according to AI. Research organizations such as UNESCO, the OECD, and McKinsey also noted that 20-40% of teacher work can be automated, but core roles such as counseling, motivation, classroom management, and relationship-building are difficult to automate.

The conclusion was that the teacher's role centers on tasks that only humans can perform—social and moral judgment, student understanding and counseling, reflection of educational philosophy, and lesson design—so there is little risk of the profession disappearing, though the role itself will change significantly.

Then, is it acceptable to continue doing what we've been doing until such sweeping change arrives? That doesn't seem right. Who brings about change? AI has already drawn near and is urging us to hand over mechanical and repetitive tasks, creating pressure for changes in work. If that's the case, it would be smooth to first reestablish new directions for education. I believe we are now being asked to move beyond discussions about the role of schools and teachers and more actively make judgments about the value of schools and education.

Today's students are individuals. It is no longer the era of mass education modeled on factories aimed at mass production. Differences in thinking on this matter lead to different educational approaches. Schools can no longer claim their reason for existence by having students mechanically and repeatedly memorize knowledge. We must reconsider what kind of education schools should provide.

A school should not be a place where students are made to "follow" rules, but rather a place where students "learn about" rules. It should be a place designed to help students "experience" how precious it is for them to keep rules they set for themselves. Enforcing rule compliance is never educational, especially when those are not rules students have set themselves.

Similarly, schools need not be places where students must excel at studying. They should be places where students of varying abilities—those who excel without having learned, and those who have learned yet make little progress—live together. Before blaming students who don't study well, it is natural to change the teaching method.

Schools must reflect on whether they stage abnormal educational scenes, and whether there are instances of treating students as strange simply because they struggle with studying or rule-following from the start. If students already excel at studying and following rules, there is no reason for them to learn at school. If teachers say "Kids, let's debate but not fight!" and students never fight throughout their graduation or lifetime, who would worry and why? Would there be a need to certify people who have completed education studies and ask them to teach well?

From that perspective, the fact that students don't protest why they aren't given sufficient learning opportunities based on their individual characteristics suggests that these students are still innocent, and we are in an era when it's acceptable for education to not fully exercise its functions—an era when such protests don't arise.

Two children are absorbed in games on a bench in a dimly lit apartment courtyard. Some worry that today's children who spend their time gaming won't have memories to cherish when they grow up. Just as adults long for their childhoods spent roaming mountains and fields, these children may long for their own childhoods spent absorbed in games, and we should recognize that such memories could be precious and evoke a subtle nostalgia for them.

In the process of this sweeping change, an accompanying partner, AI, has emerged to accelerate and expedite that transformation.