{"id":45996,"date":"2018-11-16T12:43:48","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T20:43:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=45996"},"modified":"2018-11-16T12:43:48","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T20:43:48","slug":"learning-in-the-21st-century-a-bet-on-collective-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/learning-in-the-21st-century-a-bet-on-collective-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"“Learning in the 21st century”: a bet on collective intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nIt is high time that the learning of curiosity prevails over that of submission.\u00a0This is the “credo” on which\u00a0<\/span>Learn in the 21st century is based<\/span><\/em><\/a>\u00a0, the important and fascinating contribution that\u00a0<\/span>Fran\u00e7ois Taddei<\/span><\/a>\u00a0has just made to the reflection on the future of the school and the issues of knowledge.\u00a0If we want to progress towards a “learning society”, “where the learning of some facilitates those of others”, a “revolution of our ways of learning, in any place and at any age” is required, judge-t -he.\u00a0The perspective on the perspectives developed in this book.<\/span><\/p>\n

Create and cooperate<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Why is it essential today to learn differently?\u00a0The author dedicates a chapter to this first question.\u00a0But the reasons for change are recalled throughout the book.\u00a0It’s urgent.\u00a0First of all, there is the double “shock” we are experiencing: that which advances artificial intelligence (AI) is producing in our ways of living and working, at the very moment when our ways of life are challenged by the “environmental hazard”.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the one hand, we must take into account the impact of the digital revolution.\u00a0<\/span>The machines will surpass us<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in many areas.\u00a0The training courses are part of a very fluid context where jobs are constantly evolving.\u00a0We do not even know if the notion of craft will survive the transformations in progress!\u00a0And, on the other hand, in the face of environmental danger, we must “invest ourselves to change its environment”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then we have to see that this double shock puts us in front of a considerable challenge.\u00a0The “revolution” is coming from a “galaxy of interconnected technologies”.\u00a0Spectacular progress is made in a very short time.\u00a0We are experiencing a capital “transition”, of a “total” character, against the backdrop of the\u00a0<\/span>fusion of biological and digital<\/span><\/a>\u00a0, which places the human species before an “evolutionary challenge”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under these conditions, a paradigm shift is needed.\u00a0We must take into account “the impact of the revolution of intelligences”, and privilege the\u00a0<\/span>“skills of the 21st century”<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0: no longer, for example, memorize and calculate (what machines do better than us), but\u00a0<\/span>create<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and cooperate .\u00a0Thus emerges a “new paradigm” around “new ways of learning through research”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Networked devices<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

“Pedagogies that meet the challenges of the millennium already exist and only need to be developed and networked.”\u00a0To identify them, and to appreciate the relevance, we can start by pointing, on the contrary, what we must not do anymore!\u00a0Because we must get rid of the “logic of yesterday.”\u00a0Those of a system which rewards the capacity of submission more than the potential of invention.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taddei very rightly observes that, for example, the dominant evaluation practices deserve a double criticism.\u00a0The current “educational system”, which is busy “selecting elites”, is more “anxious to sort than to ensure the efficiency of learning”.\u00a0And the ability to answer questions about “yesterday’s knowledge” rather than the ability to “formulate questions and invent new approaches” is assessed.\u00a0In a general way, it is necessary to leave a\u00a0<\/span>Malthusianist system<\/span><\/a>\u00a0, humiliating, privileging the writing and the copy, valuing the submission to the authority and the norm, where everything is “hypercontrolled by the hierarchy”.<\/span><\/p>\n

What to do, then?\u00a0Taddei first proposes guidelines, which define real principles of action.\u00a0Here is a quick list (not exhaustive!), Which will give an idea of \u200b\u200bthe wealth of the author’s words: to have confidence in the educability of all;\u00a0to\u00a0<\/span>learn otherwise<\/span><\/a>\u00a0than by remaining passive in a classroom;\u00a0give primacy to questioning;\u00a0to encourage observation and experimentation;\u00a0to leave real educational freedom to teachers and trainers;\u00a0give the habit of success.<\/span><\/p>\n

The model in which these principles can best be embodied is that of “evolving and cooperative knowledge ecosystems”, particularly conducive to the development of collective intelligence.\u00a0This can be done in areas of freedom which\u00a0<\/span>“fab labs”<\/span><\/a>\u00a0are also a good example.\u00a0There already exists “a myriad of devices”, which express a “great dynamic still underground”.\u00a0It would be enough to legitimize them and put them in a network so that the necessary revolution of learning can be accomplished.<\/span><\/p>\n

Intelligences and values<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Fran\u00e7ois Taddei is leading a double fight.\u00a0A fight to promote collective intelligence, our “best asset” in competition with AI.\u00a0And a fight to reinforce ethics, placing it “at the heart of our interrogations”.\u00a0We need her to make the transition we are experiencing beneficial to everyone.\u00a0Because “technique without ethics is only ruin of the soul”.<\/span><\/p>\n

But is the first battle likely to weigh positively on the second?\u00a0Is intelligence, the producer of knowledge, capable of giving technology the ethics it lacks?\u00a0Taddei believes it.\u00a0In any case, hope.\u00a0Because, if he is optimistic, he knows that the worst is almost always as much to fear, as the best to hope.\u00a0One is always exposed to the risk of the “collective stupidity”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is it enough to set in motion the collective intelligence to progress from an ethical point of view?\u00a0That Taddei allows us to doubt it.\u00a0Certainly, “the need for ethics is omnipresent”.\u00a0Even a “coevolution of intelligences, individual, artificial and collective” does not seem to us to lead at the same time to a positive evolution in the ethical field, which would make it possible to hope for a “desirable future that would benefit everyone”.\u00a0This for a simple reason: the order of intelligences is not that of values.<\/span><\/p>\n

A challenge to take up<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

Taddei was right, in this sense, to recall the distinction made by\u00a0<\/span>Aristotle<\/span><\/a>\u00a0between episteme (knowledge), techn\u00e8 (material manufacture), and phronesis (ethics of action).\u00a0The first challenge for today is to prevent the technological revolution from defeating, or even subjugating, intelligence (the triumph of technology over the episteme).\u00a0One can hope for a start, triumphant, collective intelligence, thanks to the learning revolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this concerns the “dialogue” (or interface) techn\u00e8 \/ \u00e9pist\u00e9m\u00e8 (technical \/ knowledge), and not the dialogue techn\u00e8 \/ phronesis (technical \/ ethical), nor the dialogue epist\u00e9m\u00e8 \/ phronesis (science \/ ethics).\u00a0Not to mention that the phronesis, according to Aristotle himself, which concerns only the faculty of opining, is distinct from “wisdom”.\u00a0Only this one, which is a virtue of the scientific part of the reasonable soul, can decide the supreme value (of the “sovereign good”).<\/span><\/p>\n

We can refer here to the\u00a0<\/span>three “orders”<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(the order of bodies, the order of spirits, the order of charity) distinguished by Pascal, for whom “the infinite distance of bodies to spirits is infinitely more infinite distance from spirits to charity “.\u00a0Collective intelligence can help us to go beyond the “flesh” magnitudes, and make all men “great” in the order of spirits.\u00a0But will they be able to attain wisdom, which is situated in “an infinitely higher order,” and which can only be attained by the “eyes of the heart”?<\/span><\/p>\n

However, for Pascal, it is not forbidden for “people of spirit” to become “saints”!\u00a0This is why we can only thank Fran\u00e7ois Taddei to have, with passion, meticulousness, and rigor, explored the paths, and identified the means, of a possible progression towards “magnitudes of spirit” … It is already considerable !<\/span><\/p>\n