Catholic Education and Artificial Intelligence


                Long story short; last June, just a few months after I started writing this blog, I was asked to apply for a PhD program in theology, specifically to research and write about an anthropological and dialogical perspective on Catholic pedagogy. I call it a “Theology of Catholic Pedagogical Theory”. I was quickly accepted to the program, but the timing and the funding wasn’t right, so that is on the backburner right now. In the meantime, I am continuing to write this blog (and three others). My Hope is to use this blog as a sort of sounding board or test-kitchen for ideas that, if I do go back to school, I can properly research and fashion into legitimate theology and/or pedagogy. We’ll see. But I am glad I am writing this; just this last weekend I was having dinner with my wife and her parents, and the conversation turned to Artificial Intelligence. My mother-in-law was talking about how within the foreseeable future, medicine will likely go entirely to Artificial Intelligence. I thought about education. What effect will AI have on education?
Veronica offers to wipe the face of Jesus in the Stations of the Cross in the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St. Nicholas in Galway, Co. Galway, Ireland. As teachers and as human beings, nothing will ever replace the efficacy of human touch and human interaction. We are made for such things. (photo P. Smith)

                Undoubtedly, Artificial Intelligence will, one day instruct students better than any human teacher could. I am careful to use the word “instruct”. The science of education really can be boiled down to ones and zeroes. Know the student and know the subject; identify how the student will best learn and retain given information; repeat, recycle. I am concerned. Certainly AI could be more efficient with instruction and grading. Maybe even helping students to identify their weaknesses and strengths in the classroom. That is what AI does. There is no way getting around that. So what can we do? What does this mean for Catholic education, in particular?
                I was already talking with my PhD promoter about possible thesis topics before potential funding ran out, and, well, without getting too much into the details, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to write about topics related to Catholic pedagogy being fundamentally different from most contemporary educational paradigms. That is, as I have written before, the fundamental purpose of Catholic education (or any education, I argue) is relationship with God for the purpose of the student knowing that she or he is Beloved. Education cannot be limited to simply getting into college or getting a job or even becoming a “well-rounded person”. Education is drawing forth from within the Truth that we are made to be in relationship with others…we are made to Love and to be Loved. Education is about relationship. It is not just about facts and figures and terms and ideas in the classroom, but also with the people in our lives. Catholic education should echo the image and likeness of the Trinity. Instruction, which I admit will almost assuredly be dominated by Artificial Intelligence in the near future, is merely a praxis within which one can contemplate human purpose and the Authentic Self. The deeper magic of education is not in the grades students earn; the magic of education is in the Truth of the human person… Truth that the human person is made to Love and to be Loved. It is not a matter of either/or in the case of human versus machine; I will gladly let a machine write lesson plans for me a grade! It is a matter of dialogue between human and machine, remembering that what my students will always desire most (because it is in their ontology) is an authentically Loving relationship with a human being who freely chooses to Love them. Maybe we need to express this clearly in our Catholic Pedagogy.

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