Tim Van Der Merwe 🇿🇦🇬🇧

The education techbros at places like Alpha Schools and this new "Academy" aren't interested in books. They aren't interested in art, culture, history or great works of literature. They aren't interested in knowledge or learning for its own sake. Instead, they are interested in entrepreneurship. They are interested in AI, not because it's a fascinating technological marvel, but because it can help us "build" products and become wealthy. This is a sad, desiccated view of education. I'm not a purist, and I think that a child who leaves education without the ability to join the world of work has been failed. But I am also something or a romantic. I want children to be exposed to amazing things that might have no commercial utility at all. I want them to be enthralled by great art, culture and science. I want them to leave school not with a CV that boasts of the products they have developed, but of the things they have learnt that changed them as human beings. Call me a silly old philosopher all you like, but I suspect I'm not alone.