Computerized teaching: Education reduced to training?

Maison Suger is pleased to host the ninth session of the seminar cycle "Accumulations and Accelerations: Computer Totalitarianism III", with Amélie Hart, high school history and geography teacher, co-author of Critiques de l’école numérique, L’Échappée 2019.

First, let us remember that learning is a complex, long-term process that combines the acquisition of physical skills, brain development, mental and cognitive evolution, and relational and social maturation. However, screen-based instruction disrupts this process, in particular by reducing motor skills and “face-to-face” interactions, i.e., psychophysical interactions with others. According to various studies, academic performance declines in proportion to the amount of time spent in front of screens. Thus, just as the danger of AI lies in reducing human intelligence to a mechanical function, screen-based teaching risks becoming akin to reflex training.

Following the success of the first two years of the seminar, which focused on the all-encompassing influence of computing, a third cycle has been organised to explore new counter-truths. The promise of virtual communities can sometimes prove harmful to physical social relations. Remote working, far from promoting equality, tends to increase disparities. The mechanised school, often presented as virtuous, risks reducing education to mere conditioning. And the fantasy of the “augmented” human reinforces capitalist logics of accumulation and acceleration.

The seminar will also examine the threats posed by automated warfare and the mechanised rationalisation of medical care, which can obscure the environmental causes of many diseases. New techniques for manipulating texts, sounds and images are making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between true and false. Finally, the artificialisation of life fosters endless individualisation: isolated humans are caught in a race toward immediate technical pleasures and struggle to grasp collective issues.

Inspired by an interactive pedagogy, the seminar is free and open to all, particularly students and researchers in the humanities, law and philosophy.