Nurturing Wisdom: Shaping Ethical Education for Future Generations in the Age of ChatGPT
In the age of ChatGPT, how do we measure educational attainment? We do not. Education is not a commodity that can be acquired, prepared and packaged. The classical purpose for educating children is to prepare them to be ethical members of the community. Humans are not instinctively moral. Thus education is a future oriented endeavor. It is a process in which we learn to be ethical members of the community. For this reason wisdom, ethical behavior, must be the goal of education.
Wisdom is an action, static by virtue of its very nature. It is gained by learning how to extrapolate codes of behavior from a few moral principles and acting from within those constructs. One’s wisdom is authenticated by one’s actions. Morality is in our cognition. We learn what our society disdains as abhorrent and what it values as just and only then classify our values into cognitive constructs. Educators model conduct that reflects the shared values and provide students with the tools necessary to construct value systems. Hence the biblical prophet Isaiah declared, “Your teacher shall not hide himself from you and your eyes shall see your teacher.” Educators seek to inspire our students to love the good as well as awaken their intellectual passions and guide them in the evolution from values to actions. It is from the synergy of thought and action that spirit is born and we become capable of performing good deeds.
Thus educational curriculums must begin with core value concepts. These are the most fundamental beliefs held to be self-evident by a specific community. Tenets such as charity, compassion, ecological preservation, integrity, justice, responsible leadership and civic duty, in their broadest definition and their most specific applications are the building blocks of the curriculum. We do not impose these concepts upon our subject matter. Rather we sensitize ourselves to the existence of these core concepts in the texts and disciplines from within which we teach. In such a curricular model educators are purveyor’s of knowledge. The school itself becomes a learning lab where students may experiment with behaviors and implement plans of action. And when beliefs are translated into deeds, there develops a spirit of community.
Therefore if schools limit our vision to the child who stands before us today, we educate for the past. It is only when we make our vision of the ethical citizen an ever-present member of our classrooms can we educate for the future. Education must nurture in our children the desire to be part of this vision and the skills to be dynamic shapers of this tomorrow through ethical actions. If we succeed in our task we enable a child to apply, extrapolate, envision and create a course of action that allows him to successfully navigate the present world and to take his rightful place at the helm of tomorrow's world.