If Learning Does Not Change Us, What Is It For?

Akinwale Ekundayo

If learning is to have what it takes to do great things, who or what is responsible for the ‘becoming’ of those who do things?

Over the years, many people have subscribed to learning systems for different reasons. Most significantly, they seek enrichment through learning and empowerment through education.

Parents, especially in the early days of our collective evolution, enrolled their children in different learning systems for different reasons. In the early days, kings invited the wise ones of their times to provide their children with knowledge on things that were of interest to them. Some were familiar things; others were not so familiar. Most of what has come to become knowledge today was then only available to an exclusive demographic of people – princes and princesses, who were the posterity of kings and the kingdoms.

In this kind of learning system, the proprietors were the kings; the learners were their children. It served the proprietor; the gains also served the proprietors. Princes and princesses were enriched and empowered; yet they remained who they were, merely more effective at it.

Somewhere along the line, things took a dramatic turn. There came an increase in population and wars for territories – for the control of the territories and their people. With it came the need for more knowledge and technology to sustain reign and rule over kingdoms, to cater to their growing populations, and to effectively manage the people and resources. Again, kings needed more people to know more than ordinary people would know, just enough to take on these responsibilities and ensure that the king did not suffer any loss. The scope of knowledge these people needed was defined; it left no room for too much knowledge that could stir a rebellion. That introduced the concept of ‘school.’

These schools were structured, focused on predefined stratification of knowledge, which would make each learner a master in each field, yet not equipped with enough to know how all the bodies of fragmented knowledge fit together into a working system. Each learner was learning to become Bachelors, Masters, and Doctors of their fields of endeavour, yet not capable of ruling over the people – that would be the exclusive preserve of royal bloodlines.

This system offered enough perks for the teachers, since they got more recognition than they got in the previous system, where their work was done in obscurity, away from prying eyes. Also, learners saw a way to rise in their estate, going beyond their status of commoners to distinguished scholars and ‘learned’ people. Learners, if distinguished enough, could become teachers too; some degree of respect and honor could then be ascribed to them. In all these, what was not so obvious, yet very foundational, is that the proprietors of these schools were the ones who benefitted extensively from the venture. As learners pay to be taught, and teachers teach to earn, the proprietors used them both to their advantage. They maintained control in every area, benefitted extensively from their payments, along with other value-added enterprises designed into their learning ecosystems.

Eventually, teachers and students were inputs into the carefully designed enterprise of the proprietors that delivered human and material capabilities for their endeavour.

Now, as things unfold in the present world, the entire system of school is being disrupted. Institutions that were built on these objectives produced outliers, who became more determined to change things than to be recognized by the status quo. This new crop of people subscribed to mainstream school systems for a season, but most of them dropped out of their avant-garde schools to pursue a significant change in the nature of things. They sought to redefine learning and to change how people learn to reflect individual aspirations of people; at least that is what they say. Unfortunately, while they promise the same old thing – enrichment and empowerment through education – their objectives may be more sinister than they appear to be. They seek something greater than the kings before them. Coming from no royal lineage, they are aspiring to greater dimensions of rulership and control, beyond territories and kingdoms. They want to rule the world.

Before they breathed a word of their real intentions, they had already captured capacities and capabilities outside the interest of previous proprietors, capable of exercising control from another kind of power, still unknown to many. They commissioned explorations into space, took ownership and patents over technologies that communicate and harness potentials in ways that were unknown to those who held rule prior to them. They were never interested in taking the throne of kingdoms; they created a whole new kind of throne for themselves, far above all known thrones, while disrupting how everything else works in the realms of reality known to all. Like the unseen eyes and hands in the shadows, they are gradually taking control of everything, without being in the saddle of the striding horses.

There comes the advent of Artificial Intelligence, ‘AI’ for short. It is gradually replacing schools with internet-enabled platforms, replacing the performers in the previous system with machines. Now, this whirlwind is replacing teachers with machines and reducing learners to input devices to continually train the machines. Gradually, the whole idea of learning would become obsolete, when getting things done would only require being worthy enough to have a franchise of the ‘machine’ and being a good operator of the ‘machine.’

The first to be eliminated would be the teachers, since they contribute the least to the prosperity of the proprietors of the previous learning structure. They may be handy in determining the direction that learning takes, but the proprietors are already perfecting their replacement in the ‘machines.’ They take salaries, huge payouts that significantly drain the purses of the proprietors, and this must come to an end eventually. The learners, on the other hand, contribute their strength and tuition to the system; they are still very vital in their overall objectives. Eventually, they would also be replaced, as the value in learning reduces and they are reduced to mere input agents to teach the machines, the best of them graduating to become the operators of the ‘machine.’ Again, the new proprietors are the sole beneficiaries of the system, as they seek to rule and control the world and its resources.

In all this, you would wonder: what is the future of learning, or are we completely doomed to this fate of irrelevance and despondency? Certainly, the ship for these new realities has already sailed. It left the shore a long time ago, and it is not likely to return to shore by any permutation of outcomes. On the seas, it is likely to sink, but that would be devastating for all of us. Why? Our collective body of knowledge and capability to continue to manage the earth is now resident in their ecosystems; their plans and their scale of execution are light-years ahead of any new idea or clarion call for caution or change.

The unanswered question remains: what would be the fate of learners in the long run, especially new children being born each day into a hopeless destiny and limitation to the use of their minds to develop solutions for their world. When would learning be re-centered on the learner in a system that returns value to the learner, prioritizing who they are becoming, as against just giving them enrichment and empowerment through learning? Without doubt, true learning changes the learner altogether into someone who is able to synthesize the riches and power they require to solve the problems before them, as against dependence on bestowed riches and power to do the same. When bestowed riches and power become inadequate or obsolete, they are able to synthesize what is needed for them to thrive. This is the kind of education that is capable of preparing anyone for the future.

Unfortunately, the pull towards machines will not stop; in fact, it will increase in alarming proportions in the days ahead. The difference between people will be the source of their capabilities – whether they are coming from who they are or they are magnanimously bestowed by machines. The choice is ours; in this, we still have a choice.

My name is AkinWaleEkunDayo. I am a ‘Bringer of Joy. ’Together, we have a responsibility to determine the shape, colour, and essence of our collective future.

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