The sociologist Mariano Fernández Enguita: "It is unfeasible to replace the teacher with artificial intelligence"

Mariano Fernández Enguita, one of the most renowned researchers in education in Spain, proposes to stay at the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid to speak in the shade of the trees of the great digital wave that, he says, will transform the school. Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Complutense University, Fernández Enguita (Zaragoza, 71 years old) is the author of several books, the latest of which, published a few days ago, analyzes the changes experienced in education from the emergence of language to the entry on the scene of artificial intelligence (AI).

Question. He affirms that the combination of digital devices, software and connectivity will transform the school, and that this time it will not happen as with the gramophone, cinema, radio, or television, about which there were similar announcements, always unfulfilled. Why?

Answer. The book has already done so, which we now consider the axis around which the school is organized, whether in the form of the textbook or the texts prepared by the teacher himself. We almost take it for granted. But the capacity of this contraption, which form the device, software and connectivity, completely breaks with it. It fits all the information, the entire school library, allows reading, drawing, composing, singing ... It is a metamedium that comprises all media, if one knows how to do so. And connectivity leads to more information, more software, and many more people. It changes it entirely. The previous media, such as radio or television, never entered the school because in a certain way they brought the book to paroxysm; they were still a succession of texts. Digital replaces printed paper with advantage, because it makes much better almost everything that can be done on paper, and also allows you to do another million things.

Q. What timeframe are you thinking about? Changes in education often generate opposition, inside and outside schools.

A. It will take a while. Not as long as it took for the textbook to get to school since the invention of the printing press, which was 200 years, but time. Initial and continuing teacher training will have to change. And it is everyone's responsibility. Of the administrations, of the centers... There may be individual variants, models, theories, debates, discussions. What cannot be is an individual decision, an "I want it, I don't want it." That could have happened in the seventeenth century: "I want to teach reading, I don't want to," because there were teachers who could not read and write. There were teachers titled by the Order of St. Cassian to only read, not to write. That would be absurd.

Q. In the book he has just published, The Fifth Wave. The digital transformation of learning, education and school, affirms that the internet is the best knowledge, but that above all there is redundancy and garbage. Doesn't that pose a major drawback to the autonomous digital learning of students that it seems to suggest?

A. I see it as road safety education. The moment children start going outside on their own, or can just let go of their hand at some point, they have to learn the difference between going on the sidewalk and going on the road, between a red and green traffic light. I think you have to give a certain panoptism, control, to the teacher. But that does not mean that the student can not leave anything of a lane, but that you have to teach him to move precisely in that context of information overabundance, unreliable information, false news ... Because anyway, as soon as they get out of school, they're going to be there. The question is whether they are alone or accompanied.

Q. Will artificial intelligence improve learning or diminish it?

A. It will depend on teachers and students learning how to use it. What I think artificial intelligence promises is above all to expand the capabilities of the teacher and the capabilities in relation to the student. It's a bit like judo masters say. It is not about opposing in a brute way that force that is artificial intelligence, but about using it in your favor.

Q. You rule out the replacement of the teacher by AI.

A. It is unworkable. If it were only about bringing information to students or even some learning, artificial intelligence could replace and surpass teachers. But it's out of the question because we're not just talking about that, but something more global. Which also occurs in an institution, the school, which is also concerned with providing care. Perhaps we are a little deceived by the word artificial intelligence, because in reality what we have is the ability to organize a lot of data, which must be made available to someone to make decisions. AI cannot be left alone.

Q. What role do you think artificial intelligence will play in schools?

A. I think there are three possible developments. One, teachers don't use it, don't enter school, or only do so marginally. But as lots of students are going to use it anyway outside, there will be a part that will reinforce their learning with it, which will be the usual ones, those who have been born in the right family, as happens with digital access in general. And we will have much more inequality. It will be as if the school had not touched the book, with the difference that it is a more powerful medium. The second possibility is that the entry of AI occurs halfway, in some schools yes and in others no, or with part of the teaching staff yes and another part no. In that case, what we will have is greater inequality between schools, or within the schools themselves. And the third possibility is that the school approaches it, because it has to, as it had to address the print medium. And it provides more support to those students who are disadvantaged outside.

Q. Will you be a faculty assistant?

A. I would say that he will be an assistant to the teacher, because he can use it for many of his tasks, and an agent or an interlocutor of the student, because the student will not have to limit himself to the only answer given by the teacher. Imagine, for example, its use for language learning, spelling correction, or access to not too complex information. The student can have a fairly rich interaction with artificial intelligence, in the sense of quite extensive, that a teacher could not give him. Because a teacher can only give collective attention, to all, or very occasionally individual attention.

Q. What do you think of the education law, the Lomloe, which is still being implemented?

A. In the curricular, pedagogical part, I have a good impression, in relation to what there was. It seems to me that there is an adequate emphasis on competences, there is a push, a saying "we like it", to introduce technology, to work as a team, for each center to have an effective project, not purely formal, for there to be co-teaching, and so on. In that sense, it has good music. But then you have to put it into practice, the competences are above all of the autonomous communities, and the key is in the center. In the center where there is a good project, there will be a good education and where not, there will not be, even if you have a good teacher of something.

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