The Best Education in the AI Era May Be Teaching What Does Not Change

“The wind’s direction cannot be changed, but the sails can be adjusted to reach the destination.” The column uses that saying to frame its argument about raising children in an age of rapid change: parents cannot control the conditions their children will face, but they can help them respond appropriately.

It distinguishes between innate intelligence, shaped by genes, and acquired intelligence, built through learning and the development of neural networks. Human innate intelligence, the column says, has changed little over hundreds of thousands of years. The difference between modern humans and prehistoric humans lies mainly in acquired intelligence, which requires more than a decade of education to develop.

That development follows biological stages. A child’s brain first builds the foundations for survival and sensory awareness. As the child begins to form a sense of self, the most important educational resource is described as unconditional love. Children need trust and support while they make mistakes and learn from them, a process the column links to the idea of “productive failure.”

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The wind’s direction cannot be changed, but the sails can be adjusted to reach the destination.

The column does not reject early education, but warns against treating speed and effort as goals in themselves. Parents should consider when and what to teach, rather than assuming that more intensive instruction is always better. It compares ignoring biological development to trying to sail east when the wind is blowing from the east: effort alone cannot guarantee progress toward the desired direction.

Later stages bring new tasks. Interaction with parents supports sensory, emotional and motor learning, followed by language development. Language acquisition involves multiple brain regions and also teaches children ways of thinking and abstract concepts. When children begin mixing with peers, emotional learning becomes more important. The column says parents and educators should clearly distinguish right from wrong, while recognizing that young children initially struggle to understand that other people may feel differently from themselves.

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There is a time for study.