The Future of (Swiss) Schools in the Age of Generative AI </DramaticTitle>Yesterday I gave a talk about the future of schools, in particular with a focus on the role of generative AI and its impact on how we teach and what we teach. Of course: I don't know, and neither does anyone else. Still I was very happy to be invited to Fribourg and speak in front of teachers of all kinds of subjects about what I consider to be some reasonable assumptions regarding what some aspects of school may look like in, say, ten or twenty years from now. 
photo by Oliver Hirt First off, I hope that some things will actually not change, for instance, the automony of schools and teachers that we have in Switzerland. Second, teachers do not only have much more freedom in what and how they teach than in many other countries; but the very profession of being a teacher is viewed as a much more worthwhile career choice than at many other places. At least in my personal experience, Switzerland looks up to its teachers—as it should—much more than other countries to theirs. Third, I hope the permeability of the Swiss education system will remain unchanged. Now of course, things will look different in a decade or two, and recent changes due to the unprecented advances in generative AI will leave a mark. To me personally this first and foremost means to think about whether our curricula should be affected in any way. I am actually rather hesitant with respect to the extent the basics behind, say, transformers or neuronal networks can be didactically reduced in a meaningful way to make them part of K–12 curricula. But I think some central points can indeed become part of school education, and allow the students to take a look behind the scenes of our modern world. Then of course there are those that, apparently driven by some fear of being left behind, franticly call for abandonning, for instance, programming education all together: “Replace it by prompt engineering, because that is the skill that is from now on essential to software developers,” they say. Frankly, if that is what some people think, then maybe these people wanted to teach programming for (what I consider) the wrong reasons anyway. It was never about making every school student a future software engineer. But I also understand that for the general public, and for schools and teachers in particular, there are more pressing questions; such as what the future will look like with respect to homework or the “Maturitätsarbeit.” Of course there are very simple answers, most prominently: “It will be more important to assess the students' process, when, say, working on a project, and not just the mere results of their work.” or “We will have to make sure that theses will be defended by more thorough oral presentations and subsequent questions.” Sure, but implementing such changes will cost time and money. Here I do see some potential for new tools that may indeed help future teachers—never to replace them, but to support with, for instance, internal differentiation. The important thing here is that educators should decide where and how they could benefit from such support, and critically evaluate whether technology does offer a real perspective. It must not be the other way around, just using tools because they are there now and it would be a mistake not to use them—for whatever reason. Further Reading
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