Despite Rapid AI Adoption, ‘Rip Van Winkle’ Would Still Recognize the Classroom

There’s an old joke that certain education reformers enjoy sharing about today’s classrooms to illustrate how resistant teachers and schools have been to innovation and technology: After a 100-year slumber, Rip Van Winkle awakens and is baffled by what he sees in modern society: from cars to smartphones to operating rooms, nothing is recognizable. But a school is the one place he recognizes.

There are multiple problems with the joke (one I know I’ve made myself—mea culpa). But put aside the minutiae like the length of slumber and that age-graded schools with multiple classrooms and chalkboards weren’t around when Rip took his fictional nap. The biggest problem is that today it gets part of the narrative backward.

For the first time in my memory, schools and teachers are aggressively adopting the latest technology of artificial intelligence.