Who says the end of the school year is approaching obviously means final evaluations. Every year, all teachers think long and hard about these assessments and, since generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT appeared in our lives, this reflection could not be more essential.
What to do with a project to do at home? A research work to be written based on a problem? It seems that ChatGPT can do almost anything — and even better than humans.
Do we need to change our plans so that ChatGPT cannot complete them? Should we go back to more traditional classroom exams to ensure it’s not AI doing the work? It is the return, in a new form, of the famous question: should we, teachers, prioritize the development of skills or knowledge?
In the world of education, learning knowledge has a bad reputation, especially since the reform of the early 2000s decided to favor skills. Some might think that our times vindicate this famous reform. Indeed, at a time when we can “Google” information in a few seconds, we might wonder why we should learn the geography of Quebec or the date of the founding of Montreal by heart? Isn’t that a waste of energy and time? Energy and time that could also be redirected towards the development of critical thinking in the face of these new technologies.
This idea may seem good, but it is actually false. In the era of generative artificial intelligence, it is in fact urgent to develop the general knowledge of our students for three main reasons.
First, to understand a text, whether in a book, on a website or generated by artificial intelligence, you must have a significant amount of knowledge in your long-term memory. Even if we can “google” the information, imagine the effort and time required to understand a text on the history of New France if we have no idea who Samuel de Champlain, the Hurons and the Iroquois are. . To put it in a vocabulary specific to cognitive science, our working memory would quickly become overloaded.
Second, critical thinking can only be exercised using our general knowledge. With fellow teachers, we asked ChatGPT to produce a historic rally in Quebec City. The tool being very efficient, it offered us in a few seconds a route with questions to which we had to answer. What a great tool for teachers! The only problem is that ChatGPT suggested we climb Mount Royal and photograph the cross that sits at its summit. As we know, this cross is located more than 200 km from Quebec… It is therefore thanks to our previous knowledge that we raised our eyebrows when reading the proposed route: it is not thanks to vague digital education skills .
Third, although it is true that we can quickly “google” information, we still need to know that this knowledge exists. To put it simply, on the Internet you can find what you are looking for. The richer and broader our knowledge network, the more effectively we can search.
In short, not only is the acquisition of knowledge not an outdated exercise in the era of generative AI, but it is actually necessary to make optimal use of these new technologies.