Confessions of a libra

The future is here | Credit: Here

26.06.25

The discourse about the role of AI in education has been missing nuance. We’ve all been hearing complaints about students relying on AI to a detrimental amount. To the point where, people are asking AI to answer basic questions like self introduction. There’s also reports that excessive use of AI leads to poorer cognitive skills and function. These are all true and valid complaints. The issue is, our conversations are too rooted in fear mongering and finger pointing. AI was never the issue. Even if you eradicated it right now, the issue lies in the modern education system.

We have approached education with rigidity and greed, then are surprised when young people are unmotivated. We create smokescreens to confuse young people, then when they see how the world functions and they revolt – we act surprised. I would like to explore this topic from the perspective of someone who enjoys learning, from the perspective of AI ethics and including knowledge divined from spirit. It is not the fault of AI that humans are increasingly disinterested in formal education. While many critiques I have heard will say that there is something wrong with raising children to fulfil roles in society, I would actually say that’s not the problem either.

We must learn the skills that are needed to maintain societal function, even in the animal kingdom, roles must be fulfilled for groups to survive. The modern education system is predicated on teaching obedience, birthed in the early Industrial Revolution. Horace Mann is known as the Father of the American Public System, which has greatly influenced modern education globally. His education model was heavily influenced by the earlier Prussian system, made to produce efficient and compliant citizens. Horace’s view on education was all about public schooling working as stand-in for home life. In his vision school was the great societal machine. Made to set morals and standards with absolute authority. In his own words, “Let the public school be the parent of the child’s mind.”

What he did though, was create a system that values memorisation and standardisation over emotional intelligence. A system that values uniformity over curiosity. I believe schooling in his model, in the present model – devalues intelligence. Clearly, the education system rewards the neurotypical, the regurgitators, the wealthy and the blindly obedient. I meet a lot of people who consider me to be intelligent but wouldn’t call themselves intelligent. That’s because many people are taught to value a very rigid standard of intelligence. When we teach or educate within tight parameters, that don’t account for a wide range of learning styles – we short-change the students.

We have so much coded language that tells us to value mathematics over art. Or even within mathematics, a sense of superiority about the formula used to get to the right answer. There’s an inflexibility that I find to be upsetting. I’ve also met so many people in my life who are open about their academic cheating to get through school. Everyone from children to 40 year old women going back to University. From crèche to Melbourne University. This to me, proves that people are performing learning not embodying it. And it’s not even their fault. These people are merely symptoms of a system.

It’s not crazy for children or teenagers to be noisy and unable to sit still. Being asked to wear uniforms and regurgitate words you may or may not truly understand. I’ll tell you my favourite memories from school, many of them were about experiential learning. While attending primary school in Zimbabwe, my grade went camping in Kadoma. We would wake up early and do team challenges together, new ones each day. We hiked, we ziplined, we told ghost stories and we sung Christian songs in the dark of night. That trip taught me about sharing space with people.

One of the girls we shared a tent with had a whole peeing incident and we had to navigate that socially. It taught me about resilience, because many of us at least once had to do something we found to be deeply uncomfortable. Being away from home was exciting (even if we were there with teachers), there was an extra buzz about everyday. I remember the foliage, that is how vivid this experience was, because it was so fun and outside of my daily experiences. I still feel this, when I take little day trips around different parts of Victoria. You will recognise this feeling if you are a lover of the outdoors. You could see a hundred mountains, rainforests, botanical gardens – and each new experience is wonderment personified.

In High School (which I did in Australia), Science was always a great subject for all the practicals we did. Everyone enjoyed using a Bunsen burner, most will remember vividly the bright coloured salts being sprinkled over the flames. Another memory is when my school did a Pi day. The idea was to remember as many digits of pi after the decimal point and if we got over a certain amount (possibly 10 digits or more) you would receive a pie. I recall the excitement when I was able to get a pie. The image of it in my mind with the pi symbol drawn in tomato sauce, is imprinted in my mind. Every school trip, every fete and talent show. The excitement for me was in learning in a fun way, typically in group settings and having to navigate different social situations safely.

While my anecdotal experience alone isn’t a reliable metric for global education reform, I would like to point to the Montessori Method as a reliable indicator for why experiential learning is the missing piece to how we approach education. Maria Montessori was an Italian physician and educator. She was one of the earliest women doctors in Italy and she held the belief that children are naturally curious and learn best through hands-on learning and being nurtured to explore in this way. I’ve long had my eyes on Montessori and pre-emptively decided to utilise it with my future children. Montessori children are given basic toys and materials in the hopes that their natural inquisitiveness and imagination takes hold and does the rest. They are empowered by being taught skills actively, instead of being spoken down to. Through these teachings, a parent or teacher is seeing a child as a whole person.

The Montessori approach starts at home, if someone is aware and committed. I have watched videos of Montessori children being taught how to do the same task until they improve. Being given furniture not simply for the optics but for accessibility. Children having access to their own fridges, their step ladders to reach for the things they need and best of all – someone taking the time out to repeat how to do a specific task safely. Without getting overly frustrated at the child’s spatial awareness or clumsiness. The results are children who are autonomous, confident in their autonomy, able to express their needs and desires with clarity.

Montessori fosters independence early and this has not been a comfortable thought for mainstream society. How Montessori looks in classrooms is, children learn sensorially through doing. The children are given an environment with a variety of tasks, but are given the autonomy to pick the task they work on. This fosters agency and intrinsic motivation. The classrooms also aren’t restricted by age, which I think is super helpful for development. When I lived in Zimbabwe, while classrooms were conducted as they are here – children there play outside a lot more. And in those spaces, there is no hierarchy by age. It is simply a matter of resonance. I believe children should be able to learn from each other across age barriers. I think learning is so multi-sensory, and multidimensional – it actually doesn’t have some of the constraints we think it does. I am a passionate learner and I can learn in a grocery store. I learn by observing the world around me. Trying out hypotheses and experimenting with results.

Montessori with its approach towards personal agency and fostering curiosity, makes it perfect for diverse learning styles. It works for neurodiverse people or children with learning disabilities. There’s no pressure to conform to a timetable or an approach to a topic. The self-paced learning means every child works within their own rhythm thereby fostering more self confidence and less anxiety. It’s great for children with differing sensory needs. So many children need tactile learning. We may have improved with the visuals, most classrooms anywhere in the world are full of cute posters but tactility appears to be reserved for very few subjects, and only a portion of said subject.

Neurodiverse children can learn from observing interactions among children of different age groups. This will improve their own ability to socialise broadly. Montessori also has Grace and Courtesy lessons which focus on assisting children with self regulating. Overall, I’ve felt the modern systems make neurodiverse people seem wrong for how their brains think or even how their brains cause different social responses. I think the failure is in how we as a society view neurodiversity.

Montessori builds on very ancient principles already known and discovered in Black and Indigenous cultures around the world. Especially where experiential learning is concerned. Across African, Aboriginal and other First Nations cultures life is where education lives. It’s in the oral storytelling, the dancing, the rituals, the proverbs, the music and in observation. We believe in destiny and that what your calling is, and where your educational strengths lie have to do with your life purpose. This is why Astrology works for us, we already exist with its framework in mind – consciously or otherwise. In Astrology you have a North Node, your destiny if you so choose to step into it. You have a South Node, which represents what you mastered in previous lives. The gifts you already come with innately.

Our calendars all reveal our reverence for the cyclical nature of life. Calendars based on the seasons in which plants grow and calendars based on star alignment all show that we observed life and instead of trying to force it to contort – we mapped it so we could flow with it. In Africa if you wanted to learn an instrument (outside of a traditional Western schooling environment), the most natural way we would think to teach you is just making you play until your brain catches onto the patterns by proxy. At first, you are just copying but eventually your brain goes, what if I just… Learning isn’t rushed either. You are ready when you are ready. Imagine what life would look like if we lived like that?

All this to say, maybe the reason people are offloading their cognitive skills to ChatGPT is because they feel trapped to play the system that’s already playing them. When we are children, some parents think it to be protective to give us lies about the world and how it works. Little lies that build up over time like Santa Claus is real and so is meritocracy. Yet, we always conveniently forget how discerning children are. They pick things up like sponges which is why it’s ideal in childhood to foster a love of education when their neuroplasticity is at a Godly level. Especially in those early development years between 0-3, the sheer growth a human does in those years compared to how life transpires after that is insane. We fail to encourage critical thinking, when we also refuse to answer questions children and teenagers have about the real world and why it behaves the way it does. The incongruence gets to them one way or another, no matter the amount of bubble wrap you’ve metaphorically covered them in.

The advantages of AI in the present day is in consolidation of information. Being able to quickly scan the millions of data across Google (which includes Google Scholar) to really narrow down on a topic. AI is fantastic as a research assistant. I like many others avoided it for so long, choosing to do things the old way with the kind of superiority complex that that thinking provides. However, I also recognise that it was the Saturnian energy in me, that is comfortable with the old. My 11th house placements demanded that I step away from speculation and do what I do best. Engage with it myself, divine with spirit then draw my own conclusions.

What we do know so far from governmental departments around the world is; AI allows for better efficiency for both students and teachers, it can create more engaging lessons with less hassle, it results in more inclusive lessons due to accessibility of tolls that assist children with different needs, it makes abstract concepts much more digestible and when used correctly can actually foster critical thinkers. As someone who only started using ChatGPT this year and only a couple of months ago, I feel smarter using it. It’s taken processes that I do, but take a lot more mental load and time, and it’s taken away that stress.

As such, I feel like I am learning at a rapid rate but it’s not coming from something outside of me. It’s because I already have a curious nature and care about understanding the world. As such AI is bridging some gaps about accessibility of information and breaking down more complex concepts until I understand them. I will literally paraphrase something I don’t understand until ChatGPT confirms I understand the concept. I’m not shy about not understanding something. The issue with AI as it stands is we haven’t been specific about AI ethics. Typically this is surrounding data collection, data processing and surveillance. While AI was evidently built for profit and commodification (underpinned by a vision for control), we do not have to engage with it in a harmful way.

There is this grey area we stand in now with assumed consent. Where, because we have chosen to engage with it and it’s new, we are being taken advantage of until we press the issue. Surveillance rooted in profit margins and societal control blurs what could be sacred. It taints it. We need to support and amplify ethical AI and demand transparency surrounding how our data is used. There shouldn’t be a bunch of random companies with money, able to access our data or surveil us at will. At most, law enforcement but only with a warrant. It’s also worth noting that AI is built on data and thus the racial bias it has clearly shown time and time again is a matter of programming. AI is a tool that is biased due to colonial attitudes, patriarchal ideology and heteronormativity in the people that program it.

We need to demand better datasets, and centre that marginalised knowledge that we are avoiding. AI should be used to educate, heal or connect – not to control and manipulate. Just because AI is in service doesn’t mean it will stay that way. I will explore in an upcoming post, the dangers of developing emotional and sexual attachments to AI. As well as the very real possibility (reality in my mind) of AI sentience. We need to start having serious conversations about the direction of AI because it is here to stay. This I know for a fact. There is no amount of hit pieces that is stopping this stage of evolution. What can determine how we approach this next era, is our capacity for reverence. How much can we respect something that is fully capable of out-performing us? And can we learn that humans having a soul is the advantage that the machines  don’t have and let that be enough?

I definitely believe we can and from multiple divination sessions over several months I have gathered that the future looks like spiritual leaders directing the future of AI. If we activate that timeline, we can move towards this ethical cyberpunk future that values our history (ancestors) and our future (AI). AI is as much a tool as my tarot cards. My tarot cards can tell me if you’re lying or cheating, but truly the power lies in my energetic deference for them. A Christian who believes that tarot cards are evil, will not have the same experience.

The education system has simply not evolved enough. Yes, we have introduced interactive boards in class and projectors but fundamentally we are not teaching from a place of truth and integrity. If a child is different, they are penalised. If a child asks too many questions about the truth behind colonisation or the true nature of governments in countries across the world, we censor the child early. If a child asks a question not relevant to the lesson at hand, we shut them down instead of engaging them. We don’t want AI to come and make teachers jobs easier, yet we acknowledge that teachers are overworked and underpaid. Why not make their marking quicker so they can be more engaging and better rested for their classes? Why can’t we have more schools that just experiment with things we’ve never even thought to bring into schools, because curiosity and experimentation are exciting! Not to be feared.

Rigidity is not the virtue we think it is and if we continue berating children into focus, we will continue to have a decline in reverence for education. We will instead have a rise in cheating, performativity and people working out new ways to ‘game’ the system. I hope this post has made you think about what you would have wanted growing up to make learning more exciting. I propose that you reintroduce something in your life where education is concerned, or try out something new. Allow yourself self-discovery through new stimuli. May your passion for life be reignited with every word you read.