Toward the Growth of Personal Paideia: New Potential in the Post-COVID Era
Jonathan Doner
Doner (EPAT, 2018) argued for the possibility of individualized educational systems as a means for the development of personal excellence within individually relevant content domains. Consequences of the COVID pandemic have given new meaning and urgency to the development of this perspective. In the classic model of the growth of educational excellence (Paideia), progress is imaged as a ladder. The structure, content, and purpose of each individual rung are the predetermined courses and curricula of modern education. Students fill these spaces and thereby climb the ladder toward a predetermined form of Paideia. The COVID pandemic, with its closures, home quarantining, and online classes proved educationally remarkable in both an encouraging and self-referential manner. On the positive side, educational systems world-wide were able to use technology to maintain the educational process within the home to a degree that would have been unimaginable just ten years before. Self-referentially, the experience made educators, students, and public alike aware of how far we still must go. This cognizance clarifies and strengthens the value of individualized instruction. The present paper outlines the philosophical basis and functional core of future systems of individualized instruction. These systems will be based in the operation of artificially intelligent tutor advocates capable of using the student’s interests, desires, history, and experience in the design, presentation, and evaluation of individualized educational experiences. Such systems will be extraordinary in their complete focus on the growth and development of person-centered paths of Paideia.
| Bio: Jonathan Doner is a theoretical psychologist and digital artist. His work is concerned with the origin and nature of intelligence and the phenomenology of religious experience. |