Language & Life
The dawning of a new age of oracy
Artificial intelligence or 'authentic stupidity'*?
The goal of this website is to help me make sense of the things that I have spent much of my life thinking about, professionally and personally. "How can I know what I think until I see what I say?" as someone once wrote.
I've called this home page Language & Life because I've found that sensitivity to the nuances of language, and awareness of its powerful effects, tend to generate the most meaningful and lasting insights into our diverse and complex world.
I worry about standards of literacy and expression in our education system. I mean this in the broadest sense of the ability to read, listen, learn, write and speak in ways which are effective for different contexts, with or without the help of technology.
When I started to create this website in early 2023, ChatGPT had just been declared the latest 'game-changer' in large language models (LLMs). LLMs are the best known products of the branch of artificial intelligence known as 'generative AI'. There is now fierce competition between LLM providers, and their tools are getting stronger everyday. They are having a huge impact on the communicative evolution of our species, in particular:
how learning occurs
how knowledge is produced and authenticated
how power and influence are distributed
It is now very easy for any of us to answer any question and to produce plausible and eloquent textual answers, whilst conveniently by-passing the thinking stage. The answers are not always accurate or wise, but they will inevitably become more and more plausible and relied upon. As a result, the term literacy is being redefined. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that what we understand by the word literacy is being culturally renegotiated.
Another consequence of LLMs (in conjunction with other technologies such as voice-typing and automated voice generation) is that the distinction between literacy and its educational 'poor cousin' oracy is becoming blurred. The risk is that people read less effectively, whilst speaking/typing/copying/pasting more rapidly, causing a potential decline in quality, accuracy and understanding.
I explore some of the consequences of this trajectory towards a new age of oracy** in the website section "All the World's a Stage" - Securing Human Roles in an AI Future.
In education, our curriculum, assessment and teacher-training methods are terribly slow in adapting to these evolving aspects of our culture. This puts pressure on teachers to figure things out for themselves and to experiment. Some are resistant to change. Others embrace generative AI, not only to produce/adapt learning materials, but also to support the assessment of their pupils' needs and their output. But meaningful and equitable progress in the profession of teaching is hampered when the institutional systems of learning and assessment show no signs of evolving to accommodate the ways in which the world is changing.
Like any new technology, the worthy and aspirational goals of generative AI will be shaped, and potentially corrupted, by the demands of those investing in it. Or by those influencing its application in everyday life. For all the reasons above, leaders in all walks of life (especially in education) have a responsibility. That is: to provide adequate quality assurance processes and governance structures for the effective and ethical use of AI in the areas over which we have influence.
It seems likely that those with strong traditional literacy skills (including critical thinking) are more likely to thrive in an LLM world, and vice versa. So it is more important than ever that we do not fail our young people in these aspects of their education. Going further, to monitor the unintended consequences of AI, we must ensure that critical thinking and oral assessment are applied wherever and whenever we encourage the use of AI in the classroom.
Technology evolution is awesome. It can enlighten and empower, but it can also obscure, deceive and exclude. The authorial identity, reliability and integrity of what is published now seems more fragile and fluid than it did when I was young. Levels of trust in previously respected media brands (e.g. broadcasters and newspapers) seem to be declining, especially amongst the young.
Mistrust arises not necessarily because we are better informed. Nor is it because we are thinking more critically. It has more to do with the sheer volume of competing sources of stimuli. Unable to cope with the overwhelming number of options and opinions, we welcome the diversions created by clever and attractive design and/or by manipulative algorithms which feed our preferences. This occurs even if we suspect that our behaviour is becoming compulsive or addictive, or that our biases (conscious or unconscious) are being cynically exploited.
Enough doom and gloom. I'm more optimistic than the last two paragraphs might suggest, and as I move towards a more reflective stage in my career, I hope to make at least a tiny contribution to a more coherent, stable and equitable world.
If you feel that we might usefully share ideas or collaborate in some way, please don't be shy about reaching out. Send me an email or connect via LinkedIn, indicating that you've looked at this site.
Dr Jonathan (aka Joff) Wheeldon
Footnotes:
*Ben Elton's ironic AI antonym 'authentic stupidity' neatly expresses the risk caused by replacing skills such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence or plain old 'common sense', with a lazy or premature reliance on artificial intelligence.
**To understand more about the importance of oracy in education, link here to the excellent report of the Oracy Education Commission (October 2024)
Contents (overview)
My story
I cannot expect anyone to take any notice of what I write without sharing something of who I am.
This section is rather longer than I had originally intended, but I found the process of editing my life into some kind of coherent narrative quite enjoyable. Link here.
"All the world's a stage..." - securing human roles in an AI future
Over the past 15 years I've been asked for, or volunteered, advice to youngsters (pupils, nephews/nieces, godchildren, children of friends and colleagues), and I thought it would be good to try to capture some of what I've learned from those experiences.
It is primarily aimed at 17-25 year-olds who are uncertain or anxious about their futures. Also at their parents/carers, and at teachers with responsibilities for skills & careers. It contains activities to enable structured conversations and the development of plans of action. There is a particular emphasis on the blurring of the boundary between literacy and oracy and how we must encourage our youngsters (and our education system) to embrace and take advantage of the new age of oracy.
It is largely shaped by what I would like to have known when I was 17, so inevitably has some subjectivity. Whilst it's rather advanced for the average 17 year-old, I do think that anyone capable of going into Higher Education ought to be able to appreciate it to some extent.
"Unsex me here..." - an essay on language, gender and identity
This is a complex and contested topic. As a contribution to the long-awaited guidance from government, I reflect on the role played by teachers, especially English teachers, in making sense of this sensitive area of cultural evolution. It emphasises the need to promote generative dialogue and rigour in the way we speak and write about the challenges. Link here.
The education system
Book summaries: the site started life as a place to host the educational book summaries I wrote in early 2022. The selection is based on recommendations from colleagues and include my view of the implications of the books for those who have responsibility for educational strategy. People tell me they find the summaries very useful, so I intend to continue to produce them. Link here.
Educational reform (coming soon): this section will capture my perspective on the current state of the English education sector, largely informed by my time teaching and subsequently (since 2015) advising schools on governance, strategy, risk and technology. My hypothesis is that the education system is so 'stuck' because the reform debate rarely gets past the first hurdle of agreeing which problems we are trying to solve. I therefore aim to unpack the problems and focus on the choices and compromises.
Teaching (coming soon): In 2013 I took a career break to do a PGCE and I spent a couple of years teaching A-level English in a state 6th form college. My colleagues and pupils seemed to find my materials engaging, especially those on Shakespeare and Chaucer, so I intend to provide them here along with some insights about what it's like to start to teach later in life. In the meantime, some of my teaching experiences are contained in the My Story section, link here.
The cultural industries
I spent most of my career working in industries referred to as 'cultural': music, film, theatre, and publishing.
My research into the struggles of the cultural industries to adapt to the digital revolution has been published as a book: Patrons, Curators, Inventors & Thieves (Palgrave, 2014).
The intention is to help people understand why organisations and industries can be so resistant to change, and why copyright law might usefully be reformed.
It continues to be relevant and some updated summary extracts are included via the link above.