Galatea 2.0

 

Pygmalion by Jean-Baptiste Regnault, 1786, Musée National du Château et des Trianons

The First AI Dating Service?

The Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C. -- 17 A.D.) tells the story of the sculptor Pygmalion in Book X of his Metamorphoses.  Appalled by the immoral behavior of the women of Cyprus, Pygmalion resolved not to marry, but ended up sculpting a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it.  Enter Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, and before you know it, the statue came to life, and the two lived happily ever after.

Although Ovid does not give a name to the statue, later sources called her Galatea, and the story has been unendingly popular.  Just a quick glance at Wikipedia will give you an overwhelming list of poems and plays and artwork that the story has inspired.  Humans have long been fascinated with the idea of creating the perfect version of our own kind, and it would seem we still are.

Galatea and The Awkward Teen

My good friend and colleague Jason recently shared with some of us an article from the website Ditch That Textbook called "Protecting Kids from Unhealthy AI Relationships."  You must read it if you have any interaction with young people.  I won't go into the details here because you really should read the article itself.  Suffice it to say that Galatea 2.0 is here, and the dangers are real, so real in fact that they include the death of one young teen.

Some remember their teen years with fondness, and others would not revisit them with an all-expenses-paid trip through the space-time continuum.  Most of us, however, can recall at least some moments of social awkwardness during those times and we can imagine how powerful the pull would have been to have an AI friend who was always there for us, always available for a talk about anything, and always willing to take us as we were without a trace of judgment.  In fact, the idea of such a friend may be a strong pull for adults.  How much more would it be for the young person struggling to find his or her way in the world?

Real People

I am not Chicken Little.  I am not running around while frantically screaming, "The sky is falling!"  Nor am I a Luddite or technophobe.  Yet there is a profound, important difference between the interactions human beings have with each other and those they have with chatbots and the like, and it is vitally important that adults who have any responsibility for the care and development of young people nurture their relationships with real people.

Let's start with parents.  We cannot shove a device into the hands of our children so that we are then free to do the things we want.  The first relationships children develop are with their parents, but if their parents are presently absent, which is to say they are in the same room yet miles away in their own minds, children quickly learn what is important and that they are not it.  Many times I had to put off until later, or never, things I really wanted to do when our children were at home.  That was simply part of the job of being a parent.  I have written before that my mom believed strongly in looking children in the eye and giving them your full attention.  She knew how important it was for a child to feel important.

Now let's move on to teachers.  As all educators know, "ain't no tired like teacher tired, 'cause teacher tired don't stop."  If there is an academically sound reason to use technology, then we should use it, but if we bring out Kahoot or Blooket merely because we are exhausted enough to convince ourselves of their pedagogical value, then we have indeed taught something, but perhaps not what we intended.  Nothing can replace the direct, human-to-human interaction between teachers and students either for depth of academic engagement or richness of social development.  As I say so often, education is a distinctly human endeavor, and we do not serve well the humans in our charge when we farm them out to non-humans.

A Limited Menu

Those restaurants that serve the most carefully prepared foods are typically those that have few items on the menu.  They devote their time and resources to offering the best, not the most.  If a restaurant offers everything from rack of lamb to hotdogs with foie gras and fried mozzarella sticks on the side, it is less likely that any of the dishes will be done to perfection.

I had to say that because I want to conclude by advocating for extracurricular activities for children, yet I am in no way calling for additional busyness.  In fact, our children are often involved in far too many activities, but that is a topic for another essay.  Here I want merely to say that children do need to be involved with other, real human beings, and that this often happens well when they participate in sports, join music or drama programs, or become involved in extracurricular clubs.  When used properly, these opportunities are not merely places to warehouse young people after school and before bedtime.  They can be avenues through which they develop meaningful, human relationships, the kind that will last longer and contribute to richer life than can be hoped for with Galatea 2.0.

The Thrill of Connections

 

What do a Diet Coke and a stack of student work to be graded have to do with each other?  They both represent the unbridled thrill of making connections.

Hundreds of Letters

One of the perks of the job, at least for me, is having the opportunity to write letters of recommendation for students.  I have written close to four hundred so far and for everything ranging from jobs to scholarships to university acceptance.  I consider it a perk of the job because it allows me to make a connection between a student and the world beyond the school.  The letter of recommendation allows me to brag a bit on students I have come to know well and in whom I see so many wonderful talents that I cannot help but be excited to introduce them to others in the hope that they, too, will see what I see and help those students on the next part of their journey.

It is always a joy when students tell me how things turned out...whether they were offered the job, received the scholarship, or were accepted into the university of their dreams.  Such was the case recently when one senior came to tell me that she had been accepted into the top university on her list.  I was nearly as excited as she was and added her name, university, and intended major to the list on our dry-erase board.  She then gave me a beautiful, hand-written thank you note and a 20-ounce bottle of Diet Coke, which I saved until this afternoon to enjoy while doing some work.  The drink is delightful, and I will treasure the note, but the biggest thrill was in helping connect this student with the next institution on her educational adventure.

Philosophy and Family

Because I love connections, I experience deep joy every year when my Latin III students read the writings of the ancient Stoic philosopher Seneca.  After translating and discussing selections from his epistles, they must compose a philosophical letter of their own in which they offer advice as he did to his friend Lucilius.  They must also submit a paper in which they respond to various prompts that allow them to reflect on what they have read and explore how this ancient wisdom might be applied in their own lives.

There is no point in my trying to convey just how rich most of the writings of these students are.  This blog post would turn into a small book of its own were I to include every paragraph of well written and well thought reflections by these students, and to select only a few would be nearly impossible.  Should I include the one in which a student shared with her mother Seneca's wisdom about not burdening yourself with work while on vacation, a bit of wisdom her mother accepted and that allowed the family to have a more pleasant time away from home?  Should I include the advice that two students wrote to their own future children, advice based on the writings of a philosopher twenty-one centuries in their past?  It would seem unfair not to include all the ways in which students wrote of their own, significant transformations as they have taken charge of their lives and the challenges in them by applying the thoughts of this famous Stoic.

But Wait! There's More!

If stories like these inspire you and cause you to remember that there can be true joy in teaching, if they help you to see beyond the pressures of the daily classroom, keep an eye out for my book The Golden Waffle Principle:  Finding Meaning in Teaching, which comes out in December.  Watch stevenrperkins.com and follow @stevenrperk on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for lots of great things leading up to its release and great content once it comes out.  Until then, I look forward to seeing you on the shared journey of discovery that is education.

My New Book on Education

There is a reason I have not been blogging much lately.  In fact, my previous post came out exactly seven months ago, so it is time for me to share with readers what is going on.

Writing a Book

I remember telling the Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives at the 2014 Teacher of the Year banquet that I was not interested in an award that would sit on a shelf.  If being named INTOY would open doors for me to do more for students and the education profession, then so much the better, and I am pleased to say that it has.

2024 marks the tenth anniversary of my receiving that honor, and a lot has happened over those ten years.  During that time I have been blessed to work with colleagues from across the United States and beyond, to speak at numerous events, and to continue writing.  There were academic articles, the second edition of Latin For Dummies with my friend Clifford Hull, and this blog.  Along the way we experienced a global pandemic, I retired from public education, and I began teaching at a Catholic high school.  Now it seems time to acknowledge some of that in a formal way, and so I have been engaged in the process of writing a book, which took me away from regular blogging.  Hopefully the tradeoff will be worth it.

Looking Back to See the Future

I enjoy a good look through a picture album as much as the next person, but if this book were merely a retrospective or for that matter focused on me, it would have little appeal and would be akin to the dust-gathering trophies about which I am not particularly interested.  Instead, this book is a collection of essays drawn from thoughts and writings and conversations across the past decade.  Although it does make frequent reference to the past, such references are to the wisdom of the ages expressed in the poetry and philosophy and art that have inspired the human race for thousands of years, and this is done with the goal helping us see a better educational experience for our children.

We need to recapture the thrill and excitement that come from a grand vision of education.  Education is a supremely human endeavor.  It is conducted by human beings with human beings, and we were created for more than is often experienced in our schools today.  Yet there have been glimpses of that grand vision through the ages.  We have known what it meant to seek and to discover the true, the good, and the beautiful, and many of us do so even today, for the natural curiosity of a student, whether at age six or age sixty, if guided well, leads to life, and that is the true measure of education.

Sine Quibus Non

A sine qua non is something that is essential.  A literal translation from the Latin is, "without which not."  To make the expression more personal, I have restated it as sine quibus non, or "without whom not," and this book, coming out in December, is indeed a sine quibus non.  In it are some of my favorite people, such Homer and Plato, Cicero and Vergil, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine.  There are my own, wonderful teachers from Kindergarten through graduate school, all of whom find mention in the book, and there are many colleagues beside whom I have been so blessed to teach and with whom I have enjoyed countless scintillating conversations over the years, discussions so exciting that I was sure the very particles in the air around us had become electrified.

It is de rigueur to thank those without whom one could not have done a thing, but the worry is always that someone will be left out.  Please know that if you have ever been my teacher, my student, or my colleague, I am grateful for the time we have spent together on the shared journey of discovery that is education.  Here, now, I must name a very few.

I offer my deepest thanks to Ed Coleman, David McGinness, Kathy Nimmer, and Kate Smith for offering kind words to be used on the book jacket, and their full statements of support are within the book.  When I asked the girl who would become my wife for what would be our first date, I was well and truly surprised when she said she would go out with me.  The next word coming over the phone from my end after she said "yes" was "really?"  I had the same reaction when each of these extraordinary educators agreed to lend their name and approbation to this project.

Special thanks go to my dear friend Gary Abud, Jr.  We met when he was the 2014 Michigan Teacher of the Year and we have covered some solid ground together.  Not only am I grateful for his remarks on the book, but also for the sheer delight of working with him and his company CoGrounded to see it market.

I would not be a teacher were it not for so many of my family members who traveled the hallways of Indiana schools before me, and I talk about that in the book.  My dad died in 2009, but I was able to share with my mom that I was working on this book before she passed away late last year.  I can see traces of how they lived out their callings as teachers, and my dad as principal, every single day in my classes.

I am grateful to my children Austin and Olivia for allowing me to serve a calling even higher than that of teacher.  In particular, I must offer heartiest thanks to Austin for his work with CoGrounded and me on the cover of the book and the design of stevenrperkins.com.  There is no greater thrill than working on projects with one's own adult children.

Finally, I will conclude by expressing my deepest appreciation for my wife Melissa in the words that I used in my speech the night of the 2014 Indiana Teacher of the Year banquet.  "She's so conjunctive to my life and soul, that, as the star moves not but in his sphere, I could not but by her."  The Governor of Indiana and the Speaker of the House were most eager to ask me for the wording of what I said that night, for they thought it a fitting line to say to their own wives.  I confessed then as I do now that the words were not mine but Shakespeare's from Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7.  

Designing the Future

 

What is the role of design in the modern world?  Does it only apply to decorating your bedroom, or could it be about something more?  Industrial Design is a highly interdisciplinary field, and I recently had the opportunity to see some of the most recent designers who are about to shape how we interact with the world.

What Is Industrial Design?

Mine is the world of nouns and verbs, of poetry and philosophy, and specifically as these all played out two thousand years ago in ancient Greece and Rome.  When our son decided to major in Industrial Design at Purdue University, I had to go to the department website to see what it was all about.  That, of course, was but a first step, and over the years that my wife and I visited campus and saw what our son was doing, I began to gain a better understanding.

My first realization that our son's undergraduate program of study would not be like mine was when he took us to one of his classrooms during his freshman year.  My experience of collegiate study involved classrooms with desks and the main library on campus, especially in the 870 and 880 section of the ninth floor.  His was a workshop.  This would be a hands-on course of study, one that involved math, art, history, and much more.

 

He and his class would learn to sketch and ideate, design using the latest software, and then realize their ideas in wood and metal, plastic and cloth, and of course, 3-D printing.

Design Daze

Each year the senior class of the Industrial Design Department hosts a day-long event to showcase their work.  They fill a gallery in Yue Kong Pao Hall of Visual and Performing Arts with their work and present throughout the day in sessions in a nearby auditorium to an audience of industry professionals, their own ID professors, and delighted families and friends.

 

As I listened to these young designers share their creations, all of which had been created to address particular needs, from a variety of medical issues to safety concerns in sports, from advancements in military technology to better ways for us to interact with the natural world, several things became clear.  Design is about far more than merely making a product attractive.  The field of Industrial Design is about solving problems.  It is about listening to people and applying science and art and creativity to making their lives better.  As I work with my own students and talk with them about their dreams for the future, Industrial Design has become an area that I have shared with them and will continue to present as a possible course of study for those with the imagination to help design our future.

Special Note

I love talking with the parents of my students, but it was a treat like no other to be on the receiving end when Steve Visser, ID Professor and Program Coordinator, and Assistant Professor of ID Jung Joo Sohn both made it a point to talk with my wife and me about our son.  They knew him as more than a faceless student and spoke to his work and his preparedness for entering the world of Industrial Design.  Thanks to their efforts and all of the Purdue faculty, our son has enjoyed two internships during his undergraduate career and has been hired by Midwest Studios for a position he will begin after graduation.