Why Education Matters More than Ever

In an era of increasing polarization across societies worldwide, the challenge of separating truth from falsehood has become more urgent than ever. As nations grapple with complex social and political issues, we frequently see charges of misinformation and disinformation flying between opposing groups and ideological camps.

Why have communities around the world become so divided about fundamental questions of truth and falsehood? How can we have respectful discussions about different viewpoints, then move forward with policy decisions, when we can’t even agree on the underlying facts? And will the dawn of the AI era make things even worse?

For anybody who has devoted their career to education, the current state of public discourse is both a rebuke and an opportunity. A rebuke because educators have done too little to fulfill their fundamental role of teaching students to think critically. An opportunity because it’s never too late for us to step back, to remind ourselves of the principles we rely on to separate fact from fiction, and to be bolder about ensuring that we equip students with the skills they need to navigate an information-packed world effectively. This challenge is amplified when the democratization of data collection and analysis has triggered a cultural shift. Paradoxically, the demand for more measurements creates both legitimate data-driven disciplines and their evil twin: a wilderness of dubious statistics and unverifiable claims. As we all contend with information overload, no wonder confusion abounds.

In an age when generative AI can be used to craft everything from deep fakes to seemingly factual footnotes that were actually hallucinated, it’s completely understandable that so many people blame the fast-spreading technology itself for the rise of disinformation. But in fact, the same core principles that have made higher education a critical path in seeking the truth can also be deployed to ensure that we use AI responsibly. Universal access to knowledge must not be confused with universal authority to produce it. The authentic development of expertise through higher education remains crucial to distinguishing credible scholarship from the noise of popular opinion.

Here’s what I mean. Yes, AI is a tool that can be abused to promote disinformation, whether in politics or many other areas. But ensuring individuals have critical thinking skills that govern how they receive information, and how they evaluate its quality, has become an imperative when technology is reshaping the production and flow of knowledge. A random video on TikTok may or may not be a valuable source of data and analysis on a controversial topic. An AI assistant that has been trained using peer-reviewed material by scientists from thousands of universities, then asked questions using well-designed prompts, is far more likely to deliver reliable information. The widespread concern about AI’s fallibility—its hallucinations, errors, and biases—overlooks humanity’s own imperfections. Rather than demanding infallibility from AI, we should acknowledge both human and machine limitations while developing the critical thinking skills needed to navigate an increasingly complex information landscape.

Classrooms are a great place to empower students to evaluate information thoughtfully. That includes using AI as a force-multiplier to do routine analytical and fact-gathering tasks much more efficiently. At the same time, it means teaching students to triangulate claims they come across in the academic world, the media, and daily life. Separating fact from fiction, or just evaluating the likely credibility of a claim, requires asking basic questions: Who said that? Where did they say it? How do they say it? How is it supported? This approach is also used in a method known as “the three Vs,” designed to equip students to critique an AI output: validation, verification, and veracity. The answers will go a long way toward telling students how much confidence they should have in an assertion.

It all goes back to the Enlightenment project of establishing the truth through reasoned analysis and close scrutiny of the evidence. Of course, not every claim falls into an easy black or white category of ironclad truth or utter implausibility. But the heart of the tradition associated with American liberal arts education is what Brookings Institution author Jonathan Rauch calls “The Constitution of Knowledge.” In a book with that title, he traces our social system for assessing the truth to the developments of liberal democracy and science in the eighteenth century. Today’s marketplace of ideas, he writes, relies on “a dense network of norms and rules, like truthfulness and fact-checking; and they depend on the expertise of professionals, like peer reviewers and editors - and the entire system relies on a foundation of values: a shared understanding that there are right and wrong ways to make knowledge.”

Any individual or organization devoted to teaching and learning should build their intellectual framework on these values and teach students to reason accordingly. Yes, critical thinking will be crucial to making the best use of AI and ensuring that we avoid its pitfalls. But educators need to be vocal about how and why we seek and establish the truth for its own sake. After all, that’s what education is all about - and our efforts are needed now more than ever.