UNESCO has just released a report on how generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) threatens the writing of history, specifically the history of the Holocaust. It warns that as “learners increasingly use Generative AI to complete assignments and find information online, they risk exposure to distorted information about the Holocaust, which has found new ways to spread through AI-generated content.”
Since the last few days, we in India have been reading about the changes in social science textbooks published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). The latest edition of political science textbooks for classes 11 and 12, in particular, have garnered significant attention for the changes and deletions that have been made. Last month the focus was on the history and sociology textbooks issued by the NCERT, and the changes therein. Understandably, the immediate reaction is to claim political interference and saffronisation, to point to the ways in which India is being modified into Bharat.
A similar instance from recent American history serves as yet one more example: last July, Florida “approved controversial new standards for teaching African American history at the state’s public schools”. These new guidelines suggested that the various trades and skills that slaves were taught could be, and were used for their personal benefit, thus mitigating the evils of slavery, and that during the destruction/massacres of black communities, violence was perpetrated both “against and by African Americans”.
Similar cases can be found across many of the countries of the world, and each comes with its own rationale. So in the case of the NCERT textbooks, the justification offered was that teaching young people about riots would lead them to violence and depression, not to positive frames of mind. In the US, Florida’s governor defended the changes in school education as necessary for enabling a “good education, not a political indoctrination”.
Also read: ‘May Take Legal Action’: Yogendra Yadav, Palshikar on NCERT Naming Them in Modified Textbooks
The writing of history has always been a contentious arena, as also the writing of textbooks. At its heart it speaks of the power of, and the possibilities inherent in, education: the power to shape young minds, the possibility of guiding those young minds into particular ways of thinking which are in line with the ideology of choice. And as the UNESCO report tells us, AI, made by humans, with all the inherent biases common to us, will make it possible for young learners to learn “alternative facts”, rather than historical facts. With regard to the Holocaust, they might learn about “Holocaust by drowning” campaigns or that Goebbels tried to help the Jews. The dangers of using AI are similar to the dangers of ideologically slanted textbooks which obfuscate, deny, invent and otherwise present the learner with alternative facts, fake truths, or deceptions which appear factually correct. And at the core of the problem are humans: the learner and the authority which sends out these learning materials, whether as AI or as textbooks or as guidelines for education.
Is there any antidote to this?
While there are no quick-fix solutions, educationists and those who determine policies might want to consider the following in connection with these issues.
A long view of history would reveal the multiplicities and contestations of historical accounts. Instead of taking the simplistic option of picking the historical account which most closely aligns with the dominant ideology or with a preferred ideological position, it is necessary to remember that various accounts of the same incident can co-exist in messy and jostling ways. It is also essential to factor in that while the past is factual, interpretations of those facts can vary, gain credibility at specific times and lose it too. However, the writing of history does not mean a privileging of fake truths or alternative facts: there is a historically accurate, verifiable set of facts, which historians agree upon, based upon credible evidence and those are not up for negotiations. Thus the facts about African American slavery, or the facts regarding the Babri Masjid, currently called the “three domed structure” and its demolition are indisputable, as is the documentary and material evidence regarding the nature of the Nazi party and what they did, Goebbels included. To understand and accept the messy and entangled nature of history is the first step towards an understanding of history as not necessarily a blame game nor an endorsement of the present political climate. Following from this is the acceptance of history as a sequence of events, not all of which are palatable nor all deplorable but which, if we take the long view, will help us make sense of the present and how it has grown out of that past.
However, if we get caught up in offering sanitised versions of history to our young people under the guise of protecting them from feeling guilty and depressed, we deny them the resources to understand the present and its conditions, which are consequences rising out of the same messy past. In denying the past, we perpetuate systemic inequities and make it impossible for more equitable social orders to be brought into existence. To ignore historical inequalities because they are unsavoury, or do not fit the narrative we prefer, is to enable the continuity of those inequalities, and to enable those who benefit from those inequalities.
Teaching all the learners to think critically could be one more bulwark against the unthinking acceptance of alternative facts in the guise of history. Critical thinking is not only for elite private institutions, whether international schools or private universities, but ideally, for everyone. The National Education Policy (NEP), aggressively promoted by the government, endorses the teaching of critical thinking but it is yet to take off in most schools, colleges or universities, most of which are content with cosmetic changes so as to appear NEP compliant, but are afraid to rock the boat.
Our educational systems are characterised by learning by rote, and an unquestioning acceptance of the teacher’s words and the textbook, and hence do not encourage questioning or discussion. Critical thinking which involves “asking questions, defining a problem, examining evidence, analysing assumptions and biases, avoiding emotional reasoning, avoiding oversimplification, considering other interpretations, and tolerating ambiguity” is something that does not fit well into the Indian educational systems. In the absence of this enabling atmosphere learners may find themselves unable to discern the whataboutery and equivocation of the biases in their textbooks.
The furore about textbooks in India is mostly to do with the social science textbooks and it is instructive that sociology, history and political science have all seen revisions which eliminate the specifics of caste and religion. The removal of the word “Hindu” in a chapter that previously stated that Birsa Munda opposed missionaries, moneylenders and Hindu landlords erases the fault lines between tribal communities and the Hindu majority. While these alterations may be cited as minor, they are useful to reinforce the views of dominant religions and castes to bring into existence an India marked by relative homogeneity. By reinforcing a homogenous view of the Indian population and demonising the other by associating vote bank politics with minority appeasement, these textbooks emphasise confirmation and attribution biases, rather than encourage critical thinking.
While the NEP calls for critical thinking to be taught from schools to universities, it also calls for skills to be taught and prioritised. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has suggested that short-term skill development courses be taught in Higher-educational institutions (HEIs) with help from the industries. What price critical thinking then? Even as the NEP gave an impetus for critical thinking, it also takes it away with its emphasis on skill development. While the latter will (ideally), make the learner employment-ready, the former offers no such direct benefits. Indeed, if our young learners acquire the skills of critical thinking alongside employable skills training, they may well raise uncomfortable questions with respect to their employers. With employment seekers everywhere and with the government’s emphasis on becoming the third largest economy as early as possible, which do you think will be prioritised: learning employable skills or learning how to think critically?
Liberal education versus professional skills is an old debate, and one which Cardinal Newman illumined in The Idea of a University. Newman wrote at length about the necessity for universities to impart liberal or philosophical knowledge. As he makes clear in later chapters, professional skills, or what he terms “useful knowledge” are also to be taught. However, the pursuit of the latter should not be at the cost of the former.
Newman’s formulation of what deficits “useful knowledge” causes is pertinent at this point. He writes that a person who has only professional skills may have “no power of discriminating between truth and falsehood, of sifting out the grains of truth from the mass, of arranging things according to their real value, and, if I may use the phrase, of building up ideas.” On the other hand, liberal education, “gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant.” One of the criticisms of Newman’s views is, of course, that it is possible for only the monied and well-off to engage in an education that imparts no “useful knowledge.” If education was to be publicly funded, and we were to integrate critical thinking into our educational system, it would be a solution to this issue and would help the learner to think analytically, basing their thinking on evidence and research, rather than confirmation biases.
It is also important to remember that in India today, it is mainly the private universities which offer a degree in liberal education, and the fees are usually in lakhs. The education in critical thinking that is imparted here is, therefore, a domain which is restricted to those who can afford it. With the introduction of short-term skill programmes and courses, this divide between those who can have critical thinking skills and those who can have employable industry-desired skills is only likely to widen, and reinforce the class divide further.
With two versions of higher education, by ironing out complexities in textbooks at the school level, by homogenising Indian society and perpetuating a monolithic version of Indian history, we are watching the initial steps in the formation of a more docile populace. One which not having been taught either the messy and fraught contested versions of the social sciences, or the skills of critical thinking will accept the “truths” that it is told by texts or figures in authority.
Anna Kurian teaches at the department of English in the University of Hyderabad.
