The Importance of a Well-Rounded Education in Today's Complex World
What should we learn in the Age of AI ?
In a world of staggering complexity, it is evident that a solid education remains the most reliable tool for navigating the tumultuous ocean of life and its unpredictable storms. While professional training is indispensable, especially in an era of rapid technological advancements and artificial intelligence, my focus here is on the education of the individual as a citizen. This is crucial in a world where political, economic, social, and environmental challenges are immense.
What kind of civic and intellectual education should an "honest person" acquire or prescribe to their children, given the vast ocean of available knowledge, the wisdom of past civilizations, spiritual teachings, and the testimonies of illustrious figures? The answer is inherently subjective, but I believe that technical mastery alone is not enough to infuse meaning. Only a solid general culture can provide the foundation for the deep reflection that the quest for meaning demands.
The ideal intellectual education is shaped throughout life, although its foundations are laid in childhood and early adulthood. I will not dwell on the transmission of fundamental skills such as reading, writing, language, and arithmetic, without which no edifice of knowledge can stand.
Education should rest on the following four pillars:
The Art of Communication: Mastery of languages, rhetoric, dialectics, and the ethics of understanding.
The Art of Reasoning: Mastery of logic, the study of the nature of knowledge (epistemology, philosophy of science), its limits and blind spots (error, illusion, and uncertainty), particularly through cognitive sciences and philosophy.
The Study of the Fundamental Laws of the Physical World: Mathematics, physics, chemistry, life sciences, earth and climate sciences, astronomy, the study of their history, and their technological applications.
The Study of the Individual and Human Societies: Psychology, sociology, ethnology, anthropology, history and its philosophy, the lives and testimonies of great figures (notably through anthologies), moral and political sciences, economic sciences, legal systems, organizational and management sciences, philosophical, moral, and ethical systems, civilizations and cultures, spiritual and religious systems and their philosophy.
Conclusion
A well-formed mind is first and foremost a generalist mind aspiring to virtues, in line with the Enlightenment ideal of the highly virtuous encyclopedic spirit. No wisdom can be built without a solid general culture as its foundation: "Only the wise constantly keep the whole in mind, never forget the world, think and act in relation to the cosmos" (Bernard Groethuysen).
However, one does not need to be a professional intellectual or an exceptional scholar to strive for this ideal. It is enough to never stop cultivating one's curiosity and moral rigor. After all, a well-made head is better than a well-filled one (Montaigne).
Adapted from an article I've originally published in the Ideas section of french newspaper "Les Echos" : https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/quelle-instruction-pour-lhonnete-homme-du-xxie-siecle-1011709