Abstract
Twenty years have elapsed since the publication of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (RBT) in 2001, which has established itself as a major tool for defining the objectives of educational programs worldwide. It is, however, high time to revisit the efficacy of RBT in defining educational objectives of the digital natives. The current article initiates a discussion on an entrepreneurial mode of education, which requires learners to venture beyond the paradigms of RBT. The article is meant to catalyze educational reforms in tune with the anticipated life and work spaces of the age of information and digitalization. It follows a visionary approach and project future scenarios, accounting for the rationale behind those predictions. The article concludes that the digital natives will have to develop a new set of skills that equip them to venture into a holistic and integrated thinking style, which it names as grey/fuzzy thinking and white/fractal thinking, respectively. The conclusions drawn in the article require further validations from field experiments. With those validations, the insights of this article could pave way for a radical transformation of education sector worldwide, bringing about an entrepreneurial paradigm shift in its conception and conduct.
Keywords
Introduction
According to Peter Drucker, in order to improve the performance of any institution one needs to define its objectives clearly and measure appropriate parameters that contributes to excellence (Drucker, 1954). Taxonomy of educational objectives with its measurement scheme originally defined by Benjamin S. Bloom and coworkers, was a huge leap towards a modern day outcome-based education (OBE). Widely used in the curriculum development, student and teacher assessment, accreditation of institutions providing education, and so on, Blooms’ taxonomy heralded a transformation in the conduct of education in the twentieth century by offering a scheme for classifying educational goals, objectives and standards. The purposes of developing a taxonomy of educational objectives in 1956 included: (a) to develop a common language about the learning goal to facilitate communication across persons, subject matter and grade levels; (b) to serve development of national, state and local standards in education; (c) to develop an acceptable assessment scheme for a unit, course, or curriculum; and (d) to expose the range of educational possibilities against which the limited breadth and depth of any particular educational course or curriculum could be contrasted (Krathwohl, 2002). It was a radical break from the behaviourist reduction of education as an instrument of socialization. It also emphasized on the higher-order thinking skills liberating education from the rote learning mode. Bloom’s taxonomy defined a holistic education, encompassing the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of individual learners. In short, Bloom and coworkers were initiating a liberation movement of education, which was accepted world over.
The original Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives was revised by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) making it more adaptive to the requirements of those times after a long 45 years of its introduction in 2001. The revised Bloom’s taxonomy (RBT) conceived a two-dimensional framework—Knowledge and cognitive processes—where the former resembled the subcategories of the original knowledge category and the latter resembled the six categories of the original taxonomy with the knowledge category renamed as remember. The remaining categories were changed to their verb forms—understand, apply, analyse and evaluate. Synthesis of the original taxonomy was renamed create and made the top category. The educational objectives were arranged in a hierarchical structure in the RBT also, but in a more flexible sense. The knowledge and cognitive process dimensions defined in a combined format, which formed a very practical and useful taxonomy table. It allowed one to distinguish between the content of learning (WHAT of learning) and the process of learning (HOW of learning), and appropriately emphasizing on ‘learning how to learn’. This is in line with the suggestions of the 1996 report of International Commission of Education appointed by UNESCO, which suggested the new millennial learners shall learn throughout their lives, engaging in a lifelong learning (Delors, 1998).
The RBT has been serving the education sector for last 20 years, helping teachers draft curricula, design assessment schemes and accreditation agencies develop standards and benchmarks for ranking. It is high time to revisit RBT in view of an overhaul, if necessary, which shall be preceded by a thorough examination of its efficacy and currency. The current article is an invitation to isolate the salient features of an appropriate outcome-based education for the digital natives, who are destined to collaborate with the intelligent machines in their life and work spaces. Those intelligent machines are imparted with abilities to collaborate with humans in realizing many aspects of knowledge and cognitive processes as visualized in RBT, requiring humans to share their core-competency those cognitive processes with those machines.
Added to it are the inaccuracies identified with the Bloom’s taxonomy in the course of 20 years based on latest epistemological and pedagogical theories, which requires to be blasted off from it to make it amenable as a powerful tool to measure the educational objectives in modern times. It would prove detrimental to the growth and development of the education sector, if RBT serves only to generate a false satisfaction for stakeholders of education of having done their job, without rendering the learners of the day future-ready!
Critique on RBT
Insufficiencies to Meet Modern Requirements
The major question is whether RBT could ensure an adequate level of intellectual formation necessitated by the new generation learners, who are condemned to collaborate with the intelligent machines in their life and work spaces. The technologies of the day, including the intelligent machines, serve as custodians of factual, conceptual, procedural knowledge and are endowed with a partial mastery over the metacognitive knowledge. They have also proven to be trustworthy collaborators for different cognitive processes from remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating, and even creating information and knowledge. With the development of artificial intelligence, these technologies are making amazing progress and have started taking over those core tasks like communication, interaction, coordination, management, consultancy and decision-making, which were earlier considered as unique competencies of human intellection. Hence, it is high time that RBT is revisited to understand its insufficiencies and to repurpose it to suit the needs of new generation learners, the so-called digital natives.
In fact, modification of pedagogies in the wake of some technological innovation, is not a new phenomenon. One could develop a short history of development of pedagogies covariant with the development of technologies. Development of new technologies, that have some capability to complement human intellection has simultaneously transformed the conduct of education over time. For example, in a time when the modes of communication were underdeveloped, a lot of importance was given to the process of ‘remembering’ in the pedagogical praxis. The learners of those days were required to learn things by-heart with right intonations as prescribed by the language, in an attempt to transfer knowledge to new times and spaces, incurring a minimum loss of information. It ensured intercontinental (spatial) and generational (temporal) communication of knowledge with greater fidelity. This required people who were memory-giants, who could reproduce the knowledge verbatim on demand. It is true at all times that human cognition requires sufficient ready information within the working memories of the human thinkers as initial capital for thinking process. However, today there exists large number of technical assistants, which effectively facilitate the human act of remembering information or knowledge. This in turn reduces the significance of the act of ‘remembering’ as something to be emphasized in a modern pedagogy. Thus, an act of remembering receives a lower status in the hierarchy of cognitive processes, when a pedagogy that suits new generation learners is visualized. That does not anyway mean that human intellection could take place without memory generation; rather as that process could be very well assisted by emerging technologies, training in those skills becomes practically redundant. In other words, we may characterize the process of remembering as an ‘evolutionary vestige’ in any modern pedagogy, which might have once served a great role in the pedagogies of the past, which enjoys a much lower significance in the pedagogies of modern times. In other words, the act of remembering is relegated to the lower hierarchical level of cognitive processes due to the availability of modern technologies that assists the act of remembering.
Moving forward to the era of printing and publishing, the cognitive act of ‘understanding’ got better visibility among the pedagogical circles. The learners were graded according to their ability to correctly interpret the meaning of a given text in a given context. Intellectuals of the day were considered as ‘walking encyclopaedias’ who had ready answers for any question and solutions to any problems posed. However, with the emergence of the age of information, the act of understanding began to receive lower significance. Today any search engine that is equipped with artificial intelligence, is capable of algorithmically explore the compendium of knowledge available in the world-wide-web or the internet. Google became the modern day guru! Correspondingly, the pedagogical focus on ‘understanding’ got diminished, even as understanding remains as the very foundation of the process of learning. With the availability of technological support for ‘understanding’, its pedagogical significance gets reduced, relegating it into yet another ‘evolutionary vestige’ in the process.
During the industrial revolution, the focus of pedagogies got further shifted from both ‘remembering’ and ‘understanding’ to the processes of ‘applying, analysing and evaluating’. The learners were required to imbibe the skills to materialize their knowledge into commercially viable products and services, which necessitated the processes of analysis and evaluation. However, with the emergence of the Industry 4.0, where intelligent machines play a greater role in the industrial processes. The processes of ‘applying, analysing and evaluating’ are progressively taken over by the intelligent machines equipped with machine learning and artificial intelligence. It has to be anticipated that in the course of time, humans will be relieved of those cognitive tasks, left to ferret for other core competences themselves migrating towards novel vistas of the thinking space.
Finally, the very act of ‘creating’, which was always considered as the top-most accomplishment of human intellect is regularly being supported and challenged by emerging technologies. For example, the Russian movement initiated by Genrich Altshuller already in 1946, called TRIZ (Russian: теория решения изобретательских задач), transliterated as Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch and translated as ‘the theory of inventive problem solving’, envisaged to transfer the process of creation to the machines. With the advent in artificial intelligence and emergence of super intelligent machines, this movement is expedited further. The theory has analysed millions of patents and identified patterns of creative thinking, which it proposes to transform into suitable algorithms, which will lead towards a computational process of creation. Even as the philosophical question whether the creativeness of humans will ever be fully copied to an algorithm, may not be fully answered, TRIZ movement readies itself to creep into the final post of human intellection, namely the imaginative and creative problem solving. It is a fact that creative minds in different walks of life like poets, artists, performers, and so on, resort to the assistance of intelligent machines today. Hence, it is evident that creative and imaginative thinking of humans in the future also will be conducted in collaboration with the intelligent machines, which will catalyze and facilitate it.
As we revisit the history of evolution of pedagogies, we realize that it is covariant with the evolution of technologies that facilitated human intellection at different levels. Starting with printing technology, which facilitated freezing the knowledge in a text format, continuing with the explosion of information transmission via internet and development of Internet of Things and Intelligent Machines, those technological thinking assistants facilitated progressively higher-order thinking skills as defined by the RBT, which progressively made pedagogical emphasis on them redundant. With the possibility of technological assistance to the act of ‘creating’, the last fort of human intellection would be falling in front of intelligent machines, necessitating us to venture beyond the purviews of Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. Hence, in anticipation of the further evolution of the technologies, pedagogies of the digital natives are constrained to identify new levels of thinking skills which are inaccessible to technological incursions with a relative guarantee to remain as the core-competency of human intellection for quite some time. We need to develop new approaches to circumvent singularities of human intellection, which shall form a firm foundation for a pedagogy of the digital natives.
It is no more sufficient today that learners remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate or create to be able to conduct themselves in the life and work spaces of tomorrow dominated by the intelligent machines. In order to move towards a new level of cognitive accomplishment, humans will have to venture beyond the Bloom’s taxonomy, which may be rendered insufficient to gauge the learning process. It is the need of the hour to develop new approaches to human intellection, which would truly address and safeguard its characteristic features and to visualize a new pedagogical movement that accompanies that process. The current article aims at it.
Questionable Foundations on Cognitive Sciences
RBT defines human intellection as a hierarchy of cognitive accomplishments and skills. Design of curriculum, assessments and accreditation is founded on such a hierarchical order of cognitive skills. RBT also anticipates the mastery of a lower level cognitive ability as a precondition for advancing to a higher level of cognition (Krathwohl, 2002). However, human intellection is proven to take place not as per any hierarchically ordered cognitive operations, challenging the very foundations of RBT on the findings of modern cognitive sciences. Kompa (2017) has done detailed study on this theme.
In real-life situations, different cognitive abilities are found to collaborate in true synergy, without abiding by any hierarchal rules. They rather act in an interdependent manner, reinforcing one another, while remaining at the same level of significance. A process of thinking consists of distributed processes involving a plethora of different configurations of the thinking skills, which is not amenable to any hierarchical ordering. Take, for example, a scenario of creative problem solving: here, solid comprehension of some fundamental concepts and basic facts outweigh an evaluation based on misconceived concepts, perceptions or facts. In other words, cognitive skills of ‘understanding’ and ‘evaluating’ participate in the human intellection without knowing any hierarchical order. Take as another example, a discussion leading to a decision-making. Here, one could observe an interplay of the cognitive processes of ‘analysis’ and ‘evaluation’, whereby every evaluation is preceded as well as succeeded by sound analysis and vice versa, in such a way that there is no analysis without prior evaluation and no evaluation without prior analysis. In short, what truly takes place in different instances of human intellection is a synergy of cognitive abilities, where those skills interact in a democratic manner, without knowing any hierarchal order. Depending on the problem at hand, thinkers are also found to shuttle between the factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive layers of knowledge also. Both neurological and phenomenological sense, human intellection cannot be proven to be a process involving hierarchical cognitive skills, rather it can be better described as a distributed process. In short, assuming a static hierarchy for human cognitive domains, as done in RBT, is not realistic enough.
What is more realistic is to visualize the cognitive abilities and skills as a spectrum of thinking skills or styles, which on integration leads you to concrete thinking event, where different thinking skills are interactively required and employed. The possible determinant of distinction between different thinking skills could be the technological assistance a thinker could avail to conduct that process, which depends on the availability of the appropriate technology that could assist human thinking skills differently. In reality, humans have been developing thinking assistants from time immemorial. As we have already noted, development of such thinking assistants also determined the direction of evolution of pedagogies.
Inadequate Footing on Pedagogical Sciences
RBT has failed to integrate the insights of a number of established theories of learning, so that it remains as a partial theory to elucidate the pedagogical processes. For example, RBT does not account for the apparent influence of the social context of the learner in the creation of knowledge, as it is established by the social learning and social constructivist theories (Bandura, 1977; Vygotsky, 1978). The constructivist theories consider that every piece of knowledge emerges from a socio-cultural context, which includes the cultural identity, relational networks and geo-political realities. Overly focus on the individual cognitive development distracts its attention from the development of a truly democratic frame of mind, which demands training in mutual thinking, consensus finding and negotiation skills, as identified by humanistic theories (Dewey, 1916, 1938). Complete neglect of the social aspects of learning endeavour make it incompatible to the modern context, which requires that learners are able to create, communicate and open to receive the serendipitous knowledge from within or without.
RBT seems to be preoccupied with the acquiring of perfection of cognitive skills in isolation. The societal aspects of knowledge creation, propagation and reception does not appear in the radar of RBT. It does neither bother about the relevance of real-life contexts in the creation of knowledge, nor does it acknowledge the amount of meaning that each piece of knowledge renders the learner and the community of practice that collaborates in the creation of knowledge. It fails to account for the uniquely individual styles of knowledge creation, propagation and acquisition and thus ignores the individual learning experiences. Its obsession with grooming of individual cognitive skills and processes is often exercised at the expense of holistic personal development, bracketing the necessary social skills, like communication skills and teamwork from the purview of educational objectives.
RBT focuses on developing some abstract cognitive domains, without bothering about the personal differences among the learners as identified by the theories of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983). It fails to account for the autonomy of the learners, their unique intelligences and social relatedness, and so on. In this sense, it cannot claim to be a learner-centred taxonomy. Further, RBT does not develop a motivational structure for learning in its conception, which is understood as vital in theories of human motivation (Maslow, 1954). Especially, an intrinsic motivation regime is considered fundamental to a lifelong learning process as per modern pedagogical theories.
Based on such methodical flaws of RBT, any attempt to apply criteria based RBT in the assessment of learning outcomes becomes inherently inadequate, leading to its gross over-simplification exerting a negative influence on the conduct of education. Overdependence on the RBT in developing educational processes often provides a false satisfaction among the educators as to have achieved the desired learning outcomes, without anyway equipping the learners to be future-ready. This has also promoted them to neglect the need to reform RBT according to the actual needs of the times. This has deprived the new generation learners from attaining respective educational objectives that meet the modern requirements.
Pedagogical Challenges of the Digital Age
In this section, let us specify two major issues humans are condemned to grapple with in order to make meaningful intellection in the contemporary world. The binary reduction of the process of thinking is gradually leading humans towards a situation of ‘no exit’, which may be characterized as singularities or black-hole like situations. They are existential and noetic singularities, which would respectively put an end to life on the planet earth leading to an existential black-hole and would make human intellection redundant or insignificant defining a noetic black-hole. The pedagogical challenge of the digital age would be to successfully circumvent these singularities caused by certain pattern of human intellection and to facilitate learners to venture into new vistas of cognitive expansion beyond those singularities.
Existential Singularity and Grey Perception
Existential singularity is something that engulfs the life on the planet earth, leading it to a runaway situation, to a point of no return, owing to the technological interventions humans have made there. Unsustainable technological intervention that humans make on the planet is often ascribed as the primary reason for this predicament. Take, for example, the nuclear technologies, which have already exhibited its destructive power to wipe out life on earth when utilized to develop nuclear weapons. As on 2020, it is estimated that the nine nuclear-armed states—United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea—together possessed an estimated 13,400 nuclear weapons, which is sufficient to destroy life on earth at least 134 times, as just 100 such weapons being sufficient to wipe out the entire life on earth.
Another dramatic existential singularity is related to global warming and associated climate change. It is caused by an unsustainable use of fossil fuels, which enhances the percentage of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, causing rise in the average temperature of earth’s atmosphere due to greenhouse effect. Climate scientists warn that if nations on the globe fail to radically reduce the use of fossil fuels, it could lead to an irreversible change in the climate patterns on earth leading to drought, rain bombs, flooding and extreme weather conditions, making it uninhabitable. In short, the progress humans make as part of their technological advancements often creates unsustainable condition for life on earth. The scientific method originated from the method of doubt due to Rene Descartes, who formulated it by the Latin phrase, Cogito ergo sum, translated as ‘I think, therefore I am’. Today this should be reformulated to suggest ‘I exist, therefore I think’, giving priority to preserve the existential roots of humans on earth to be able to continue to think!
The important question here is whether the formation of such existential singularities could be traced back to any particular perception of reality or worldview that humans adopt. It is evident that a non-holistic perception of reality could lead to non-sustainable development of technologies, which could lead humans towards an existential singularity. Such a non-holistic perception could be traced back to the first assumption of Aristotle in developing his renowned Syllogistic Logic, namely, the Principle of Excluded Middle (PEM). It states: ‘There cannot be an intermediate between contradictions, but of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one predicate’ (Aristotle, 1998). Accordingly, PEM excludes the grey regions between the truth values from the process of thinking in view of rendering human intellection clear and distinct. Accordingly, truth is conceived as ‘black’ or ‘white’, with truth values existing only at the limits of a grey spectrum, defined by either ‘black’ or ‘white’. Such ‘black-or-white thinking’ naturally leads to the binary logic, which lays foundation to the modern era of information and digitalization. PEM excludes the possibility of gradients in truth values, which may encroach into the grey spectrum between the truth values, black and white. It also categorically rejects any grey perception of reality, leading to a kind of reductionism in thinking. Any grey perception of reality, whether it is sensual, aesthetic, symmetrical, fuzzy, systemic visionary or sustainable is omitted as per PEM. This naturally leads to a reductionist perception of reality, leading to an inability to perceive it in a holistic manner. Development of technologies that destroy the fabric of life on earth are ascribed to such partial vision of reality. In short, PEM is a noxious assumption of syllogistic logic, the backbone of scientific thinking, which could lead humans towards an existential singularity.
Only a holistic perception of reality allows humans to see beyond the truth values of ‘True’ or ‘False’, the so-called ‘black or white reality’. Such a perception shall help them venture into the grey spectrum, where the truth values are defined by the varying intensity of truth contents. In fact, such a perception of reality is facilitated by the fuzzy logic, as defined by Lotfi Aliasker Zadeh of University of California, USA. Fuzzy logic admits indefinite number of truth values between the binary options, 1 or 0, thus includes the grey region between the binary extremes in its definitions. In reality, it accounts for the variations in the ambience and the variations in intensity of truth values. Accordingly, the meaning resides not just at the extreme points of the truth scale, rather along its path line, which is defined by those extreme values of 1 and 0. It allows for a gradient of truth values between ‘True’ or ‘False’ to exist. In the wake of an information age, where truth values representing reality are radically compromised due to disinformation, infodemics, post-truth and alternate facts, and so on, fuzzy approach may prove a feasible option to characterize human perception. It obviously complicates the perception of truth; but allows humans to comprehend the heart of the matter. In fact, fuzzy logic has proven itself to be compatible to modern technological advancements. It has given rise to a host of new generation controls, which are extremely sensitive to the changes in the ambient and variations in the truth values and are applied in gadgets like washing machines, microwave ovens, air-conditioners, camcorders, and so on.
In short, fuzzy perception accommodates the grey view of reality and its holistic appreciation. New generation learners, who dare to venture into grey regions of reality, perceive it in a holistic manner and as a part of a whole system which is driven by a holistic vision. Such a perception protects them from falling into a reductionist temptation to fragment reality in view of better analysis, which at the same time may lead to the development of technologies that violate the rules of ecological, societal or economic sustainability as stipulated by the United Nations. In other words, a fuzzy/grey/holistic perception helps humans to avoid falling into an existential singularity, which has to be promoted by any new generation pedagogy worth its name.
Noetic Singularity and White Thinking
Noetic singularity arises from the redundancy of human thinking as they gradually get delegated to the intelligent machines. As we have already noted, intelligent machines facilitate and collaborate in the exercise of different cognitive functions specific to human intellection, including remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and even creating. It generates an impression that humans have conceded their proper territories in intellection to those intelligent machines, moving themselves towards a point of singularity, which may be characterized as a noetic singularity. Fast pace of progress in artificial intelligence may further accelerate this runaway process, making humans subjugated to the intelligent machines of their own imagination and creation. Alternately described as ‘technological singularity’, this scenario will also radically shrink the traditional career options of the new generation learners, who will have to conduct themselves in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous or VUCA workspace in turn.
The binary mode of thinking as promoted by Aristotelean syllogistic logic may be identified as the initiator of the noetic singularity. The principle of non-contradiction (PNC) assumed by the syllogistic logic excludes a variety of thinking styles from the spectrum of possibilities of human intellection, branding them as imprecise and hence inadmissible. PNC states: ‘The most certain of all basic principles is that contradictory propositions are not true simultaneously’ (Aristotle, ca. 360 B.C.E). This assumption forbids the coexistence of the truth values, implying that ‘True’ and ‘False’ cannot coexist. According to Ibn Sina alias Avicenna (980–1037 CE), the logician of the Islamic Golden Age, ‘Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned’. It looks like an obvious assumption, something to be taken for granted. However, it might lead to a prioritization of syllogistic and logical thinking over other styles of thinking. It overly promotes analytical thinking, which leads to an extreme mode of positivism, asserting that only those things that could be analytically proven could be considered true and valid. It is obvious that there could many realities in life that you may not conclusively prove, yet absolutely essential to life. For example, it would be extremely difficult to prove something to be absolutely good or beautiful; but humans habitually make judgements in this regard. In other words, PNC restricts human intellection from being polychromatic, leading to a kind of ‘color-blindness’ by assuming syllogistic logic which abides by PNC as the only valid mode of intellection. It assumes that the ‘white’ within the ‘black-or-white thinking’ is a monochromatic reality, excluding diversity of imprecise thinking styles. Of course, this approach of syllogistic logic and binary logic which followed it, laid solid foundation for a scientific thinking and heralded amazing advancements in technology. However, it relegated aesthetic, spiritual, mystic, philosophical thinking as essentially invalid and hence irrelevant.
Limitations of syllogistic logic was apparent to the Hellenistic philosophers. The incompleteness of the binary logic was exposed by Eubulides of Miletus already in the 4th century BCE. As per his famous Liar’s Paradox, Miletus asks whether the statement, ‘This statement is false’ is true or false. If the statement were true, then it is indeed false; but if it were false, well then, it is obviously true! Hence, both ‘True’ or ‘False’ could be an adequate answer for this question, leading to a paradoxical situation. Further, there are realities in modern science, which may not be sufficiently described by the binary logic. For example, the nature of light or subatomic particle is described by a wave-particle duality, which is incompatible with PNC. Light is both particle and wave; so are quantum mechanical particles at subatomic levels. In fact, Indian systems of logic had anticipated this development, as they defined a Catuskoti (English: four-cornered) logic. As per this logic, any statement has four truth values: (a) True; (b) False; (c) Both true and false; (d) Neither true nor false. Later on Nagarjuna (ca. 150–250 CE) added one more truth value, ineffable or indescribable to complete the set of truth values, which helped description of reality that are beyond words, such that Mauna (English: silence) alone is the adequate response to it. This makes ‘Catuskoti’ logic appropriate to describe certain aesthetic, moral or mystical experiences, which is impossible for the binary logic derived from the syllogistic one.
Binary logic being the language of digitalization, it is understandable that intelligent machines that operates based on it shall easily complement or even replace a mode of human intellection, which is purely based on binary logic alone. This expectedly leads to a situation, where cognitive uniqueness of humans is not sufficiently honoured with intelligent machines intruding into such thinking spaces exercising their supremacy. It is such scenario that leads to the kind noetic singularity described earlier, wherein technologies driven by artificial intelligence made by human hands renders human intellection insignificant, redundant or irrelevant.
It is high time that humans rediscover and reassert the uniqueness of their thinking skills, which is essentially ‘white’ or polychromatic, made of a broad spectrum of different lines of thinking. Logical thinking or analytical thinking may be considered as an important line of this spectrum, something that played a seminal role in the progress of science and technology. However, human intellection is not confined to analytical thinking alone. It could be visualized as spectrum of thinking styles describable based on an ‘analogy of an oscillator’ taken from the fundamental physics. Just like an oscillator which when excited creates, communicates and receives waves, human mind also creates, communicates and receives information or ideas. Correspondingly, human mind is adorned with a multitude of thinking skills related to creation, communication and reception of knowledge, defining a spectrum ranging from analytical thinking and intuitive thinking.
Here, analytical thinking is regarded as Aristotelean in nature, as it is the established mode of thinking that generates new ideas, whereas intuitive thinking is regarded Platonic, as it is the foundational approach of mystical appropriation of knowledge as originated from a ‘world of forms’. Other components of the spectrum of thinking styles may be differently visualized to include differential thinking, integral thinking, mutual thinking, figurative thinking, imaginative thinking, and so on. Together, they define a spectrum of thinking skills, which when harmonized or synergized together will leads to the so-called ‘white thinking’. In short, logical thinking or analytical thinking is conceived only a part of this huge spectrum of thinking skills, which humans may be forced to surrender to the intelligent machines. However, such a contingency will not make the entire human intellection irrelevant, leading to some noetic singularity. In short, humans could escape any noetic singularity that might be introduced by intelligent machines, by resorting to a white spectrum thinking!
Modern neuroscience characterizes human thinking as a kind of fractal thinking, which enables human brain to crunch ‘big-data’ across its fault lines composed of the never-ending pattern of self-similar structures at different scales within it. Humans are also gaining insight that the core of reality is also essentially fractal in nature. In other words, a fractal reality corresponds to a fractal brain and they are made for each other. This enables a human brain to short-circuit itself, associated with a crunching of big-data, with a relative ease. Such data crunching event is evident, for example, in the simple act of laughing at the cracking of a joke, which is natural to human candidates. For an intelligent machines or humanoids, it will define a hell of task involving iterative solution of complex algorithms over big-data, which will remain a formidable task to them. Humans are gifted with a unique mode of fractal thinking, which equips them to develop an intuition, which may not be computationally proven, but instantaneously available as a sixth sense. This again, suggests the novel approaches to the training of human minds to avoid any noetic singularity developed by human collaboration with intelligent machines in the conduct of intellection.
In short, in the interest of avoiding any noetic singularity, humans shall vouch for an integrated or fractal thinking, developing a full spectrum of thinking skills ingrained in them. Such a movement may be described as a ‘white thinking revolution’ due to the new generation learners. Thus, along with ‘grey perception’, which helps learners avoid eventual existential singularity, ‘white thinking’ helps them avoid an anticipated noetic singularity. Together, grey perception and white thinking defines the mode of intellection required of a new generation learner, who shall venture into grey spectrum of perceptions and white spectrum of thinking.
Intellectual Formation of the Digital Natives
Discussions on the prospective existential and noetic singularities throw light on the cognitive requirements and needed intellectual formation of digital natives. It immediately points to an urgent requisite for pursuing grey perception and white thinking to circumvent those singularities. It is a call for redeeming human intellection from a narrowed down perspective on it developed based on certain limiting assumptions employed by Aristotle in the definition of the syllogistic logic, which permeated itself down the centuries as the only valid mode of intellection, masking the natural potential of humans to perceive grey and to think white. Such limiting of human intellection did contribute heavily to the exciting progress in the scientific and technological spheres, with other spheres like art, aesthetics and spirituality left to bear the brunt. The revelation that an obsession with strictly analytical thinking could lead to unsurmountable singularities, necessitates a reimagining of the intellectual formation of the digital natives.
Intellectual formation of the digital natives need to focus on liberating human intellection from the confines of the binary logic, expanding its horizons as far as possible. Accordingly, human perception shall be shifted from a purely black-or-white paradigm to a fuzzy, holistic and grey paradigm. Similarly, human thinking shall shift from a purely monochromatic paradigm to a fractal, integrated and white paradigm. Human perception shall comprise of a spectrum of different perspectives of the grey reality within and without and human thinking shall include a spectrum of different lines of thinking styles, integrating them into a polychromatic or white spectrum. Armed with a grey perception and white thinking, humans may evade the existential and noetic singularities they encounter in the age of information and digitalization, the era of digital natives.
Accordingly, we may define a next level of cognitive accomplishment of the digital natives as an ability to venture into the grey spectrum of perception and white spectrum of thinking. This movement may be described by a verbal word ‘to venture’, signifying the ability to perceive grey and to think white. It also refers to an ability to synergize the input information (perceive grey) and to simplify the available knowledge (think white), respectively.
In modern parley, the verb ‘venture’ is associated with an entrepreneur, who are prepared to step into the unchartered territories of life. The French verb entreprendre means to ‘undertake’, which is derived from the Latin roots, entre, meaning ‘between’ and prendre, meaning ‘to take’, which in combination communicates a sense of ‘undertaking’. The French word entrepreneur historically had a war connotation, with an attached sense of strategy, organization and risk-taking. Thus, an entrepreneurial attitude comprises of a self-motivated undertaking associated with adequate strategy, organization and risk-taking. Just like an entrepreneur, the new generation learners are also radically challenged to overcome both the existential and noetic singularities surrounding them, by venturing into still unchartered spaces of thinking. In other words, the intellectual formation required for a new generation learner is identically equal to an act of venturing into a new type of thinking spaces, hitherto obscured due to the overemphasis of binary mode of thinking. Ability to venture into these newfound thinking spaces may define the intellectual formation required by a digital native. It essentially adds a new coordinate of entrepreneurial thinking towards their intellectual formation of the day, adding a new dimension to every other cognitive skill identified so far. In other words, a digital native is supposed to remember as an entrepreneur would have done so; they shall understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create just like an entrepreneur, ensuring needed fluency, originality and flexibility to all aspects of human intellection.
In fact, the genii of the past generations were considered polymaths, who were adept at grey perception and white thinking with excellent mastery in multiple disciplines. They were people, who easily synergized different perceptions, integrating them to develop novel concepts and simplified different styles of thinking with greater ease. In them merged different horizons of human intellection, expanding the frontiers of human perception and thinking. Many of them were philosophers, artists, scientists, engineers and statesmen simultaneously, with mastery in different spheres of human activity. Digital natives are invited to follow these polymaths, and venture into multiple spaces of human intellection.
Following the ‘analogy of an oscillator’, human intellection shall also venture into new modes of production, communication and reception of ideas. They shall be prepared to learn, unlearn and relearn, preserving absolute flexibility and plasticity of their minds. They shall also make a whole-person thinking, integrating their sensual, physical, mental, emotional, intellectual, volitional and spiritual aspects into the process of thinking. They shall also account for their societal, cultural and existential contexts in their thinking process and ‘venture’ into a brave new world.
Call for an Entrepreneurial Pedagogy
Educational objectives of the new generation learners are also required to be redefined to meet the contemporary requirements on intellectual formation of the digital natives. Ability to venture into new regimes of intellection will have paradigmatic importance in the new educational economy. The scope of the cognitive skills defined in RBT need to be extended into grey spectrum of perception and white spectrum of thinking. The unique abilities of learners to develop synergy of outlooks and simplification of thoughts shall complement with the ever-enhancing ability of intelligent machines to facilitate the cognitive skills of the learners to remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate or create. Further, as these cognitive skills are being facilitated by intelligent machines today in an increasingly comprehensive manner, any modern pedagogy shall equip learners to venture into the VUCA future with an entrepreneurial spirit, defining an entrepreneurial pedagogy in the process.
An entrepreneurial pedagogy shall support the learners to venture into a synergized perception and simplified thinking. It shall revisit these aspects of natural mode human intellection, which was glimpsed by the glittering success of the binary mode of perception and intellection from the days of Aristotle. It is a call to improve the venture capital of uniquely human thinking, which shall protect humans from an existential and noetic singularities developed due to an overly binary mode of intellection.
An entrepreneurial pedagogy shall prepare learners to think in an entrepreneurial way. It shall equip learners to identify entrepreneurial seed ideas from whatever piece of information they receive. It shall render them sufficiently open-minded to perceive the possibilities enshrined in those seed ideas based on a sense-based investigation and exploration. It shall equip them to pitch those seed ideas in front of the world with a sense of self-confidence and mastery over their own unique intelligence by way of celebration of their Eureka moments. It shall equip the learners to enrich their life-skills, values, attitudes and competencies based on the insights and inspirations derived from those seed ideas and eventually leading them towards self-actualization, self-realization or self-perfection, allowing them to store those seed ideas in their personality. It shall equip learners to exhibit mastery over those seed ideas to the extent of gamifying them and engaging in a competitive or collaborative engagement with others, allowing them to synergize their seed ideas with those of others. Finally, it shall equip them to develop some entrepreneurial products or services for the welfare of others, which shall catch the imagination of the world as a solution to a perennial existential problem that it is grappling with. Just like any other entrepreneurial undertaking, the entrepreneurial learning process shall be driven by a set of intrinsic motivations, making a lifelong and autonomous learning possible in modern times.
Teachers shall be content with facilitating such autonomous learning process, catalyzing and mentoring it and shall be prepared to provide tailor-made instruction based on the seed idea discovered by the learners, exposing its historical and interdisciplinary significance. In this manner, they shall promote learners to pursue a lifelong and autonomous learning based on their own seed ideas, improving and actualizing them in the course of time.
It is high time that modern education transforms itself into an entrepreneurial education, equipping the new generation learners to be venture-ready or venture-fit. It shall equip learners to venture beyond the restrictions of binary perception and thinking, ensuring a holistic and integral formation of the learners in their given socio-cultural contexts. It shall instil/initiate an entrepreneurial transformation of the skills, values, attitudes, talents, abilities, and so on, of the learners, making them to be future-ready.
Conclusion
Ever since the introduction of the original version of Bloom’s taxonomy in 1956 (Bloom et al., 1956), narrative of the conduct of education worldwide was rewritten initiating a radical shift from the behavioural approach of education and drafting an outcome-based education in its place defined by the different levels of cognitive attainments. Irrespective of its popular appeal and the revision undertaken in 2001, it still inhabits insufficiencies and inadequacies that could make its continued use in academic circles questionable. The current article recommends a revisit to some of the assumptions of binary logic, which inherently influence RBT and recommends its radical redefinition in view of the future life and workspaces. Intelligent machines, which possess exceptional abilities to complement and artificially substitute for the cognitive processes of remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create, which are considered as the hierarchy of cognitive skills of an individual are expected to dominate the future life and work spaces. Scientific and technological advances based purely on binary logic has paved way for an existential and noetic singularity, through which human intellection would be rendered both self-annihilative and redundant, respectively. The article recommends a novel approach to expand the horizons of human intellection to bypass these singularities. It recommends a holistic, fuzzy or grey perception of reality to escape the existential singularity and an integrated, fractal or white thinking to escape the noetic singularity. Correspondingly, a new dimension for human intellection is proposed, namely ‘to venture’, which facilitates learners to venture beyond the binary limitations on human intellection. It also equips the learners to synergize and simplify the process of thinking, developing uniquely human traits for intellection in complementarity with intelligent machines of the day. Here, the act of ‘venturing’ is not presented as a superior skill within the hierarchy of human cognitive accomplishments, rather as a coordinate or parameter that permeates to every other aspects of cognitive skill development, making them complementary to the respective facilitation provided by the intelligent machines. This approach shall liberate human intellection from the contingencies of existential and noetic singularities and at the same time help learners reassert their uniqueness and establish the true complementarity of natural intelligence of humans with the artificial intelligence of the machines. The article also recommends development of an entrepreneurial pedagogy that would impart a new kind of training to the learners equipping them to venture into the unchartered terrains of human intellection. This pedagogy shall equip new generation learners to venture into new vistas of human intellection, characterized by holistic, fuzzy or grey perception and integrated, fractal or white thinking, attaching radical synergy and simplification to it reasserting its uniqueness.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
