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The Western Organizations Funding Africa's LGBTQ+ Backlash
A dangerous move
My research indicates that these bills endanger people’s lives by gathering together shifting notions of “African culture,” “Christianity” and “family values”. They’ll also cause a crackdown on basic sexual and reproductive health services and education, including lifesaving HIV/AIDS services. While targeting gender and sexually diverse people, they’re actually pushing a conservative interpretation of gender relations and roles.
As an African political sociologist who researches and teaches gender and sexuality, I argue that these laws are a backlash. They are a response by patriarchal societies to increased freedoms for previously marginalised groups, including women and girls. These freedoms are seen in increased participation of women in political spaces, improved access to education and steps to prevent gender-based violence.
The anti-homosexuality law in Uganda is a significant and dangerous move. It dismantles decades of gains in equitable public health access and gender equality. It reverses positive shifts that have been witnessed in people’s lives as a result.
International connection
It is important to see these bills and laws as part of a broader context across Europe, Latin America, the UK and the US. In the name of protecting “family values”, there is a growing coalition of global players – including far right political parties and Christian evangelical groups – who can mobilize financial resources to support African parliamentarians to develop these laws.
Some of these financial resources unfortunately also come from development funders. A 2022 investigative report points to international donor funding flowing towards churches and associated groups that propelled anti-LGBTIQ+ legislation in Ghana.
The UK government has been funding the Inter Religious Council of Uganda – a homophobic religious organization.
This contradictory funding pattern is also observed in Uganda. The British government has been funding the Inter Religious Council of Uganda – a homophobic religious organization. While it can be argued that this was given to support activities such as anti-corruption initiatives, these resources work against core principles that the British government argues it stands for.
Funding is given to organizations whose public rhetoric inflames societies against LGBTIQ+ communities. This feeds into the agenda of lawmakers, who are reliant on mobilizing “religious and cultural views” as the moral justification for their proposed new laws.
US evangelical churches have also supported anti-LGBTIQ+ rhetoric through “training” and financial resources. This was evident in American evangelist Scott Lively’s role in the 2009 Bahati Bill in Uganda. The bill was a proposed precursor to the new anti-homosexuality law. And, more recently, the role of groups such as Family Watch International in the anti-homosexuality law that Museveni has assented to.
There is a convergence between Christian fundamentalist groups, conservative secular actors and political organizing. This remains a critical concern for those of us interested in understanding how various actors mobilize to overturn hard won freedoms. These freedoms include the reclamation of formal political spaces – parliaments, political parties and legislation.
What needs to be done
A petition has been filed in Uganda’s Constitutional Court to challenge the new anti-homosexuality act. A number of additional steps should also be taken.
It’s about the rights of every person, irrespective of gender and sexual orientation.
Firstly, the wave of new laws demands transnational organizing. The latest law is not just about LGBTIQ+ people in Uganda. It’s about the rights of every person, irrespective of gender and sexual orientation. A collective movement – one that cuts through differences – is needed.
Secondly, litigation in Uganda must become one of several strategies used.
Thirdly, there is need to track money, and associated advocacy, to stop the development funding that goes to anti-LGBTIQ+ groups.
Lastly, more research is needed to understand the connections between anti-LGBTIQ+ groups across regions. This will allow activist responses that are informed by a full understanding of the actors involved in undermining human rights in Africa for sexual and gender minorities as well as women and girls.
Too Soon, Too Late: What’s Really Blocking Ukraine’s Entry To NATO?
Twisted history
Ukraine’s accession to NATO is not a new issue. In 2008, France and Germany – at the time led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel – fought hard at the NATO summit in Bucharest to block Ukraine's entry. Paris and Berlin feared provoking Moscow. The Bush administration was in favor. The result was an ill-judged decision: yes to membership, but one day... When? It wasn't said.
It’s either too late or too soon. Other solutions must therefore be found: they will undoubtedly take the form of security guarantees which, although not those of Article 5 of the Atlantic Charter, will satisfy Ukraine and act as a sufficient deterrent.
French President Emmanuel Macron spoke out in favor of "tangible and credible" security guarantees, something halfway between the Israeli option – i.e., U.S. assurances and aid to the Jewish state – and full NATO membership. The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, also spoke of "guarantees from like-minded states."
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Volodymyr Zelensky talk at the European Political Community Summit in Moldova
Eastern Flank
Such guarantees can only come from states that have the means and the credibility to do so. The United States, the United Kingdom and France, three nuclear powers and permanent members of the UN Security Council, stand out, as does Germany, the continent's leading economic power. A country on NATO's "eastern flank" will also be involved, no doubt Poland, which is investing massively in defense.
But what are such state commitments really worth? Ukraine has had a sad experience of this: in 1994, it received such assurances of non-aggression in the "Budapest Memorandum," signed in exchange for its renunciation of Soviet nuclear weapons. Among the signatories was Russia, and the rest is history...
There are still six weeks to go before the Vilnius summit to define an acceptable solution for Zelensky, whose main argument to impose himself is always the same: Ukraine is fighting for you. Indeed, this is the "blood money" that explains NATO’s current sense of urgency.
Geopolitics
Why The Latin American Far Left Can't Stop Cozying Up To Iran's Regime
Ignoring women's rights
A sociologist by training, she was a communist in her youth and fled for a while to the Soviet Union. Once she returned, her research work and activism revolved around miners initially, then the condition of women and native communities. In a conservative country, the Left saw these far-from-privileged sectors as its natural constituents and support base.
In time, her views and activities led her to join the socialist and indigenist MAS movement of the former president, Evo Morales. Late in his last presidency, in 2019, Pérez Ramos was appointed Bolivia's ambassador in Iran. The two countries' ties had flourished under Morales, again in part for their shared hostility to the United States.
The embassy was briefly shut in 2020, to save money, when Morales was replaced with a conservative administration, but reopened after the Left regained power that year. Last October, Pérez Ramos, this former defender of the rights of workers and women in her own country, denounced Iran's mass protests and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement as a Zionist and "British" plot.
Bolivia, she said, was a "brother country to Iran and we have anti-imperialist ideas"
She was speaking at a meeting with the mayor of Tabriz in north-western Iran. Bolivia, she said, was a "brother country to Iran and we have anti-imperialist ideas," adding she was confident Iran's problems would be solved "with the knowledge and intelligence of its dear leader." Her comments, so clearly dismissive of women fighting for their rights, caused a furore among government opponents in Bolivia and especially defenders of women's rights, and she later said they had been misunderstood or distorted.
Oct. 26, 2010: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad welcomes Bolivian President Evo Morales in Tehran, capital of Iran.
Ahmad Halabisaz/Xinhua/ZUMA
Crony ties
You wonder if the envoy's prominence these days is for Bolivia's increasing importance as a chief repository of lithium. As a mineral needed for batteries and solar panels, it is in many ways the oil of the future. Or, as some Iranians suspect, are regime hands in both states forging "crony ties," like those likely developed with Venezuela?
Pérez often appears at state-sponsored events alongside the envoys of Venezuela and Nicaragua, but also in shrines and religious premises. Local media will show her leaning against a tomb, meditatively, like a Shia Muslim, which presumably she is not. She has claimed to have felt, after visiting a shrine in Qom in central Iran, the curative effects of soil taken from Kerbala (in Iraq), where the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein was killed. Whatever happened to communist anti-clericalism?
She might even have called the book "Islam in Action"
The envoys of Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua were recently promoting the Spanish edition of the Iranian supreme leader's autobiography, entitled Cell Number 14. Pérez Ramos praised Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a "real fighter," speaking at the book's presentation at a Tehran book fair on May 15, saying she might even have called the book "Islam in Action," as this was essentially its "inspiring" message.
Such declarations might be dismissed as mere flattery, or preposterous, if they weren't made against a backdrop of state violence and murders.
food / travel
How The Sari Conquered The World
Timeless garment
The display is devoted to the contemporary sari and the revival of this venerated garment for everyday wear, as red-carpet haute couture, as political statement (think Gulabi Gang), and even adapted for cricket or skateboarding (no, I’m not too convinced about that last point either).
The sari is staging a comeback – as a symbol of female empowerment.
It is a symbol of Indian womanhood which became tarnished by Bollywood’s fixation with ‘clinging saris [which] fetished the female body as the object of the male gaze’. The exhibition’s premise is that the sari is staging a comeback – as a symbol of female empowerment. As well as a stunning array of eye-catching saris from across the sub-continent, there are also a few photos of men in saris – as a protest or provocation or as part of a personal manifesto.
The Design Museum aims, in the words of the event’s curator, to explore the sari as ‘a site for design innovation and an empowering vessel for self-expression in India today. The very fact that a major global institution is holding such an ambitious celebration devoted to a single item of dress is itself a statement of the sari’s global status.
A cultural impact
The Offbeat Sari exhibition at the Design Museum, London, UK. 17th May 2023.
© Cover Images / ZUMA
Unquestionably, the sari is part of India’s soft power – one of the cultural and aesthetic signifiers of a country which enjoy attention and esteem beyond its borders, add lustre to a nation and so boost its profile and influence. The formal indices of soft power seem to be stacked up to boost the west – one bizarrely put Germany in third place, and positioned Canada well ahead of India – but I would argue that India has more going for it than perhaps any other nation.
As well as the cuisine (everything from popadum to dosa, from mango chutney to chicken tikka) and the fashion (salwar kameez, shawl, sherwani and chappals also have a global footprint), there’s yoga, the sitar, cricket, the Taj Mahal, attar, agarbati, and a rich vein of modern literature and fine art.
Oh, and did I mention Bollywood – not simply huge across South Asia and its diaspora but in regions as diverse as Nigeria and Uzbekistan. And then there’s the more difficult to define civilisational legacies – reflected in scripture and architecture but also in the sense of spiritual quest which has been such a large part of India’s global appeal. And India is one of the few countries able to assert that its nationals, or people of Indian heritage, have over the years been awarded the Nobel prize in all six categories, from peace to literature.
Once I would have added that strange and successful mix of secularism, political pluralism and robust democratic instinct which India both epitomised and championed. I wouldn’t trumpet this aspect of India’s soft power quite so loudly of late. But I’ll happily sound a conch shell for the sari.
Society
Exploiting Auschwitz — How Poland's Ruling Party Reached A New Low
A reactionary move
The date, proposed by former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, commemorates the anniversary of the first free elections that took place in Poland in 1989. Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s PR team has no idea how to respond to the opposition’s message that he and his fellow representatives have been killing democracy, have had several government scandals, and have not taken the appropriate steps to address ongoing inflation. Instead, they decided to go to extremes.
In doing so, PiS compared the demonstrators to German war criminals from 80 years ago.
There is no question that Tomasz Lis’s tweet was simply stupid. It came about amid a wave of opposition to President Andrzej Duda’s decision to sign into law a Bolshevik-esque tribunal in Poland, which aims to remove Polish politicians from public life ahead of the upcoming elections. Duda ignored the warnings of experts, who argued that the law is unconstitutional and that the solutions proposed are reminiscent of policies promoted by Putin, but all this does not absolve Lis's of his unwise statement.
It was indeed good that the news anchor decided to apologize for his post in the end.
A screenshot of the advertisement
Politicizing tragedy
Tomasz Lis is neither a politician nor an organizer of the upcoming march. Linking a popular movement with one mindless statement, and doing so in the context of the German extermination of Jews and Poles at the hands of German Nazis, is an open call for additional outcry.
Lis’s foolish use of the word “chamber” does not entitle party members, including PiS spokesman Rafal Bohenek, to make this false comparison.
The Law and Justice party has been saying for years that they will defend the truth about Nazi crimes and the suffering of their victims. This is the same party that intended to imprison those who spread lies about these acts for three years.
What is the real effect of this politicization? A constant, disgusting dance on the graves of victims, who lost their lives during World War Two. PiS’s use of images of Auschwitz is unfortunately one of several exaggerations, and the most egregious ones at that. But it is not the first time that these deaths have been used by the Polish right to support their political aims.
In 2017, then-Prime Minister Beata Szydlo used ceremonies commemorating the tragedy of the first transports to the camp to defend her party’s policies, which at that time were opposing accepting migrants from war-torn Syria. Two years later, deputy Minister of Justice Patryk Jaki, from the Catholic-nationalist United Poland party, compared striking teachers to Wehrmacht soldiers.
Last year, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski used the anniversary of the start of World War II to ask for billions of dollars of reparations from Germany. Minister of Culture Piotr Glinski politicized this year’s memorial of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in the same way. PiS is expecting the victims of war to hand them additional votes ahead of the elections.
April 28, 202: A woman seen draped with the Israeli flag over her shoulders during the International March of The Living in Oswiecim, Poland.
Wojciech Grabowski/ZUMA
Auschwitz didn’t come from nowhere
The Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp holds a specific place in our collective memory. It was there that Hitler’s final solution was carried out. The grounds of the camp were turned into a museum, in order to show future generations the evils that humans are capable of, and to warn them that, if they forget, history is doomed to repeat itself.
What has PiS done with this symbolic space? It only took them a few seconds to trample on its legacy, and to bring these victims into a political campaign.
Auschwitz didn’t come from nowhere.
“Auschwitz didn’t come from nowhere,” Marian Turski, who had himself been imprisoned in the camp, said a few years ago. PiS’s has clearly not heeded his warnings.
Watching the clip from PiS, I believe that Turski’s words are more relevant than they ever were. Auschwitz did not come from nowhere, and it was boundless contempt that paved the way for it.
But the concentration camp is not only a symbol for Poland but also for the entire Western world. And it is the world who will react to the words that PiS has invoked.
As for whether PiS will apologize, that remains doubtful. But this insulting video, in due time, should be met with even more protests on the streets of Warsaw.
food / travel
Squash That Vegan Cannelloni! The Politics Of Going Meat-Free Is Hotter Than Ever
As a representative of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, Gorissen has a long track record of defending meat farmers. Yet, the worry was such that she felt that she had to clarify that her enjoyment of the plant-based cannelloni was not changing her opinions.
Free Choice
She came out with a written statement to reassure the public with details of her dining habits. “I am a person that regularly eats meat,” she said. She also confirmed that there would be no state wide restriction of meat eating, saying “each person should decide for themselves if they want to be meat-free.”
People also continue to oppose veganism in the name of tradition.
Yes, 60 or so years after vegetarianism first came into vogue, mostly as a way to protect the lives of animals, it still causes a stir. Recent international polls show that around 8% of people are vegetarian, whether that be for their health, for animal or environmental rights, or even just for taste. Veganism — which alongside meat also excludes all animal products including dairy, eggs and honey — is the fastest-growing movement, with a recent estimate of 79 million vegans around the world.
If vegetarianism and veganism have become a part of being environmentally and socially conscious, then "meat is part of my diet" is a political statement that goes far beyond animal rights.
It can even enter into policy making. The German Green Party had previously proposed a meat-free day every week and campaigned for a veggie-day in public canteens. This came after they denounced the environmental damage inflicted by the meat industry, which produces large amounts of greenhouse gasses.
But people also continue to oppose veganism in the name of tradition and culture. Labeling something a burger when it does not contain meat has been hotly debated, and many traditional cuisines cannot exist if meat is removed.
German center-right politician Silke Gorissen (left) having lunch outside. Where's the beef?
Silke Gorissen/Instagram
Politics of barbecue
In France, Green party politician Sandrine Rousseau made a comment last summer about meat and manhood that ignited weeks of headlines. “We need to change the mindset that eating ribs on a barbecue is no longer a symbol of masculinity” she said.
Her opponents on the political right called Rousseau delusional and accused her of “attacking men.” On the left, as Paris-based Le Figaro reported, Communist party leader Fabien Roussel criticized her for missing the more salient economic point: Eating meat is “about what is in your wallet, not what is in your trousers.”
NYC’s Eric Adams v. Everyone
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has also received his fair share of insults for being vegan. The black, former police officer made the decision to go green in 2015 to help control his diabetes.
In the past few months, he has been accused of being a “food and climate dictator” who is forcing his “deficient diet” on the most vulnerable for his plan to make New Yorkers healthier through food.
In more pointed character assassinations, Twitter users wondered if the “illiterate pos” who “thinks he’s better than you” suffered “massive brain damage” due to his “vegan snowflake” diet.
Even vegans took a swing, accusing Adams of not going far enough in promoting his diet, for being “all flash and no bang.”
The numbers of vegans and vegetarians continues to grow no matter what the motivation: dietary, environmental, political. And even if meat-eaters are still the majority, it seems reasonable that any kind of cannelloni is worth a taste.
Geopolitics
The Widest Europe: The Meaning Of Moldova In The Face Of Russian Aggression
Suspicion of France
But obviously, the Ukraine conflict and its consequences on Europe will be at the center of the discussions. Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron took advantage of the platform provided to him at the Bratislava Security Conference in Slovakia to share his perspective.
The French President clearly aimed to dispel any ambiguities, misunderstandings, and what he referred to as "fantasies" before joining all the heads of state and government in Europe in Chisinau. This de-escalation operation intends to allow him a stronger influence during the EPC summit.
There is longstanding mistrust towards France in Eastern Europe.
There is a longstanding undercurrent of mistrust towards France in Eastern Europe, suspected of wanting to weaken NATO by advocating for European strategic autonomy, and towards Emmanuel Macron himself due to a number of clumsily worded statements about Putin and Russia.
All of Europe has gathered on Thursday in Moldova, just a few kilometers away from the separatist region of Transnistria, where Russian troops are stationed. The Balkan countries, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and of course, Ukraine, are present as well.
EPC Moldova via Twitter
Macron's stronger position
Emmanuel Macron was slightly self-critical on Wednesday, regarding France being perceived as "arrogant or distant." He went back in time by recalling — without mentioning the author — the famous statement by former President Jacques Chirac about Eastern European countries who "missed an opportunity to stay quiet." This was during the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 when Eastern European countries supported Washington, unlike France and Germany.
This humility, which, let’s admit it, is quite uncommon in France, has allowed him to outline the "political and geopolitical clarification of the European Union" that he desires, in order to address the challenges of the war in Ukraine, the post-war period, and also to not be at the mercy of American voters.
"You can count on France," he concluded. This statement will allow him to arrive in a stronger position in Chisinau, at a time when Europe cannot afford to make any mistakes.
Germany
Khodorkovsky: Don't Count On A Swift End To The War In Ukraine
Imperial control
We should remember that the Russian ultimatum of Dec. 2021 did not demand a withdrawal from Ukraine, but "NATO in the borders of 1997". This demand raised the question of a restoration of imperial control over the Baltic countries, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Balkans. And it brought the fate of East Germany back into the conversation.
There will be an end to the war only if Putin steps down from the political stage.
Independent Ukraine and its heroic armed forces became a stumbling block to Putin's imperial dreams. If Ukraine had surrendered, the West would find forcibly conscripted Ukrainian soldiers in Putin's invading army a year or two after he had established his rule. For Putin, the political cost of Ukrainian lives is zero.
Since war for Putin is a means of mobilizing supporters and a tool for maintaining power, it is difficult to expect long-term peace, no matter what territorial concessions Ukraine could have made. The only guarantee of an end to active hostilities would be a balance of power, in which each strike is met with a corresponding counter strike. Putin must understand that the next cycle of hostilities, if it comes to that, will not be in his favor, because the Ukrainian army can fight better.
This will only be possible with guarantees from the West of immediate support for Ukraine, through a coalition of allies capable of military action. The West must make these guarantees now because — barring dramatic mistakes on the battlefield — it is very likely that the conflict will freeze in the fall and winter of 2023/24, as the offensive potential of both sides is exhausted.
There will be an end to the war only if Putin and his regime step down from the political stage, which is probably only possible through Putin's demise.
Remains of Merkel's Russia policy
The need to stand united against the aggressor for the sake of general security is however not the only lesson to be learned from this year of war. For many countries in Europe, and Germany in particular, the issue of energy security is quite essential.
Many unflattering words are now being heard about former German Chancellor Angela Merkel for allowing Germany to become so dependent on Russian energy supplies. Critics of her foreign policy seem to like to forget that Germany has had additional revenues of $250 billion from this dependence. Unfortunately, these funds have caused many to forget their prudence. The Kremlin's desire to exploit Europe's energy dependence for its own interests then led to an extremely dramatic energy crisis.
I fear these lessons have not been fully learned. The popular notion that wind and solar energy will allow Germany to both preserve its industry and move away from nuclear energy and become independent of authoritarian states that supply fossil fuels is absolutely utopian.
On the contrary, this concept will lead (and is already leading) to a drastic decrease in industrial competitiveness — while the likelihood of military confrontation is high — and at the same time to massive purchases of fossil fuels from other authoritarian regimes.
March 23, 2022: Russian regime critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky speaks out on Russia's war against Ukraine at a press briefing hosted by the Center for Liberal Modernity in Berlin, Germany.
Bernd Von Jutrczenka/ZUMA
Alternatives take time and money
The use of liquefied natural gas (LNG) provides more freedom of movement. It is certainly remarkable how quickly German professionals were able to build efficient LNG terminals. Obviously, the problem was not the engineers and the industry, but the bureaucracy. Nevertheless, it is a fossil fuel and is bought on the general market.
The self-delusion that "if we don't buy oil in Russia, we take away a significant amount of Putin's money" ignores the global nature of the modern oil market. The only way to reduce dependence on this type of energy dictator is an energy transition that uses all, or at least most, of the technologies available today. LNG would then be merely a transitional solution. That means a lot of work, a lot of investment, and a lot of time. So this work must start now.
An alternative would be to resume relations with Putin — a magnificent supplier, who knows how to go for the West's throat, and how much money he can make with it. (And, it's worth noting that a future Donald Trump presidency would mean an end to military support for Ukraine).
Another option, a complete de-industrialization of Europe, would hardly be advisable. An attempt to resume relations with Putin would also lead to such high energy prices that de-industrialization would be inevitable.
A victory for Ukraine, the restoration of its borders, the dethronement of a disgraced dictator, democracy in Russia — these are noble tasks for all of us. But the road to accomplishing them may be longer than we would like.
*Mikhail Khodorkovsky is an exiled Russian energy industry businessman and prominent opposition activist, now residing in London.
Future
AI Is Good For Education — And Bad For Teachers Who Teach Like Machines
But it is a mistaken perspective, as we need to reduce routine-bound and repetitive teaching, and instead concentrate on processes that favor the student's holistic or integral development. AI can help.
A passionate teacher is irreplaceable
The pandemic showed what some technological optimists like Gates could not understand: that good education is not about quantitative learning, but development. It involves teamwork, communication, interaction, and even emotion and artistry. That means people gathered in a classroom.
Teachers with a passion make an impression. Their eagerness is contagious. Their challenges and oversight, and the reading and essays they set for their pupils, promote an ability to reflect, to articulate and to argue. Beyond the page or screen, a good teacher will foment life abilities including resolve and a desire to succeed. Good teaching is key to the student's broader personal development.
Schools that merely transmit information to pupils are at risk.
Teachers have protested the dangerous idea of pupils using an AI chatbot to do their homework. But they are mistaken if they see AI as a simple tool to 'copy' the answers. What AI does do, instead, is threaten a repetitive model of education based on the accumulation of facts and data.
This is the prevalent model in Colombia and Latin America, and it has done nothing to change the profound structures students use to think, read, feel and act. Schools that merely transmit information to pupils are at risk — indeed, they should have disappeared decades ago, because the internet already holds that information.
Some teachers do not realize, however, that the internet does not hold the skills needed for thinking, communicating or living with other people. The educational system should devote itself to developing such skills, and not burden youngsters with facts and rules.
In the future, students will hand in two pieces of written work: one, the chatbot-produced draft and the other, what the student elaborates on its basis. That elaboration is the indicator of the educational process, because learning inevitably entails a significant modification of previous cognitive structures. This is the first condition of development, and the second is integrality.
Students in Class at Berlin's Hunsrück Elementary School solve a task on tablets during class, 16 March 2023, Berlin.
© Soeren Stache via ZUMA press
Teachers to teach
In the future, chatbots will help teachers assess students more accurately. Education must feed and consolidate processes that aid students to overcome weaknesses and access more complex ethical and thought systems. Traditional education stifled this with routines, grading and reports.
Machines will help us transform education to change society for the better.
Feedback is a part of the educational process, which is a dialogue between teacher and pupil. Here, AI will act as a singular monitor of students' progress in learning and absorbing skills in reading, thinking and conceptualization. With this information at hand, the priority for teachers will be to guide, or better guide, mediate, communicate and consolidate the relevant concepts. Our focus will be to advance the developmental process.
Teachers will be able to devote themselves to essential tasks, not the trivial transmission of information or grading. AI can do that, so we can work on developing more empathetic, concerned and creative individuals. Our task will be to shape youngsters who have greater autonomy and understanding of themselves and others, and are able to forge a life project for themselves. These tasks will remain, for some time yet, the preserve of humans.
Gates was mistaken when he said AI could teach as well as people, but right in saying it can provide teachers with great opportunities. I would even say it is the ideal ally in hastening the teaching changes we need to help coming generations.
As the Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai has said, a single girl, a book or a teacher can change the world. I believe education is the best tool to change the people who will change the world.
If Bill Gates is a technological optimist, I am an educational optimist — hoping machines will help us transform education to change society for the better. This should not however be taken as an expression of faith in "technologized" education.
I shall soon ask a chatbot to see what it thinks of this. I know one thing: whatever it says, I shall rework and enhance its feedback, cognizant of its risks, like those of every contraption we have invented since the dawn of our time.
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