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EL ESPECTADOR

Where Pope Francis Has Failed: On Women's Equality

Nuns in St. Peter's Square
Nuns in St. Peter's Square
Juan Carlos Botero

BOGOTA — It is no easy task trying to talk about the errors of Pope Francis. The achievements of Argentina's Jorge Bergoglio, both in words and deeds, have been frankly quite startling.

Acts of humility by the Supreme Pontiff have had a tremendous public impact, like kneeling to wash and kiss the feet of prisoners, including a Muslim woman, or officially recognizing the Palestinian state. He has generously stretched his hands out to atheists and raised it unstintingly to excommunicate the Italian mafia.

Before ongoing, eternal doubts on homosexuality, instead of stating an opinion and calling it an "abomination" as the Bible does and as popes have done for centuries, he responded with a more inclusive and understanding attitude. "Who am I to judge?" he said.

He has contributed to the renewal of ties between the United States and Cuba, and denounced the economic model of capitalism that offers no compassion for the less fortunate. He eschews the pomp that power bestows and lives in modesty and simplicity, asking his colleagues to renounce the deceptive lure of luxury to devote themselves to the needy.
He has not hesitated to call the massacres of Armenians "genocide," nor to cleanse the Vatican"s finances, demanding transparency in its investments. Employees suspected of corruption have been dismissed, and secret accounts used for massive money laundering revealed.
Let it be said that the pope was expected to behave just like his predecessors. The fact that he has turned out to be an exception speaks well of him and badly of the Roman Curia, where it appears people with Francis' scrupulous honesty and humility are actually very few.
So what is Pope Francis"s mistake? Sadly, it's a big one, brought to light recently when he denounced the inequality of wages between men and women. What he said was right, of course: There is no justification for paying someone less than another person to do the same job merely because of gender. In the European Union, a woman earns 16% less than her male colleagues, and in the U.S., she earns 77 cents for every dollar paid to a man.
The pope called this inequality a scandal. But if he is right, his own comments are perhaps not so much an error as an act of incoherence, since he heads one of the world's most sexist institutions. There is no reason why women should not officiate mass as they do, perfectly well, in the Episcopal Church, or become priests, cardinals, bishops and even pope.
Female leadership, so necessary and fruitful in the worlds of finance, politics, sports and design, remains banned in an institution that declares itself the defender of Christian morality. This incoherence has proved costly to the Vatican, and it is time for this humane and revolutionary pope to apply his reformism to the matter of the place of women in the Church. Only good things would follow.

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Future

AI Is Good For Education — And Bad For Teachers Who Teach Like Machines

Despite fears of AI upending the education and the teaching profession, artificial education will be an extremely valuable tool to free up teachers from rote exercises to focus on the uniquely humanistic part of learning.

Journalism teacher and his students in University of Barcelona.

Journalism students at the Blanquerna University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

© Sergi Reboredo via ZUMA press
Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ - Early in 2023, Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates included teaching among the professions most threatened by Artificial Intelligence (AI), arguing that a robot could, in principle, instruct as well as any school-teacher. While Gates is an undoubted expert in his field, one wonders how much he knows about teaching.

As an avowed believer in using technology to improve student results, Gates has argued for teachers to use more tech in classrooms, and to cut class sizes. But schools and countries that have followed his advice, pumping money into technology at school, or students who completed secondary schooling with the backing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have not attained the superlative results expected of the Gates recipe.

Thankfully, he had enough sense to add some nuance to his views, instead suggesting changes to teacher training that he believes could improve school results.

I agree with his view that AI can be a big and positive contributor to schooling. Certainly, technological changes prompt unease and today, something tremendous must be afoot if a leading AI developer, Geoffrey Hinton, has warned of its threat to people and society.

But this isn't the first innovation to upset people. Over 2,000 years ago, the philosopher Socrates wondered, in the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus, whether reading and writing wouldn't curb people's ability to reflect and remember. Writing might lead them to despise memory, he observed. In the 18th and 19th centuries, English craftsmen feared the machines of the Industrial Revolution would destroy their professions, producing lesser-quality items faster, and cheaper.

Their fears were not entirely unfounded, but it did not happen quite as they predicted. Many jobs disappeared, but others emerged and the majority of jobs evolved. Machines caused a fundamental restructuring of labor at the time, and today, AI will likely do the same with the modern workplace.

Many predicted that television, computers and online teaching would replace teachers, which has yet to happen. In recent decades, teachers have banned students from using calculators to do sums, insisting on teaching arithmetic the old way. It is the same dry and mechanical approach to teaching which now wants to keep AI out of the classroom.

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