An Online Weekend Course
with Eugene Schwartz
Friday, February 23 through Sunday, February 5
Four Lectures and Three Slideshows
The presentations are asynchronous and
may be viewed throughout the weekend.
Tuition: $150
The more than seven hours of audio lectures and slideshows offered in this weekend course represent the most comprehensive and insightful view of AI available in the Waldorf movement.
The launch of the chatbot system ChatGPT in November 2022 took the world by storm; within weeks, over one hundred million people had availed themselves of its astonishing powers. Its speed, clarity, and writing skills appear to be harbingers of a new stage of artificial intelligence that may transform almost every field of human endeavor. And what about Waldorf schools? Some enterprising Waldorf high school students are already using ChatGPT to assist them with history essay assignments or mastering concepts in science, and more than a few teachers have sought its assistance in lesson preparation and may get its help with those onerous end-of-year reports.
In this weekend course Eugene contends that the most important task facing Waldorf educators and parents is to understand the ramifications of artificial intelligence and acknowledge the role that it is already playing in the lives of our students. He will begin with a jargon-free explanation of how a chatbot works. He will then explore the ways in which our own approach to "intelligence" in the Waldorf movement has been unwittingly influenced by modern technology, altering our relationship to knowledge and wisdom. And he will illuminate how the Waldorf approach is needed, more than ever, to empower teachers, parents, and students in counterbalancing AI’s nebulous counter-image of human cognition.
The launch of the chatbot system ChatGPT in November 2022 took the world by storm; within weeks, over one hundred million people had availed themselves of its astonishing powers. Its speed, clarity, and writing skills appear to be harbingers of a new stage of artificial intelligence that may transform almost every field of human endeavor. And what about Waldorf schools? Some enterprising Waldorf high school students are already using ChatGPT to assist them with history essay assignments or mastering concepts in science, and more than a few teachers have sought its assistance in lesson preparation and may get its help with those onerous end-of-year reports.
In this weekend course Eugene contends that the most important task facing Waldorf educators and parents is to understand the ramifications of artificial intelligence and acknowledge the role that it is already playing in the lives of our students. He will begin with a jargon-free explanation of how a chatbot works. He will then explore the ways in which our own approach to "intelligence" in the Waldorf movement has been unwittingly influenced by modern technology, altering our relationship to knowledge and wisdom. And he will illuminate how the Waldorf approach is needed, more than ever, to empower teachers, parents, and students in counterbalancing AI’s nebulous counter-image of human cognition.
Waldorf educators and computers, pre-and-post-Covid. The karmic necessity of technology. The Internet as a database. How does Chat GPT work? Time and space as preconditions of incarnation. The "zombiefication" of thoughts and words. Conversation or persuasion? The oracular qualities of AI; surprising its inventors. Summoning powers beyond our ken.
The "Trojan Ponies" that weakened the Waldorf Wall. Outsourcing and quantifying. Consultants and experts. Homework and textbooks, tests and grades. Greater demands on students, lowered expectations for educators. Teacher training institutes and Anthroposophy as a "subject." The scripted main lesson and the standardized curriculum. Where Waldorf ends. "Not with a bang / But with a whimper."
The Word: spoken, written, and digitized. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and the perception of Intelligence. Descartes and Dualism. The mind and the brain. The self-deception of Waldorf researchers accepting the brain as the seat of intelligence. The descent of Cosmic Intelligence. Electricity and the advent of Ahriman. Theory of Mind.
Rudolf Steiner's 8 to 1 proportion of preparation to teaching. The teacher's efforts as the precondition of learning. The interaction of the etheric and astral bodies in the "learning process." Remembering (Space), forgetting (Time), and understanding. Information, Intelligence, Knowledge. The metamorphosis of lesson content. Learning as a social experience. Intelligence, Knowledge, and Wisdom.
Abraham Lincoln's bodyguard and the birth of the database. The Jacquard Loom, the punchcard, and automation. Herman Hollerith, IBM, and the power of Information. The Turing Test, ELIZA, and HAL.
Ahriman and the Age of Electricity. Science and the Seance. The Crookes Tube. Manipulating light. The Window and the Screen. What's in a name? The longing for radiant light. The lighting of the First Goetheanum.
The metamorphosis of stages of childhood and their reflections in adult life. The non-linear relationships of stages of childhood and adulthood. Do-It-Yourself Databases. Real Intelligence in the Waldorf classroom.
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