Future Advancements in Education by Karina

Future Advancements in Education by Karina - September 2025 Scholarship Essay

Over the last 50 years, technology has advanced exponentially, more than we could have even thought to imagine. As our technology advances, so does our society, and therefore our education. If you were to compare a student from the 1970s to the 2020s, you’d notice the difference in the way they think, they speak, and the way they act that can be directly traced back to their education. So, you can only imagine the differences between a student from today vs. in the next 10 years.

While you could write a whole different essay on what will happen, this is about what I’d like to see, and for that it’s all about their educations. I’d enjoy students to be inspired to think more and read more, especially outside of their work. Students nowadays associate reading and writing with their boring and annoying homework, making them less likely to continue it in the future. Reading and writing however are some of the most important things for humanity. It helps us to share knowledge and information of everything, and without it we would be completely lost. I believe that teaching students early on about the importance of reading and writing and letting them explore their own path with it will allow them to think more, especially with critical thinking.

The consumption of media has more than doubled in these last ten years. With the rise of social media and Tiktok, information has never been more accessible. However, with the rise of easily spreading information also comes the rise of easily spreading misinformation. With all the misinformation that is spread and developed in the brains of often young students, it causes them to think less about what they’re reading but instead read it, consume it, share it, then throw it out and never think of it again. It harms their brain and should be something that we look to stop doing in the future. When I was in my freshman year of highschool, our history teacher taught us a lesson about the “skills of the historian” as he put it, which was all about researching who was behind a paper and what bias they may have and how that could affect their writings. It helped us to make better research essays and think more about what we’re reading. This should be a standard in education. Everyone should learn more about what they’re reading and where it came from.

Savings the best for last, it’s time to talk about the use of AI. I am human, so I worry for the environmental impacts of AI, but I will admit that AI can be used as a good tool in doses. To compare it to a much more chewable subject, think of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an open-source site that allows anyone and everyone to add information. That means some of it is bad, but a lot of what Wikipedia has is also good. They list every source they use that allows you to have a library of easily accessible sources on one topic, no matter the popularity, to research on. AI is within the same vein. While it may spread misinformation and cause a form of writing that is both lackluster and hard to read, it can also be used as a tool to help with more robotic tasks, such as grammar and punctuation. It could even be used as a way to help you compile your sources and collect them in an easily accessible spot. If used in schools, AI could revolutionize the way we write our boring papers and make us focus on the content rather than the grammatical errors.

Education is something that has come a long way. While in the beginning, it was sparse and taught to few, it’s become a global standard. As our society evolves it’s important to make sure our education system evolves with it. I hope that in the future we can see a rise in things like critical thinking, better tools, and more writers and readers that will be the next generation of historians and writers.