Re-Personalization: AI and the Classical Revival of Modern Education

When I graduated from university in 2022, I had no idea I belonged to the last class of students untouched by AI. Just five months after my degree was conferred, OpenAI released ChatGPT and precipitated a major shift in how we work and learn. When pursuing my graduate studies, I found myself surrounded by the not-so-subtle signs of increasing AI use among students: an LLM was an open tab on everyone's browser, the number of hands going up during lecture was drastically lower, and the average standard of writing improved to a level that raised a few eyebrows. In response, the faculty introduced a plethora of policies surrounding AI use, ranging from outright bans to open use in exams (with citations).

I'm still not sure whether AI helped or hurt my learning. In conjunction with my lecture notes, AI provided an interactive studying tool that helped to clarify key concepts better than churning through search results. Simultaneously, the habit of prompting ChatGPT for explanations in real time left me wondering whether I had given those key concepts the depth of reflection they deserve. Ultimately, the hybrid, course-by-course system of AI integration felt like the best the faculty could have done, considering how new LLMs are. I was lucky: the computing faculty at a world-class university is perhaps one of the best places at designing an AI-driven pedagogy. Among future AI natives currently pursuing primary and secondary education, the situation must be radically different. Syllabi at the national level can't adapt quickly enough, and pedagogical staples such as homework have been rendered obsolete. Although it increasingly seems to be the case, education isn't broken; it is instead set on a path of transformation that might just reawaken the joys of learning for everyone.

Scaling a System: Modern Education and Its Discontents

The History of Standardized Education and the Myth of the Factory School

Most historical figures, as any student of history will know, never attended primary or secondary school. Instead, classical education was often a privilege of the elite (or holy), primarily conducted through private tutoring¹ and apprenticeship². Private tutoring (which I will be referring to as classical tutoring to prevent confusion with the private tutoring of today) might culminate in the university, often considered to be the pinnacle of intellectual life. The university retains much of its original mandate: privately organized, tutor-driven instruction coupled with a focus on pushing the limits of our knowledge further and further. Classical tutoring, on the other hand, has seen a large decline when compared to modern education. Apprenticeship, too, while echoed in modern forms like mentorship programs and medical residencies, has changed dramatically and has become more limited in scope.

Much of classical education was superseded by standardized education two centuries ago. In the early 19th century, Prussia enhanced the original vision for education laid out by Frederick the Great in 1763³. The German kingdom provided staples of modern education, such as tax-funded primary school education, standardized curriculum and tests, professional training of teachers, and secularization. In contrast to the older models of education focused on private tutoring and apprenticeship, this system of standardized education was centralized and oriented around nation-building⁴.

The Prussian model had its competition. Competing models like the monitorial system, for example, divided students by reading ability rather than age⁵. A single teacher oversaw a large room, while student "monitors" were in charge of teaching their peers. These alternatives quickly faded, and most countries around the world adapted the Prussian model to offer accessible, professional education to as many of their citizens as possible*⁶.

While doing research for this post, I expected to critique our current education system by pointing out how it was designed to create the compliant, literate factory workers needed to fuel the Industrial Revolution. This criticism of the Prussian model resulting in so-called "factory schools" is widespread among those seeking to transform the current system, despite the many historians who have criticized this epithet⁵. The warehouse-size halls of the monitorial system arguably resembled factories more than today's classrooms, and industrialization wasn't the primary motivator for standardized education in the first place⁵. Even if the arguments against the ahistorical "factory schools" were valid, it's crucial for us to recognize and appreciate the greatest gift of the standardized system: accessibility. For the first time in millennia, education wasn't a privilege enjoyed solely by the wealthy—education was universal, a rudimentary expectation of a developed society. Modern education might just be one of humanity's greatest accomplishments, and the myth of the factory school hints at genuine concerns while failing to recognize both the enormous benefits of accessibility and the many successful attempts at pedagogical reform pioneered by educators and policymakers.

What Accessibility Left Behind

And yet, why is there discontent? For many living through the churn of the standardized system, education is a series of passionless battles, whether it is against fellow students, teachers, or the cold impersonality of exams. The modern curriculum's focus on accessibility over personalization causes a disparate impact: weaker students struggle to better themselves due to a self-perpetuating cycle of poor results and pessimism, while stronger students find themselves bored due to a standardized pace they find too slow. Many countries around the world have designed solutions to better personalize the learning experience, with academic streaming and subject combinations being among the most common strategies. However, such solutions are oftentimes incomplete, leaving much to be desired. One might argue that what remains of education should be done through family or religion, but the all-encompassing timetables of modern education system strip away much of this freedom from parents and community leaders. This lack of personalization dulls the joys of learning for many, leaving students primed to pursue education solely as job preparation, and not for its own sake. This sentiment is echoed in one of the most notable complaints leveled by students: why am I learning about X when I won't be using it in my future career?

Education was never meant to serve only the job market. To learn for its own sake—that has always been the traditional goal⁷. To instill a love for humanity and the universe. To find one's own place in the grand scheme of all that was, is, and will be. Education as job training might suffice for the workplace, but education as an end in itself goes beyond this and permeates the very essence of life itself.

Importantly, education is not limited to general knowledge. Apprenticeship remained a cornerstone of classical education, and it went well beyond occupational training. It merged high levels of technical education with sophisticated ethical and cultural knowledge. In fact, apprenticeship was the primary route for education for much of human history. Being an apprentice meant learning how to be a contributing member of society, not just learning a trade or acquiring a skill⁸. Personalized education, whether through apprenticeship or private instruction, cultivated mastery, interdisciplinarity, and a strong sense of community.

Education must adapt to the rise of AI, and this fact is certain. What is not certain is how it should adapt. The world modern education was built for is fading, with AI radically changing not just how we learn, but also what we might be learning. As we grapple with what learning should become, we must also ask: what does the workforce of the future look like?

Cutting the Middleman: AI and the Bifurcation of Knowledge Work

AI is a form of general-purpose automation, like electricity or the internet before it, and it's poised to transform the workplace in ways we're only beginning to grasp. However, there are some noticeable trends. As the quality of the frontier models and their agents improve, human-AI collaboration will increase, as will automation of tedious, low-value tasks. Ironically, as more reasoning gets outsourced to AI, the nature of work transforms to something more human.

Why? One of the consequences of the AI boom is that the average quantity and quality of work produced by employees will be higher by today's standards. This might seem counter-intuitive, especially given the glut of low-quality AI content online, but the equalizing effects of AI will only get better as the models improve at producing creative output and as people refine their ability to work with AI as a co-intelligence. AI tends to disproportionately benefit weaker performers, raising the bar for everyone and intensifying competition as a result.

How, then, can we differentiate between prospective hires? Their ability to collaborate with AI may become the primary differentiator. However, candidates will also be differentiated based on their soft skills: can they communicate well? Can they lead? Some soft skills, such as communication and creative thinking, directly tie into effective AI collaboration as well.

In the long term, human judgment and relational trust are likely to be valued at a premium. Such a world would need those who can think across domains, embrace risk, and guide others through uncertainty towards goals rooted in people and business outcomes. Meanwhile, there will be less and less space for those working on repetitive tasks, or for those who act as mere conduits for information in an organization chart.

Deeply technical individuals who have retained their hard skills despite the rise of AI will still be needed, though likely in smaller numbers than today. These individuals will likely stick to using AI as a tool and not as a surrogate for their reasoning, instead focusing solely on their own craft. In this group, we find researchers, designers, and artists, all providing bespoke services to clients who value excellence and precision. With most of the low-skill processes automated by AI, this new class of artisans may find new freedom to pursue their craft with focus and creativity.

For those familiar with software engineering titles, this might already sound a bit familiar; these two branching paths echo the mid-career transition into either engineering management or the individual contributor track. AI will intensify this divide: managers will increasingly focus on orchestrating human-AI-human relationships, while individual contributors will focus on providing reliability and precision, especially in cases where AI might fail. In due course, this bifurcated model will likely spread to other knowledge-based industries, such as law, accounting, and other forms of engineering.

Re-Personalization: What Classical Education Offers the Age of AI

Classical education centers on learning for its own sake, with the two primary models being classical tutoring and apprenticeship. Classical tutoring was not done for social cohesion or workforce preparation. Instead, it cultivated virtue, rhetoric, logic, and leadership. Examinations were rarely timed tests with high stakes. Instead, they were typically personal and oral, revolving around understanding and critical thinking⁹. Apprenticeship echoes these ideals: though its aim was professional training, the pace and content was personalized, often embedding apprentices in a system of civic and personal values.

In the search for ways to reform education, we can find some inspiration in how it was conducted in the past. Classical tutoring offers interdisciplinary education with a strong focus on literacy and leadership, mapping nicely to the primary skills that will be valued in the AI generalists of the future. Meanwhile, apprenticeship, with its strong and personalized culture of mentorship, inculcates the personal and professional skills required for hyper-specialist artisans. Ironically, AI might make modern education's greatest weakness its greatest strength: education for work will align more closely with education for life.

However, just like with the myth of the factory school, the idea of neoclassical education can result in sweeping dismissals of the current system, which clearly still works more often than not. Classical education was hugely exclusionary, with classical tutoring, for example, generally only accessible to the elite and priestly classes. Unless we want to return to an era where most humans lived in squalor, we cannot regress to the old models wholesale. Whatever spark of inspiration the past might bring must be harnessed as a productive flame, or else it might spiral into an uncontrollable inferno.

How might we then approach this reform? If the overarching goal of modern education is to build a competent and literate workforce, then rapid changes in work should be closely accompanied by equally rapid changes in how we educate. Unfortunately, the modern system of state-controlled education is still arguing in some places about calculator use. I return to my assertion in the introduction: "the computing faculty at a world-class university is perhaps one of the best places at designing an AI-driven pedagogy". While the role of "computing faculty" and "world-class" in that assertion was clear, what might not have been as obvious was the role of "university". As mentioned, the university continues to embody the spirit of classical education. Individual professors and small faculties can move faster than the state can, and the course-by-course model of tertiary education offers several opportunities for trial and error. A neoclassical approach to classical tutoring might adapt key features of the modern university–such as decentralized instruction and subject-based modularity–to younger students, while striving to balance personalization with accessibility.

Apprenticeship already exists in many cultures and industries worldwide, such as sushi apprenticeships in Japan¹⁰ or the teacher-disciple tradition (guru-shishya parampara) in Indian classical music¹¹. However, societal expectations have evolved to care much more about standardized metrics of results such as credentials and test results, often leaving apprenticeship either sidelined as part of a hobby, diminished through impersonal structures, or ignored completely. To prepare the artisans of the future, apprenticeship could be revived as a standalone credential and be appended to the existing system as the seed of some greater reform. By integrating apprenticeships with existing systems, they transform from time-intensive relics to structured paths towards mastery^¹².

Classical education, through classical tutoring and apprenticeship, offers us a compelling path forward for the age of AI, especially now that the traditional and modern goals of education are beginning to converge due to the bifurcation of knowledge work. Universities, with their decentralized and modular nature, show us both how the classical approach can still work and how we can get there. While many public systems may struggle to reform at scale, small and agile institutions are well-positioned to lead the charge. Crucially, however, the urge to change shouldn't supersede prudence. After all, without the availability and scalability of modern education, the very development of AI might have taken far, far longer. If we are to build an education system worthy of the world AI is creating, we must look beyond the binary of old versus new. The future of education lies in combining scale with soul: will you heed the call?

* One example would be how Horace Mann, after a visit to Prussia, began the adoption of the Prussian model of education in the United States in the early 19th century. While this represented an important step in the centralization of education, it's crucial to consider that this adoption wasn't wholesale; education in America reflected the more local and decentralized nature of governance at the time, in contrast with the system's country of origin⁶.

^ This is already implemented to a certain capacity in the form of on-the-job/skills-based training¹², but for modern apprenticeship to be anything like its classical origins, the current model requires further expansion, both in terms of disciplines offered and the social and cultural role it can play.

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