Greetings HillCo Families,

Last week, I attended an AI summit with a handful of Hill Country staff members. Thank you to HillCo parents Matt and Julie Kouri for inviting us! I’ve been ruminating on what I learned at the summit almost non-stop since last Thursday. In particular, I’ve been wrestling with how the AI movement will disrupt education—both higher education and K-12 education.

I don’t have a formal thesis on how AI will disrupt education in the next three to four years, but one thing I do know is that it will disrupt the current state of education. While I can’t predict exactly how our school and education in general will be impacted, here are a few thoughts I want to share with you today:

1. Our school MUST wrestle with this question. Sticking our heads in the sand and hoping it goes away will only leave us vulnerable to the already challenging disruptions that will take place. I’m grateful for Hill Country’s foresight on this matter. We have already launched an AI Task Force to wrestle with the impacts of AI on our school and to prepare practically for the disruptions we see on the horizon.
   
2. As an educator first, I am actually a little excited for this disruption even though it is a bit daunting. Here is why. I think AI may force us to contemplate the purpose of education in ways that we haven’t previously thought about. Education in America has been primarily outcome-based since the late 1800s. Before this, education was more generalized—think classical liberal arts education, which educated students on a wide body of knowledge, in comparison to the new focus on specialization. In fact, it may surprise you to learn that specific degrees didn’t become standard in higher education until after the Civil War. What does this have to do with AI? AI makes the outcome, or the knowledge needed to be mastered by a particular degree or focus, obsolete. We do, and will increasingly have, all the information in the world at the tip of a Siri search. What is the point of getting a degree, or going to school for that matter, if we can ask Chat GPT anything we need to know?
   
3. Lastly, education should never have been solely about outcomes. From the beginning, education was about the development of the whole child. Take Deuteronomy 6, for example, where Moses commands parents to teach their children to love God with their heart, soul, mind, and strength by: “Impress(ing) them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:7), or when Jesus says, “When a child is fully trained he will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). Education was intended to be about more than outcomes—degrees, test scores, college entrance, final essays, etc. It has always been about educating the whole child—heart, soul, mind, and strength. AI will force us to return to the beauty of the educational process rather than the final product. I believe this will have a positive effect on education, and more importantly, on our students. It just may be a little bumpy to get to that place.

I believe the purpose of Hill Country Christian School is more critical than ever as we continue to prepare students for college and for life.

Looking forward to partnering with you through these uncharted waters.

In Christ,

Eric DeVries, Head of School