{"id":971,"date":"2026-09-23T09:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/?p=971"},"modified":"2026-09-22T13:43:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T17:43:38","slug":"and-another-thought-about-ai-and-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/blog\/2026\/09\/23\/and-another-thought-about-ai-and-education\/","title":{"rendered":"And another thought about AI and education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now that I\u2019ve started, I can\u2019t stop seeing new angles on this topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I just started Adam Gopnik\u2019s <em>The Real Work<\/em>. It\u2019s a book-length meditation on how to find mastery in your life.<sup><a id=\"ffn1\" href=\"#fn1\" class=\"footnote\">1<\/a><\/sup> He\u2019s talking about mastery on page 2, but he could have been talking about effort and satisfaction in learning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>What really moves and stirs us is <em>accomplishment<\/em>, that moment of mastery when suddenly we feel that something profoundly difficulty, tenaciously thorny, has given way, and we are now the Master of It, instead of us being mastered <em>by<\/em> it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s what we need to inspire in our students, a feeling of mastery, that they are masters of the subject, not the other way around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\t<li><a id=\"fn1\"><\/a>\u201cThe real work\u201d is a phrase magicians use when talking among themselves about their craft. It is, in Gopnik\u2019s words, \u201cwhat makes a magic effect magical.\u201d <a href=\"#ffn1\">&#8617;<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;What really moves and stirs us is accomplishment, that moment of mastery when suddenly we feel that something profoundly difficulty, tenaciously thorny, has given way, and we are now the Master of It, instead of us being mastered by it.&#8221; &#8211; Adam Gopnik<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}