King’s Talk | 数字时代教育的挑战与破局

On January 10th, 2025, King's School organized a lecture themed "Creating a Digital Future," inviting Dr. Chen Jing, an expert with extensive experience in digital humanities, to address the audience. The event attracted numerous parents, all eager to explore how to assist their children in safely using electronic devices, adapting to the digital society, and becoming future digital creators.

Challenges in Current Education

During the lecture, Dr. Chen Jing highlighted several challenges faced by today's education system. At the school level, student involution is a serious issue, driven by meritocracy, which constantly pressures students. The diversified assessment system has increased students' psychological burdens, with potential psychological problems now affecting a significant proportion of high school students, and this trend is spreading to junior high and even primary school levels. Additionally, with the rapid digital transformation, the internet access rate among minors is nearly 100%. However, they face issues such as addiction, lack of discernment, and the tendency to feel isolated and anxious while using the internet. Despite measures like the youth anti-addiction system, the effectiveness has been limited.

Educational Strategies Proposed

To address these challenges, Dr. Chen Jing proposed a series of educational strategies. Theoretically, it is advocated to expand educational resources, urge commercial companies to take ethical responsibilities, tailor education to the specific needs of different regions and groups, and break down disciplinary barriers to achieve interdisciplinary integration. For example, it is now a general requirement for college students to study artificial intelligence courses. Practically, the focus is on cultivating children's digital literacy, which includes abilities such as information data management, creation, team collaboration, problem-solving and innovation, as well as critical, creative, and systematic thinking, and awareness of safety, citizenship, and planning.

Curriculum Frameworks and Standards

Internationally and domestically, relevant curriculum frameworks and standards have been issued. Dr. Chen Jing's team is currently collaborating with King's School to promote AI-related courses. They design teaching methods according to the characteristics of children of different age groups, such as thematic teaching in primary school and project-based teaching in higher grades. In curriculum design, emphasis is placed on starting from basic links like data collection, using life examples to transform into data thinking teaching, and through continuous and stable curriculum arrangements and the assistance of parent manuals, achieving cooperation between school and family.

In-depth discussion in the Q&A session

The interactive Q&A session saw enthusiastic participation from parents. Regarding the digital education connection problem between junior high school, senior high school, and university, Dr. Chen Jing believes that there is currently a disconnection, and universities should strengthen cooperation with middle schools to explore suitable paths. In terms of AGI response, universities have taken active actions, designed interdisciplinary courses, used AIGC tools cautiously, and guided students to participate in scientific research to deeply understand AI. Creative cultivation requires designing digital tool teaching according to children's age and stimulating interest points. Regarding children's ideas about the digital world, parents should actively communicate and guide, and view AI technology rationally. In AI cognition education, it is necessary to refine teaching content and strengthen school-home cooperation. Regarding children's digital resource usage rights, it is suggested that parents strictly filter when children are young and make decisions together with children. Regarding children's social and gaming issues, parents should participate moderately and understand, instead of simply prohibiting.

Dr. Chen Jing also encourages students to become "super nodes" that link the complex networks of society. By gathering information and resources from different fields, they can carry out cross-boundary integration, promoting the growth and the revolution of the digital society.