Kim Man-gon's Education Forum 6 Million Students Creating 6 Million Types of Textbooks!

AI digital textbooks have become controversial—some oppose the policy outright, while the National Assembly has classified them as learning materials, creating repeated disputes. The underlying issue seems to be that textbooks are distributed using government budgets, whereas learning materials are purchased by individual schools at their own expense if they choose to do so. Currently, only schools that wish to participate are using them this year for elementary grades 3 and 4, and middle and high school grade 1 (English, mathematics, and information).

A large-scale EdTech exhibition was held in London in January. While not widely publicized, four Korean publishing companies reportedly attracted attention by demonstrating AI digital textbooks.

I felt some regret and disappointment about this. First, there is the question of why these efforts did not receive comparable attention domestically. It is not that textbooks must maintain their status by gaining popularity. Regardless of their classification, I felt regret that they could not demonstrate the passion and conviction to reach teachers and students and bring about a "classroom revolution."

According to reports, promotional materials displayed the phrase "5 million textbooks for 5 million students." Isn't this a truly "revolutionary idea"?

However, there was no clear explanation of this remarkable idea. "Presenting suitable problems by assessing student levels"? Isn't such "personalized learning" something that was already possible before? "Ability to systematically manage student learning data and provide rapid feedback"? Why was this functionality explained with emphasis only on problem-solving and review?

What caught my eye was an interview with Publisher V found at the end of the article. "Digital education can overcome the limitations of traditional educational methods that could not satisfy all students." "We want to create an environment where students can study in an enjoyable way."

Consider a class focused on knowledge transmission. Who should be the target audience for the explanation? High-achieving students? Average or lower-performing groups? Regardless of which tier of students is the primary target, certain students are neglected, and they must endure this situation for years. "When you teach top-performing students, it is interesting, but they can manage well on their own. Do not forget that those who truly need you are the average students," Eric Hobsbawm pleaded. However, in a classroom with multiple students, there are inevitable practical constraints.

The concern is naturally about students who fall behind. This is true everywhere in the world. This is why the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) from the Bush administration, which addressed policies to eliminate underperforming students, resonated with many countries. In Korea's case, a former gubernatorial candidate's pledge "I will not leave any child behind" was welcomed, and many people applauded when a certain educational organization declared long ago that it would "take responsibility for each and every student with disabilities."

The "classroom revolution" ultimately aligns with the purpose of individualized learning. If it merely amounts to having students solve problems and AI informing teachers of this situation, it is at a rudimentary level. The teacher's consideration, advice, and guidance are essential, and such instruction must be consistent across all subjects. Students will build their own textbooks as they accumulate data according to their learning in each subject.

Teachers will use AI's assistance to help each student walk their own path. That is what the classroom revolution should be. Having all students receive identical lessons from the same textbook and same problems is not a revolution, no matter how advanced it becomes. The story of Ashton-Warner, a rural elementary school teacher in New Zealand, who taught Maori children became widely known through her book "Teacher" (1963). She argued: "Have your students come up with their own stories and use them in their learning."

This is not a story from developing countries long ago. It remains backward to have all students uniformly learn from the same textbook in the same way, as was done in the 1960s. Now that AI has been introduced, I look forward to a day when all students, whether through textbooks or learning materials, create their own textbooks and study with joy and enthusiasm.