By Eugenia Manolidou
Recent international assessments reveal a silent crisis: children struggle to comprehend, to interpret, to think. Have we all, in this age of information, somehow “forgotten” how to learn?
A few days ago, I attended the international educational conference “Education and the Great Challenges of the 21st Century,” organised by Athens College as part of its centenary celebrations. Its aim was to open a substantial dialogue on the future and vision of education, the role of the teacher, the key skills students must develop to meet contemporary challenges, and the integration of emerging technologies into teaching and learning.
What struck me most was a shared concern: an educational horizon increasingly shaped by technology, and conversely, one that seems ever less centred on the human act of inquiry.
According to the OECD PISA programme (2022), only 62% of fifteen-year-olds in Greece reached at least Level 2 in reading literacy, compared with a higher average among OECD countries. In mathematics, the corresponding figure was 53%, while the international average stood at around 69%. Even more strikingly, only 2% of students achieved the top Levels 5–6, where critical and analytical reasoning are measured. These data suggest that a significant proportion of pupils struggle to identify a text’s main idea, to distinguish evidence from opinion, or to explain a simple situation logically. Education, in other words, seems to be losing the vital link between knowledge and understanding.
Globally, PISA 2022 recorded an overall decline in reading and mathematics compared with 2018 — a finding that deepens concern for the resilience of essential cognitive skills.
Within this context, the rapid spread of Artificial Intelligence in everyday education introduces what might be called a paradox of ease: machines deliver instant, persuasive answers, and the learner risks abandoning the act of questioning altogether.
International organisations have begun to call for a counterbalance. The UNESCO Global Policy Framework for Generative AI in Education emphasises the need for a human-centred perspective, the strengthening of pedagogical judgement, and the ability to evaluate sources. The OECD, in its Digital Education Outlook and AI guidelines, likewise stresses the importance of “safeguards” and of cultivating critical thinking through effective teaching practices. Its ongoing projects on creativity and critical-thinking assessment are already forming international communities of practice that share classroom applications.
And what, after all, do these findings reveal?
That children have lost the courage of curiosity — the impulse that gives rise to knowledge and to doubt.
So let us ask in turn:
Who first taught humankind that genuine learning begins not with the answer, but with the question?
Who showed that education is not the transmission of information but the birth of thought?
Who instilled in the young the ethos of dialogue, self-knowledge, and the ability to seek truth through reason rather than repeat opinions offered ready-made?
Who left humanity a legacy of teaching that contained no syllabus, yet gave birth to every science?
Exactly.
However reluctant we may be to admit it, what algorithms truly do is push us back into the arms of Socrates.
The return to philosophical inquiry and linguistic precision is essential for the formation of intellectual autonomy. The cultivation of reasoning, analytical thought, and semantic discernment must begin from the earliest stages of education.
This is not a call to reinstate philosophy or Ancient Greek as formal subjects, but to use them as pedagogical tools that strengthen intellectual discipline, argumentation, and critical reflection. Through language and philosophy, students learn to define, to reason, and to question with evidence — to think rather than merely reproduce.
The education of the future will not be saved by the speed of information but by the quality of thought. For in the end, technology may provide answers — but only questions can lead us to truth. And that, from the time of Socrates to our own, remains the foundation of all true education.