From Faustian Pacts to Democratic Guardrails: Teachers Take the Lead on AI
by John MacGabhann, ETUCE President
Welcome to one and all.
Thanks to our Danish affiliates – to BUPL for hosting and GL for supporting the organisation of this important conference; and thank you, colleagues and guests, for taking the time to attend.
Colleagues, good teaching exists entirely independently of Artificial Intelligence. Good teaching is not dependent on, an emanation of or generated by AI. When AI did not exist at all, good teaching flourished. Aristotle and Plato managed rather well, with not a Tablet in sight.
AI is a tool, no more than that. Contrary to what the Ed-Tech companies and their cheerleaders would have us believe, it is not the philosopher’s stone, turning the base metal of our human-centred teaching into AI-enabled gold.
Clearly it is a powerful tool. Its functionality does have a contribution to make and could, used prudently, support teachers and learners. However, it must be for teachers, using their professional judgement and pedagogical knowledge, to decide whether, when and how to use AI – just as is the case with any other tool deployed in an education setting.
The Ed-Tech companies have incurred massive, grotesque cost in a feral race to be at the head of the Ed-Tech pack, to be first to bring their product to market, all the while peddling the illusion that what they are offering is magical and cannot be done without.
Their ultra-libertarian owners, especially those US-based, want to surge over all regulatory barriers, regardless of the cost to nations, societies and citizens. To achieve their goals, and without scruples, they enter Faustian pacts with the current US administration, pandering to its anti-democratic impulses and agenda.
To survive the cull that may be imminent, they need return on their investment and are making huge efforts to panic us, to rush and herd us into their marketplace, there to buy their very expensively developed product. Their aim is market-share and dominance – to generate profit for shareholders and avoid being cannibalised by their competitors.
They have identified us – all of us – teachers, academics, researchers, students, education institutions, municipal authorities, school management, school principals, rectors, government agencies and national governments as their target market.
They have no inherent commitment to our ethical, cultural or educational values, to education as a public good, to equity and inclusion, to the social contract or, it would seem, to democracy. At best they are indifferent, and at worst virulently hostile, to our values. They mouth fine words about quality and equality in education but these are uttered “from the teeth out” – without sincerity or conviction; merely a lure; the words of the fox bent on plundering the chicken coop; a creation of the marketing department. Their commitment is to profit.
Our commitment is fundamentally different. We – as educators, as the leaders of unions representing educators, as ETUCE – the family of education trade unions in the European region – are honour-bound actively and strategically
to defend and promote our human-centred vision of quality public education for all,
to champion European principles, European autonomy, national competence and societal cohesion
to protect the human right of all our students to a quality public education informed by the principles of equity, equality, inclusion and transparency
to defend and promote collegial, democratic decision-making and governance in and for education, and
to prevent the privatisation of a public good, its colonisation by private interests.
We are also, colleagues, bound by our values and our ETUCE policies to protect democracy, to champion informed, discerning, participative citizenship against the populist, far-right, imperialist and fascist forces that far too frequently and very ominously have made common cause with and been promoted and amplified by the Big-Tech cartel, the tech oligarchs.
Therefore, this gathering is not merely a project conference. Your presence here is not for the photo opp., is not performative attendance. It has a truly serious purpose.
We are not here to voice our woes or to parade a litany of concerns or difficulties and obstacles at local or national levels. Our purpose here goes beyond that.
We have a clear, strong policy. The ETUCE Conference in Budva gave us that policy. The imperative now is to implement it. It is necessary and urgent that we activate it in each and every country with an affiliate represented by ETUCE.
Today’s conference therefore has a compelling strategic purpose.
to understand and establish the current state-of-play and preparedness – or panic – in our respective jurisdictions
to identify and operationalise key strategic actions, and not only or primarily at international/ETUCE level.
In each country, the local education unions must decide on and give effect to key strategic actions, must make it impossible for government, employers, managers or institutions to mandate the use of or to deploy AI in education without the structured involvement of education trade unions, without heeding the profession’s voice, in the key decision-making processes – whether they relate to administration, data protection, procurement, assessment, selection, assignment, curriculum or pedagogy.
Any proposed procurement or deployment of AI in the education sector must be regarded, assessed and dealt with both as an industrial relations and a professional issue and must be thoroughly interrogated as such before proceeding.
We are, of course, fully aware that very many of our members and of our students are using AI, are interested in and, sometimes, beguiled by aspects of its functionality. For teachers, AI has the potential to streamline some of the more tedious and time-consuming bureaucratic elements of workload that divert from true professional purpose. However, there is a risk of off-loading one’s professional responsibility to AI. For students, the prospect of short-cuts to completing assignments and to examination success is tempting bait.
We must therefore seek to identify, accurately and objectively, the legitimate potential of AI-enabled technologies and advise and guide all and sundry towards appropriate use and away from improper use.
We must encourage, lobby, badger the EU and national governments not to resile from the commitments – explicit and implied – to robust regulation of AI in the education sector – which in the EU’s AI Act is defined as a high risk sector.
We must counteract the corrosive, subversive influence of the lavishly funded Ed-Tech lobby – recognising that it is complemented by specific threats by the Trump administration to punish Europe if it does not stand down or substantially water down its regulatory framework as set out in the AI Act.
Given the gravitational pull of the Draghi report for the current EU Commission, we must persuade decision-makers that competitiveness is not achieved by capitulation to the profit motivation of Ed-Tech but, rather, is achieved by protecting and improving high quality education for all, which can include use of AI-enabled technologies where appropriate and consistent with good pedagogical practice.
It is of critical importance that we assert and vindicate our professional values and, in this respect, promulgate the key underpinning principles of professional autonomy, academic freedom and full involvement in the decision-making that affects our professional practice.
To this end, we must
demand that ETUCE and its affiliate unions be fully involved in the development of guidelines and guardrails that will help our members to act with professional acuity and prudence when using AI in education and, in that context, vindicate the right of teacher unions to be involved in co-design and governance of AI in education.
oppose careless or hasty procurement from public funds of AI-enabled technologies
advocate for and assist as far as possible the development at EU and national level of indigenous AI capacity and infrastructure that respects our values and recognises the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of the European region
demand the requisite level of public investment to achieve this goal.
This conference gives us an opportunity to learn more about the potential benefits and risks and to strategise accordingly, so that we can bring a coherent and persuasive European education union perspective to the EI Conference on AI in Education in December.
Therefore, let us proceed from here, from Copenhagen, with renewed confidence and the determination to take appropriate action nationally and at EU level and to align such action with the ongoing “Go Public! Fund Education” campaign and our defence of democracy.
