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Speaker 1: You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast

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Speaker 1: from News Talks at Me.

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Speaker 2: Do you know I still remember the exact seat in

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Speaker 2: which I was sitting. It was twenty years ago. It

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Speaker 2: was twenty years ago, which honestly makes me feel a

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Speaker 2: little bit sick in my mouth. But it was twenty

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Speaker 2: years ago, and I was primed for one of the

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Speaker 2: key exams in my tertiary education. I had passed tea

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Speaker 2: line shorthand at forty words a minute, at fifty words

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Speaker 2: a minute, at sixty words at seventy words a minute.

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Speaker 2: But to progress on my journalism course and ultimately earn

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Speaker 2: a degree, I had one final challenge. I had to

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Speaker 2: pass a tea line shorthand exam at eighty words a minute.

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Speaker 2: We learned tea line from a wonderful tutor, a woman

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Speaker 2: called Julie, with exacting standards, a wicked sense of humor,

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Speaker 2: and away with words. She would walk around the classroom

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Speaker 2: and peer over your shoulder when you were tracing out

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Speaker 2: different characters. That's a squitty looking outline, she'd say, with

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Speaker 2: a wry smile. The moment I realized I had passed

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Speaker 2: eighty words a minute, I walked up to the front

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Speaker 2: of the class and kissed her on the cheek. It

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Speaker 2: took five months of work, with daily lessons. Sometimes you'd

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Speaker 2: be doing three hours in class every day. I drilled

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Speaker 2: myself with cassette tapes at home, but in a stuffy

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Speaker 2: room on the Draft Street in central christ Church. Finally

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Speaker 2: had done it. But here's the crazy thing. That was

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Speaker 2: the very last time I seriously used tea line shorthand.

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Speaker 2: That's no reflection on Julie. She was an amazing tutor,

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Speaker 2: and shorthand skills had been fundamental for journalists for however

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Speaker 2: many decades. But back in two thousand and five, what

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Speaker 2: no one had apparently stopped to consider was whether those

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Speaker 2: skills would be necessary in a world on the cusp

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Speaker 2: of smart phones. What's the point in trying to keep

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Speaker 2: up with shorthand in an interview when your phone can

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Speaker 2: record a abateam interview and even transcribe it in real time.

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Speaker 2: Since our son was born four months ago, I've kind

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Speaker 2: of found myself thinking a lot about my shorthand experience

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Speaker 2: in the context of AI, and I keep kind of

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Speaker 2: returning to this fundamental question, what skills and knowledge should

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Speaker 2: we actually bother teaching our kids. In the UK, surveys

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Speaker 2: have suggested that about ninety percent of university students are

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Speaker 2: using AI to help with assessments. Frankly, I'm surprised it's

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Speaker 2: not more. But educators around the world are trying to

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Speaker 2: grapple with how to get around the likes of chat, GPT,

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Speaker 2: clawed and deep seek in assessing students learning. So far,

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Speaker 2: at least, technology which purports to scan students submissions for

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Speaker 2: signs of AI is having mixed results at best. Many

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Speaker 2: assesses are advocation for a complete return to in person

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Speaker 2: exams with handwritten essays. And yet in stewing over this, yeah,

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Speaker 2: I couldn't help, but wonder if in some ways that

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Speaker 2: misses the point. It's like long division in the age

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Speaker 2: of the calculator, right, Sure, it's a nice to know,

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Speaker 2: but be honest, do you actually use it? How many

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Speaker 2: of us actually need manual long division skills in the

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Speaker 2: modern age? And what's the point in wrote learning historical

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Speaker 2: dates when they are but a google away? What's the

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Speaker 2: point in learning where to place a semicolon when you

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Speaker 2: can always spell and grammar check your work when it

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Speaker 2: comes to AI instead of trying to work around it.

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Speaker 2: I have been wondering are we not just better to

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Speaker 2: fully embrace it and try and teach our kids how

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Speaker 2: to maximize the utility of the technology. Ultimately, though, two

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Speaker 2: points have given me reason to pause. First of all,

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Speaker 2: it occurs to me that we as humans are actually

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Speaker 2: not very good at foreseeing what skills will and won't

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Speaker 2: be relevant in the workplace of the future. I mean,

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Speaker 2: it was only a few years ago, right that everyone

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Speaker 2: was urging young people to drop everything and learn how

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Speaker 2: to code, and now coding jobs are among the first

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Speaker 2: ones being gobbled up by generitive artificial intelligence. And it's easy,

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Speaker 2: in reflecting in my tea line shorthand example, to miss

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Speaker 2: an even greater point. Yes, it's true t line skills

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Speaker 2: have not been necessary or helpful in my almost twenty

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Speaker 2: years of journalism. But what has been helpful is the

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Speaker 2: discipline that experience taught me. What has been helpful is

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Speaker 2: the organizational skill, is the accountability, the professionalism in learning

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Speaker 2: tea line shorthand. Yep, I learned shorthand, but more importantly,

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Speaker 2: I learned how to learn. And whether it's through long division,

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Speaker 2: historical essays, or anything else, surely that is the skill

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Speaker 2: that we should aspire to educate in our kids.

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Speaker 1: For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live

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Speaker 1: to News Talks at B from nine am Saturday, or

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Speaker 1: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio