An incident which occurred recently has brought to mind, a few weeks earlier than usual, a memory that comes up every year for me as we approach the graduation season.
My own graduation from college was a happy occasion. On that day, I walked across the stage and accepted my diploma as my parents and my professors looked on, beaming with pride. The chair of the Political Science Department, from whom I had taken almost half of my classes, also had a hint of sadness in his eyes as he smiled at me, and after the ceremony, he came over to meet my parents and told them how proud they should be of me and so on, but then he leaned in, touched me gently on the arm and invited me to come see him in his office the next day after lunch, before moving off to talk to other people.
The next day after lunch my parents would be leaving for the airport, so I was free to go meet "Dr. B" as his students affectionately called him.
Dr. B's graduation day gown was still hanging up in the open closet next to his desk but otherwise there was nothing in the office to indicate that it was anything other than a normal workday for him. He was the kind of teacher whose greatest joy in life was to help his students help themselves, but he wasn't the only one in the building that day preparing for the summer session, which would start in a few weeks.
I sat down in front of his desk, where I had sat many times before over the previous four years, as he began to speak. He told me once again how proud he was of me, and he asked me some general questions about what I planned to do next and so on. Then, he got really quiet for a few moments, looking down at his desk, and I could tell he was struggling to find the right words to say what was on his mind. Experience told me to be patient, and eventually he'd have something to say that I'd be glad I got the opportunity to hear.
After a few moments, he began to speak once again, and although it was almost 30 years ago, I can still hear what he said in my mind as clearly as I did that day.
He said; "Aaron, you are one of the best students I ever had, and I'm not just saying that. I've been teaching here for 32 years. Most of the kids who come through here don't try very hard to learn anything. They just do the minimum to get by and they don't care about learning anything and after they graduate, I quickly forget about them and I'm not sorry to see them go. But you really made the most of your time here, it was a pleasure to have you in my classes, and I'm VERY sorry to see you go."
He paused for a moment, and I could see he was struggling again, but soon he continued and said words I'll never forget.
"Aaron, there's something else that makes me very sad today, because the fact is...well...I'm afraid the degree you earned here is already obsolete."
I sat there utterly stunned for a few seconds before he continued.
"Y'see Aaron, with this internet thing (the internet was still pretty new back then) everything I've taught you over the past four years is going to be available soon to anyone who needs it at the click of a mouse. Your knowledge, all the information you know, and all the books you've read and all the lectures you've sat through and taken notes and all that, it's all out there for anyone who wants it, any time they need it. I'd be pretty surprised if you will even be able to get a job teaching social studies in a high school. I think in ten years or less, universities like this one will all be shut down and maybe high schools too. They might still have elementary schools for young children, just to teach them the basics before giving them a computer, but I think 8th grade is going to be the max and then everyone's going to just be done with school."
I sat there with my mouth open, utterly speechless, having no idea what to say, but he wasn't done. He went on to tell me that he'd be retiring in a few more years, and he was sure he was going to be among the last teachers to spend a career in the classroom and make it to a comfortable retirement. He felt sorry for the younger profs in the department who probably wouldn't have enough in their pension accounts to retire and would have to figure something else out. He also felt VERY sorry for me, as I was just starting out in life and would probably struggle a lot to find work that paid enough to live on (he wasn't wrong about that part.)
He also said, before he let me go, that he didn't want me to be completely despondent because if I could find a way to make the internet work for me, I still had a chance to have a happy, successful life. But, he cautioned me, I needed to understand that although I had completed my formal schooling, my education would never end. I needed to continue reading books and otherwise learning in order to stay one step ahead of the competition. He used his thumb to point to the enormous number of books he had on the shelves behind his desk and told me that most of them he'd read after he graduated, and he continued to read two or three books a month, just to stay on top of things in his own profession. I would probably need to read even more, he cautioned me, and I should also make use of the internet to find and get more information to stay current on everything. That, he said, is the only way I could continue to be relevant and employable until I reached the age of retirement myself.
And then, having rendered unto his star pupil this final lesson, Dr. B once again shook my hand and told me to get out there and be a successful human being.
Well, all these years later, it's obvious that Dr. B's eulogy for the traditional education system, and all the ramifications it would have for the economy and me personally, was premature. In any case, I ended up going into journalism, not teaching, so even if he had been right about that part, it wouldn't have necessarily been as bad for me as he thought it was going to be.
But he wasn't wrong about everything he told me that day, and in some ways, I'm starting to think that he wasn't actually wrong at all, just slightly ahead of his time.
I DID take his advice and ever since graduating from college, I have continued to buy and read an enormous quantity of books. Since moving to Israel almost 25 years ago I've probably spent close to $3,000 or more on such books, and I've been given many more as gifts. I've also read hundreds of pages worth of PDF files published by think tanks here in Israel, listened to thousands of hours worth of podcasts and YouTube videos that were posted by think tanks, media organizations, historical societies and universities. This material covered a wide variety of topics related to Israel and the Middle East, from Biblical and modern history, archaeology, environmental issues, strategic issues, economic issues, social issues, military issues, cultural issues, religious/theological issues, and all kinds of other stuff.
But, as I said in the beginning of this blog, I recently experienced something which made me remember old Dr. B's advice, and it's left me thinking he might have been just slightly ahead of his time.
It happened like this.
My wife and I are contemplating moving out of our apartment in a few months, so I decided to try and get ahead of the issue and start sorting through stuff now and getting rid of things I don't need. I have been astounded at how much junk I've found that I should have thrown out a long time ago, including clothes, toys, puzzles, games and other stuff my children outgrew years ago.
But I've also been going through my own stuff, including my precious books, and I realized that I had dozens of volumes that were no longer relevant to my life. Some of them were "obsolete" because they were essentially commentary on things which had been "current events" when they'd been written but were now "ancient history". For instance, I had three books that talked about the threat to Israel from the Assad regime in Syria, which no longer exists.
Other books weren't useful to me anymore, although they might have been useful to someone, so, I did what any self-respecting bookworm will do: I tried to find a library to donate these books to. I started with the library at my eldest son's high school, which is part of a network of schools that is closely connected to the Hebrew University. I figured they'd for sure want all this stuff, but they didn't, which wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was the reason they gave me for not wanting them.
One of the people who worked at the library told me, in fact, that up until a few years ago, the University probably would have happily taken these books, but because of AI, hardly anyone even needs books anymore, even at a university. AI can do all the research needed to write an up-to-the-minute expert report on any topic you might ask it to write, and the computer can give it to you in the form of a movie or podcast if you want it to. Sitting down to read a physical book, printed on paper, that an ordinary human "expert" spent months or even years researching and compiling, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past that no one does anymore.
I made a few more attempts to give my books to a good home but no one wanted them, so eventually I just left the two boxes at one of those places where old-fashioned people like me take and leave old-fashioned paper books.
As I walked away, trying not to think about all the money and time I had invested in all the books I was leaving behind, I had the horrible feeling that I was, in fact, an obsolete human being. Dr. B had warned me 30 years ago that my college degree was already obsolete even back then, but he'd tried to cheer me up by telling me that if I continued my education by reading and staying current on topics related to my profession, I'd continue to be relevant, and more to the point, employable.
Now, I was starting to wonder if even that is still true.
When I got home, I opened Chat GPT and asked it to write me an analytical synopsis of current events in the Middle East over the last 24 hours, taking into account historical trends, the policies of governments, corporations, etc, traditional precedents, current military deployments and forces, and so on. The result of that query left me deeply depressed. It was fantastic, brilliant even, at least as good as anything I could have written myself, and probably better, and I wasn't even using the most recent iteration of AI that's available.
The experience left me wondering what anyone needed me for anymore. My usual fee for an hour of freelance work is more than the cost of an AI subscription for an entire month. I justify charging that fee by telling my clients that I have so much experience and have invested all that time and effort to amass all that "expertise" which allows me to produce materials that will be useful to them.
I'm deeply grateful that I still have a few clients, but how long will that last, and what will I do if and when they figure out that they're being suckers to pay me so much for something that they can get from AI for a tiny fraction of the price?
With these cheerful thoughts buzzing through my mind, I listlessly opened up Facebook and started scrolling, and one of the first things I saw was a meme with Colossians 3:23-24; "And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ."
It came to me in a flash as I read these words from the Bible that the only thing that makes me special, the only thing that EVER made me special, was the God thinks I'm special. That brought to mind another passage of Scripture, Luke 12:24; Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. How much more value are you than the birds?
With that, my mood lifted as I recalled how God has always taken care of me, my entire life, including many seasons when I felt forgotten and forsaken by literally everyone else. So, even if my professional skills and all the "expertise" I've worked so hard and spent so much money accumulating is obsolete, God will still find a way to take care of me, just as He always has.
This has been a long blog, but I know I'm not the only person feeling obsolete these days, so I hope it was a blessing to someone.