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.css-13ygqr6:hover{background-color:#d1ecfa;}.css-13ygqr6:visited{color:#979797;}.css-13ygqr6.node--video:before{content:'';display:inline-block;height:20px;width:20px;margin:0 4px 0 0;background:url(data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20width%3D%2242px%22%20height%3D%2242px%22%20viewBox%3D%220%200%2042%2042%22%20alt%3D%22Video%20icon%22%20data-testid%3D%22play-circle%22%20version%3D%221.1%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Ctitle%3EVideo%3C%2Ftitle%3E%3Cdefs%3E%3C%2Fdefs%3E%3Cg%20id%3D%22play-circle%22%20fill%3D%22%23000000%22%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M21%2C0%20C9.38%2C0%200%2C9.38%200%2C21%20C0%2C32.62%209.38%2C42%2021%2C42%20C32.62%2C42%2042%2C32.62%2042%2C21%20C42%2C9.38%2032.62%2C0%2021%2C0%20L21%2C0%20Z%20M21%2C36.7733333%20C12.32%2C36.7733333%205.22666667%2C29.7266667%205.22666667%2C21%20C5.22666667%2C12.2733333%2012.32%2C5.22666667%2021%2C5.22666667%20C29.68%2C5.22666667%2036.7733333%2C12.32%2036.7733333%2C21%20C36.7733333%2C29.68%2029.68%2C36.7733333%2021%2C36.7733333%20L21%2C36.7733333%20Z%22%20id%3D%22circle%22%3E%3C%2Fpath%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M29.54%2C19.88%20L17.7333333%2C12.9733333%20C16.8466667%2C12.46%2015.7733333%2C13.1133333%2015.7733333%2C14.0933333%20L15.7733333%2C27.9066667%20C15.7733333%2C28.9333333%2016.8933333%2C29.54%2017.7333333%2C29.0266667%20L29.5866667%2C22.12%20C30.4266667%2C21.6066667%2030.4266667%2C20.3933333%2029.54%2C19.88%20L29.54%2C19.88%20Z%22%20id%3D%22triangle%22%3E%3C%2Fpath%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E) no-repeat left bottom/18px 18px;} Better Ways to Ask—and Answer—Questions in Math Class

3 Instructional Shifts to Facilitate Student-Led Learning

5 Ways to Increase Elementary Students’ Knowledge of Other Countries

Making Math Review a High-Energy Game

Nurturing Mistake Tolerance in the Classroom

4 Strategies for Developing Confident Student Speakers

Leading by Example as a School Administrator

The Power of Finding a Thought Partner

Why Movement Matters in Math

Responding Professionally to Unreasonable Requests From Parents

Addressing Work Refusal in the Classroom

28 Ways to Quickly Check for Understanding

Why Kids Should Nature Journal at All Grade Levels

How to Improve Classroom Behavior Without Public Shaming

Here’s What the Science of Reading Looks Like in My High School Classroom

How AI Can Enhance the Grading Process

Calibrating Best Practices Across a Whole School

A Strategy for Encouraging Students to Talk in Class

A Late Work Policy That Works for Teachers and Students

5 Ways to Create a Literacy-Rich Preschool Classroom

Supporting Students’ Meaning-Making in Reading Instruction

Slowing Down the Reading Process to Build Students’ Comprehension Skills

Question: What Are Your Favorite Poems to Teach?

Planning Writing Lessons for the Early Elementary Grades

Integrating Technology Into Collaborative Professional Learning

How Instructional Coaches Can Help Teachers Foster Students’ SEL Skills

What Mentors and Mentees Wish the Other Knew

Working Proactively With an Instructional Coach

Reinventing Your School Data Wall

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Pedestrians pass through The Ohio State University's student union. John Minchillo/AP hide caption

Ohio reviewing race-based scholarships after Supreme Court affirmative action ruling

May 18, 2024 • Higher education officials in Ohio are reviewing race-based scholarships after last year's Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action.

These teens were missing too much school. Here's what it took to get them back

May 18, 2024 • Since the pandemic, chronic absenteeism in the nation's K-12 schools has skyrocketed. These teens are working to get their attendance back on track.

Perspective

Code switch, in a debate over a school name, it's not just parents who are attached to the past.

May 18, 2024 • At the height of the racial reckoning, a school district in Virginia voted to rename two schools that had been previously named for Confederate generals. This month, that decision was reversed.

Starting Your Podcast: A Guide For Students

New to podcasting? Don't panic.

Basil Rodriguez was arrested linking arms outside Hamilton Hall, but said the arrest had strengthened their resolve to continue protesting. The trespassing charge Rodriguez faced was dismissed this week. Keren Carrión/NPR hide caption

Campus protests over the Gaza war

Arrested. injured. suspended. six nyc university students say they'll keep protesting.

May 18, 2024 • Students arrested at Columbia University and the City College of New York spoke with NPR about their choice to risk legal and academic consequences.

Des Moines Superintendent Ian Roberts races students on an Iowa track. Phil Roeder/Des Moines Public Schools hide caption

Iowa superintendent and former Olympian bested in footrace by 5th-grader

May 18, 2024 • Ian Roberts has competed in some of the most high-profile races in the world. But his biggest competition to date was a determined fifth-grader in jean shorts and Nike tennis shoes.

Earlier this month, President Biden spoke about protests that have roiled many U.S. college campuses. Among their demands is for the Israeli military to leave Gaza. Biden said students have a right to protest but not to be disruptive. He is set to speak at Morehouse College in Atlanta on Sunday. Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Biden is set for the Morehouse graduation. Students are divided

May 17, 2024 • Ahead of Biden's address at Morehouse, students share their frustrations

Applicants to Georgia State University received a welcome email for the 2024-25 school year. However, the email was sent in error to 1,500 applicants by the school's admissions office. Here, the campus celebrates its fall commencement exercises on Dec. 17, 2014, in Atlanta. Meg Buscema/Georgia State University hide caption

1,500 college applicants thought they were accepted. They soon learned it was an error

May 16, 2024 • Georgia State University says the students were not sent an official acceptance letter but "communication" from a department welcoming those who intend to major in a specific academic area.

Kansas City Chiefs player Harrison Butker, pictured at a press conference in February, is in hot water for his recent commencement speech at Benedictine College in Kansas. Chris Unger/Getty Images hide caption

The NFL responds after a player urges female college graduates to become homemakers

May 16, 2024 • Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs urged female graduates to embrace the title of "homemaker" in a controversial commencement speech. The NFL says he was speaking "in his personal capacity."

Student Podcast Challenge

Announcing the 2023 college podcast challenge honorable mentions.

May 15, 2024 • Here are the honorable mentions from the 2023 College Podcast Challenge. Congrats!

Why children with disabilities are missing school and losing skills

May 15, 2024 • A special education staffing crisis is raging through many U.S. school districts. It's taking a toll on students and families.

Illustration of a rally where "peaceful protesters" march alongside "violent looters." LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

Why the trope of the 'outside agitator' persists

May 15, 2024 • As protests continue to rock the campuses of colleges and universities, a familiar set of questions is being raised: Are these protests really being led by students? Or are the real drivers of the civil disobedience outsiders , seizing on an opportunity to wreak chaos and stir up trouble?

Students with disabilities are missing school because of staff shortages

May 14, 2024 • There's a special education staffing crisis in a northern California school district. It means some of the district's most vulnerable students have missed weeks and even months of school.

May 14, 2024 • Student Podcast Challenge invites students from around the country to create a podcast and compete for a chance to have your work featured on NPR.

Public Health student Hanna Stutzman helps establish new native plantings at The College of New Jersey. Nathaniel Johnson/The College of New Jersey hide caption

Environment

Bringing the wild things back to campus.

May 14, 2024 • The College of New Jersey is making room for native plants, and students are digging it.

Dr. Thorsten Siess shows the Impella. Annegret Hilse/Reuters hide caption

Shots - Health News

He invented a successful medical device as a student. here's his advice for new grads.

May 14, 2024 • When Thorsten Siess was in graduate school, he came up with the idea for a heart device that's now been used in hundreds of thousands of patients around the world.

Deadline Extended: NPR Student Podcast Challenge entries are now due May 31

May 13, 2024 • Entries for our sixth annual contest for middle and high school students (and our first-ever fourth grade competition) are now due Friday, May 31 at midnight E.T.

Graduate students and demonstrators at the University of Texas at Austin protest the war in Gaza after walking out of commencement at the DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium on May 11, 2024 in Austin. Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption

Student protests caused mostly minor disruptions at several graduation ceremonies

May 12, 2024 • From California to North Carolina, students staged chants and walkouts over the weekend in protest of Israel's ongoing military offensive in Gaza.

Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

May 11, 2024 • Researchers are learning that handwriting engages the brain in ways typing can't match, raising questions about the costs of ditching this age-old practice, especially for kids.

Students and protesters raise peace signs in the air while listening to speakers at the encampment for Palestine on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at the University of Washington Quad in Seattle. Large crowds amassed ahead of a speech by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk at the HUB on UW's campus. Megan Farmer/KUOW hide caption

The Picture Show

Photos: campus protests continue, police make arrests and clear encampments.

May 10, 2024 • Photojournalists at NPR member stations documented protests at college and university campuses nationwide this week.

Student protesters demanding university divestment from Israel have set up encampments over the past month at dozens of campuses across the nation, including at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. Steven Senne/AP hide caption

From pandemic to protests, the Class of 2024 has been through a lot

May 10, 2024 • Pomp and circumstance again fall victim to circumstance for some students in the graduating class of 2024, as protests over the war in Gaza threaten to disrupt commencement ceremonies.

Mountain View High School will soon be known by its former name: Stonewall Jackson High School. The Shenandoah County School Board voted 5-1 to once again honor the Confederate general, whose name was originally attached to the school during the battle over racial segregation. Google Maps/Screenshot by NPR hide caption

A Virginia county board votes to restore Confederates' names to schools

May 10, 2024 • The school board meeting stretched into early Friday. During the debate, a Black student athlete told the board, "I would have to represent a man that fought for my ancestors to be slaves."

David Banks, chancellor of New York City Public Schools, testified at a House Education Committee hearing on antisemitism on Wednesday. He was joined by Karla Silvestre, president of the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland, Emerson Sykes, staff attorney with the ACLU, and Enikia Ford Morthel, superintendent of the Berkeley Unified School District in California. Jacquelyn Martin/AP hide caption

Republicans and K-12 school leaders clash over handling of antisemitism

May 8, 2024 • Republicans tried for the kind of headline moments they've scored in similar hearings with elite college presidents. But the testimony from K-12 public school leaders offered few surprises.

Police face off with pro-Palestinian students after dismantling part of the encampment barricade on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, early on May 2. Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

In NYC and LA, police response to campus protests draws sharp criticism

May 8, 2024 • Students say they suffered broken bones, concussions and other injuries from allegedly aggressive police action breaking up pro-Palestinian protests last week.

Ammer Qaddumi was arrested at a Pro-Palestinian protest at UT-Austin on April 24, 2024. Michael Minasi/KUT hide caption

Some student protesters aren't deterred by the prospect of punishment

May 7, 2024 • Some students face criminal charges, suspensions and even expulsions for participating in pro-Palestinian protests and encampments. Their reason? A "just cause."

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Our Best Education Articles of 2021

Our most popular education articles of 2021 explore how to navigate some of this year’s challenges—including grief, boredom, and isolation—while uplifting our capacity for connection, belonging, and healing. Several articles also highlight how character, conscience, and kindness can guide us toward greater meaning in our lives.

If you are looking for specific activities to support your students’ and colleagues’ social and emotional well-being in 2022, visit our  Greater Good in Education website, featuring  free  research-based practices, lessons, and strategies for cultivating kinder, happier, and more equitable classrooms and schools. And for a deeper dive into the science behind social-emotional learning, mindfulness, and ethical development, consider our suite of self-paced online courses for educational professionals, including our capstone course, Teaching and Learning for the Greater Good .

Here are the 12 best education articles of 2021, based on a composite ranking of pageviews and editors’ picks.

How to Help Students Feel a Sense of Belonging During the Pandemic , by Mary C. Murphy, Kathryn Boucher, and Christine Logel: Belonging and connection in the classroom contribute to success and well-being, particularly for marginalized students.

Four Ways Teachers Can Help Students Develop a Conscience , by Vicki Zakrzewski: How do kids develop a sense of right and wrong—and what can educators do to help them act on their conscience?

How to Help Students of Color Find Their Power , by Brandy Arnold: Project Wayfinder is helping Black and Latino students explore their identities and goals.

What a Children’s Book Taught Me (and My Students) About Grief , by Lauren McGovern: Teaching sixth graders about grief helped teacher Lauren McGovern after the loss of her son.

36 Questions That Can Help Kids Make Friends , by Jill Suttie: A question-and-answer exercise may help middle schoolers build friendships, including with kids of different ethnicities.

How to Make This Hard Transition Back to School With Your Students , by Amy L. Eva: Here are three ways educators can support their students (and each other) this fall.

A Different Way to Respond When Kids Do Something Wrong , by Joanne Chen: Restorative practices—taking responsibility, making amends, and seeking forgiveness—are an alternative to strict punishments and blame.

What Do Kids Mean When They Say They’re Bored at School? , by Rebecca Branstetter: Boredom can be a temporary emotion or a sign of a deeper issue, says a school psychologist.

How to Help Students Be the Best Version of Themselves , by Karen E. Bohlin and Deborah Farmer Kris: When students are facing challenges, educators can help them reflect on—and act on—what matters to them.

Four Character Strengths That Can Help Kids Learn , by Carol Lloyd: Research suggests that fostering character strengths can help children be better students.

How Educators Can Help Make a Kinder World , by Vicki Zakrzewski: By integrating character education, SEL, and mindfulness, schools can cultivate the inherent goodness in students.

Three Strategies for Helping Students Discuss Controversial Issues , by Lauren Fullmer and Laura Bond: Here are research-based ways to facilitate civil discourse in the classroom.

Bonus: Science of Happiness Podcast Episodes

Episode 94: How to Craft Your Life : When the world around you changes, so can your goals. Our guest, Patty Brown, tries a practice to tap into a new sense of purpose.

Episode 96: Don’t Be Afraid of Your Anger : What happens when we suppress our anger? And what if we tried to work with it instead? Our guest, Soraya Chemaly, tries a practice to harness her inner fierceness to care for herself.

About the Author

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Our Best Education Articles of 2019

What a Children’s Book Taught Me (and My Students) About Grief

What Do Kids Mean When They Say They’re Bored at School?

How to Help Students Feel a Sense of Belonging During the Pandemic

Our Best Education Articles of 2020

I served as a college president for nearly two decades – I know choosing the right commencement speaker can be fraught with risks

Walter M. Kimbrough, University of Southern California

How Black teachers lost when civil rights won in Brown v. Board

Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz, University of North Dakota; Andrea Guiden Pittman, American University; Andrene J. Castro, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Marvin G. Powell, George Mason University

College students in Austin, Texas, have dwelled in windowless rooms for years − here’s why the city finally decided to ban them

Juan Miró, The University of Texas at Austin

5 thoughts for new college grads seeking to find the right balance between meaningful work and making money

Christopher Wong Michaelson, University of St. Thomas and Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, Babson College

Divesting university endowments: Easier demanded than done

Todd L. Ely, University of Colorado Denver

Higher education

College sports fandom shows how a shared goal can bring people together.

Amy Parsons, Colorado State University

K-12 education

Florida’s school safety dashboard helps parents and teachers address root causes of bullying, fighting and other misbehavior.

F. Chris Curran, University of Florida

Homeschooled kids face unique college challenges − here are 3 ways they can be overcome

Kenneth V. Anthony, Mississippi State University and Mark E. Wildmon, Mississippi State University

The power of touch is vital for both reading and writing

Naomi S. Baron, American University

Unlicensed teachers now dominate new teacher hires in rural Texas schools

James P. Van Overschelde, Texas State University and Minda Lopez, Texas State University

Sports & athletics

Students with disabilities often left on the sidelines when it comes to school sports

Megan MacDonald, Oregon State University

How Black male college athletes deal with anti-Black stereotypes on campus

Jonathan Howe, Temple University

Nick Saban’s ‘epic era’ of coaching is over, but the exploitation of players in big-time college football is not

Joseph N. Cooper, UMass Boston

For some NBA draftees who overcame adversity, making the transition to fame and fortune is no slam dunk

Rob Book, University of Southern Denmark

The Kobe legacy: Should the NBA let high school players skip college?

Nicole Kraft, The Ohio State University

Families & parenting

3 ways to use the solar eclipse to brighten your child’s knowledge of science.

David J. Purpura, Purdue University; Lauren Westerberg, Purdue University, and Sona Kumar, Purdue University

What families need to know about how to safely store firearms at home

Kerri Raissian, University of Connecticut and Jennifer Necci Dineen, University of Connecticut

Healing from child sexual abuse is often difficult but not impossible

Maria Khan, West Virginia University

Uncommon Courses

Amid growth in ai writing tools, this course teaches future lawyers and other professionals to become better editors.

Patrick Barry, University of Michigan

National parks teach students about environmental issues in this course

Seth T. Kannarr, University of Tennessee

AI helps students skip right to the good stuff in this intro programming course

Leo Porter, University of California, San Diego and Daniel Zingaro, University of Toronto

Amid growing legalization, cannabis in culture and politics is the focus of this anthropology course

Hillary Jeanne Haldane, Quinnipiac University

Some of the most interesting and innovative courses on campus

Most read this week.

Mary McLeod Bethune, known as the ‘First Lady of Negro America,’ also sought to unify the African diaspora

Ashley Robertson Preston, Howard University

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Education articles from across Nature Portfolio

How to stop students cramming for exams? Send them to sea

An innovative proposal to stop exam over-preparation, plus William Bateson’s 1924 take on the previous century of biology, in the weekly dip into Nature ’s archive.

Latest Research and Reviews

Framework for department-level accountability to diversify engineering

University departments may benefit from guidelines not only to craft effective diversity, equity and inclusion plans, but also to measure progress towards achieving specific goals. This Perspective presents a framework for building, assessing and continuously improving strategic plans to improve recruitment and retention and make departments more inclusive.

• Jacqueline C. Linnes
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Longitudinal trajectories of self-esteem, related predictors, and impact on depression among students over a four-year period at college in China

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Why English? Exploring Chinese early career returnee academics’ motivations for writing and publishing in English

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Confidence of Emergency Department doctors in managing ophthalmic emergencies: a systematic review

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From vocation to profession: multiple identities of Chinese management academics

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The moderating effect of physical exercises on job stress, emotional intelligence, and teaching satisfaction among Chinese University teachers

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News and Comment

Reading between the lines: application essays predict university success

Applicants whose essays had broader ‘semantic content’ tended to achieve higher marks.

Teaching artificial intelligence in medicine

Artificial intelligence (AI) is finding its way into healthcare. Therefore, medical students need to be trained to be ‘bilingual’ in both medical and computational terminology and concepts to allow them to understand, implement and evaluate AI-related research.

• Yosra Magdi Mekki
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Reply to letter regarding ‘Descemet’s membrane or confirmation of a novel corneal structure: the layer of Dua’

• Yannis Athanasiadis
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Research culture in biomedicine: what we learned, and what we would like to do about it

This comment reports on work done at Harvard Medical School to identify areas for improvement in research rigor, reproducibility, and responsibility in pursuit of continued research excellence.

• Alexa T. McCray
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The power of putting education first

From high school to distinguished professor of chemistry at Rhodes University, Tebello Nyokong discusses her inspiration and ambitions to promote science in South Africa.

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70 years after brown v. board of education, new research shows rise in school segregation.

As the nation prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , a new report from researchers at Stanford and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past three decades — an increase that appears to be driven in part by policies favoring school choice over integration.

Analyzing data from U.S. public schools going back to 1967, the researchers found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status has increased by about 50 percent since 1991.

The report also provides new evidence about the forces driving recent trends in school segregation, showing that the expansion of charter schools has played a major role.  

The findings were released on May 6 with the launch of the Segregation Explorer , a new interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. The website provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022. 

“School segregation levels are not at pre- Brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s,” said Sean Reardon , the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project. “In most large districts, school segregation has increased while residential segregation and racial economic inequality have declined, and our findings indicate that policy choices – not demographic changes – are driving the increase.” 

“There’s a tendency to attribute segregation in schools to segregation in neighborhoods,” said Ann Owens , a professor of sociology and public policy at USC. “But we’re finding that the story is more complicated than that.”

Assessing the rise

In the Brown v. Board decision issued on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and established that “separate but equal” schools were not only inherently unequal but unconstitutional. The ruling paved the way for future decisions that led to rapid school desegregation in many school districts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Though segregation in most school districts is much lower than it was 60 years ago, the researchers found that over the past three decades, both racial and economic segregation in large districts increased. Much of the increase in economic segregation since 1991, measured by segregation between students eligible and ineligible for free lunch, occurred in the last 15 years.

White-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation, while lower on average than white-Black segregation, have both more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s. 

Racial-economic segregation – specifically the difference in the proportion of free-lunch-eligible students between the average white and Black or Hispanic student’s schools – has increased by 70 percent since 1991. 

School segregation is strongly associated with achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, especially the rate at which achievement gaps widen during school, the researchers said.  

“Segregation appears to shape educational outcomes because it concentrates Black and Hispanic students in higher-poverty schools, which results in unequal learning opportunities,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . 

Policies shaping recent trends 

The recent rise in school segregation appears to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions, the researchers said. 

Both residential segregation and racial disparities in income declined between 1990 and 2020 in most large school districts. “Had nothing else changed, that trend would have led to lower school segregation,” said Owens. 

But since 1991, roughly two-thirds of districts that were under court-ordered desegregation have been released from court oversight. Meanwhile, since 1998, the charter sector – a form of expanded school choice – has grown.

Expanding school choice could influence segregation levels in different ways: If families sought schools that were more diverse than the ones available in their neighborhood, it could reduce segregation. But the researchers found that in districts where the charter sector expanded most rapidly in the 2000s and 2010s, segregation grew the most. 

The researchers’ analysis also quantified the extent to which the release from court orders accounted for the rise in school segregation. They found that, together, the release from court oversight and the expansion of choice accounted entirely for the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019.

The researchers noted enrollment policies that school districts can implement to mitigate segregation, such as voluntary integration programs, socioeconomic-based student assignment policies, and school choice policies that affirmatively promote integration. 

“School segregation levels are high, troubling, and rising in large districts,” said Reardon. “These findings should sound an alarm for educators and policymakers.”

Additional collaborators on the project include Demetra Kalogrides, Thalia Tom, and Heewon Jang. This research, including the development of the Segregation Explorer data and website, was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   

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What is ‘original scholarship’ in the age of ai.

Melissa Dell (from left), Alex Csiszar, and Latanya Sweeney.

Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Anne J. Manning

Harvard Staff Writer

Symposium considers how technology is changing academia

While moderating a talk on artificial intelligence last week, Latanya Sweeney posed a thought experiment. Picture three to five years from now. AI companies are continuing to scrape the internet for data to feed their large language models. But unlike today’s internet, which is largely human-generated content, most of that future internet’s content has been generated by … large language models.

The scenario is not farfetched considering the explosive growth of generative AI in the last two years, suggested the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Kennedy School professor.  

Sweeney’s panel was part of a daylong symposium on AI hosted by the FAS last week that considered questions such as: How are generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT disrupting what it means to own one’s work? How can AI be leveraged thoughtfully while maintaining academic and research integrity? Just how good are these large language model-based programs going to get? (Very, very good.)

“Here at the FAS, we’re in a unique position to explore questions and challenges that come from this new technology,” said Hopi Hoekstra , Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, during her opening remarks. “Our community is full of brilliant thinkers, curious researchers, and knowledgeable scholars, all able to lend their variety of expertise to tackling the big questions in AI, from ethics to societal implications.”

In an all-student panel, philosophy and math concentrator Chinmay Deshpande ’24 compared the present moment to the advent of the internet, and how that revolutionary technology forced academic institutions to rethink how to test knowledge. “Regardless of what we think AI will look like down the line, I think it’s clear it’s starting to have an impact that’s qualitatively similar to the impact of the internet,” Deshpande said. “And thinking about pedagogy, we should think about AI along somewhat similar lines.”

Computer science concentrator and master’s degree student Naomi Bashkansky ’25, who is exploring AI safety issues with fellow students, urged Harvard to provide thought leadership on the implications of an AI-saturated world, in part by offering courses that integrate the basics of large language models into subjects like biology or writing.

Harvard Law School student Kevin Wei agreed.

“We’re not grappling sufficiently with the way the world will change, and especially the way the economy and labor market will change, with the rise of generative AI systems,” Wei said. “Anything Harvard can do to take a leading role in doing that … in discussions with government, academia, and civil society … I would like to see a much larger role for the University.”

The day opened with a panel on original scholarship, co-sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center and the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics . Panelists explored ethics of authorship in the age of instant access to information and blurred lines of citation and copyright, and how those considerations vary between disciplines.

David Joselit , the Arthur Kingsley Professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, said challenges wrought by AI have precedent in the history of art; the idea of “authorship” has been undermined in the modern era because artists have often focused on the idea as what counts as the artwork, rather than its physical execution. “It seems to me that AI is a mechanization of that kind of distribution of authorship,” Joselit said. He posed the idea that AI should be understood “as its own genre, not exclusively as a tool.”

Another symposium topic included a review of Harvard Library’s law, information policy, and AI survey research revealing how students are using AI for academic work. Administrators from across the FAS also shared examples of how they are experimenting with AI tools to enhance their productivity. Panelists from the Bok Center shared how AI has been used in teaching this year, and Harvard University Information Technology gave insight into tools it is building to support instructors. 

Throughout the ground floor of the Northwest Building, where the symposium took place, was a poster fair keying off final projects from Sweeney’s course “Tech Science to Save the World,” in which students explored how scientific experimentation and technology can be used to solve real-world problems. Among the posters: “Viral or Volatile? TikTok and Democracy,” and “Campaign Ads in the Age of AI: Can Voters Tell the Difference?”

Students from the inaugural General Education class “ Rise of the Machines? ” capped the day, sharing final projects illustrating current and future aspects of generative AI.

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The Mind-Expanding Value of Arts Education

As funding for arts education declines worldwide, experts ponder what students — and the world at large — are losing in the process.

By Ginanne Brownell

This article is part of our special report on the Art for Tomorrow conference that was held in Florence, Italy.

Awuor Onguru says that if it were not for her continued exposure to arts education as a child, she never would have gotten into Yale University.

Growing up in a lower-middle-class family in Nairobi, Kenya, Ms. Onguru, now a 20-year-old junior majoring in English and French, started taking music lessons at the age of four. By 12, she was playing violin in the string quartet at her primary school, where every student was required to play an instrument. As a high school student on scholarship at the International School of Kenya, she was not only being taught Bach concertos, she also became part of Nairobi’s music scene, playing first violin in a number of local orchestras.

During her high school summer breaks, Ms. Onguru — who also has a strong interest in creative writing and poetry — went to the United States, attending the Interlochen Center for the Arts ’ creative writing camp, in Michigan, and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio . Ms. Onguru, who recently returned to campus after helping organize Yale Glee Club’s spring tour in Kenya, hopes to become a journalist after graduation. She has already made progress toward that goal, serving as the opinion editor for the Yale Daily News, and getting her work published in Teen Vogue and the literary journal Menacing Hedge.

“Whether you’re in sports, whether you end up in STEM, whether you end up in government, seeing my peers — who had different interests in arts — not everyone wanted to be an artist,” she said in a video interview. “But they found places to express themselves, found places to be creative, found places to say things that they didn’t know how else to say them.”

Ms. Onguru’s path shows what a pivotal role arts education can play in a young person’s development. Yet, while the arts and culture space accounts for a significant amount of gross domestic product across the globe — in the United Kingdom in 2021, the arts contributed £109 billion to the economy , while in the U.S., it brought in over $1 trillion that year — arts education budgets in schools continue to get slashed. (In 2021, for instance, the spending on arts education in the U.K. came to an average of just £9.40 per pupil for the year .)

While experts have long espoused the idea that exposure to the arts plays a critical role in primary and secondary schooling, education systems globally have continually failed to hold it in high regard. As Eric Booth, a U.S.-based arts educator and a co-author of “Playing for Their Lives: The Global El Sistema Movement for Social Change Through Music,” said: “There are a whole lot of countries in the world that don’t have the arts in the school, it just isn’t a thing, and it never has been.”

That has led to the arts education trajectory heading in a “dark downward spiral,” said Jelena Trkulja, senior adviser for academic and cultural affairs at Qatar Museums , who moderated a panel entitled “When Arts Education is a Luxury: New Ecosystems” at the Art for Tomorrow conference in Florence, Italy, organized by the Democracy & Culture Foundation, with panels moderated by New York Times journalists.

Part of why that is happening, she said, is that societies still don’t have a sufficient and nuanced understanding of the benefits arts education can bring, in terms of young people’s development. “Arts education is still perceived as an add-on, rather than an essential field creating essential 21st-century skills that are defined as the four C’s of collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking,” Dr. Trkulja said in a video interview, “and those skills are being developed in arts education.”

Dennie Palmer Wolf, principal researcher at the U.S.-based arts research consultancy WolfBrown , agreed. “We have to learn to make a much broader argument about arts education,” she said. “It isn’t only playing the cello.”

It is largely through the arts that we as humans understand our own history, from a cave painting in Indonesia thought to be 45,000 years old to “The Tale of Genji,” a book that’s often called the world’s first novel , written by an 11th-century Japanese woman, Murasaki Shikibu; from the art of Michelangelo and Picasso to the music of Mozart and Miriam Makeba and Taylor Swift.

“The arts are one of the fundamental ways that we try to make sense of the world,” said Brian Kisida, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri’s Truman School of Public Affairs and a co-director of the National Endowment for the Arts-sponsored Arts, Humanities & Civic Engagement Lab . “People use the arts to offer a critical perspective of their exploration of the human condition, and that’s what the root of education is in some ways.”

And yet, the arts don’t lend themselves well to hard data, something educators and policymakers need to justify classes in those disciplines in their budgets. “Arts is this visceral thing, this thing inside you, the collective moment of a crescendo,” said Heddy Lahmann , an assistant professor of international education at New York University, who is conducting a global study examining arts education in public schools for the Community Arts Network. “But it’s really hard to qualify what that is.”

Dr. Lahmann’s early research into the decrease in spending by public schools in arts education points to everything from the lack of trained teachers in the arts — partly because those educators are worried about their own job security — to the challenges of teaching arts remotely in the early days of the Covid pandemic. And, of course, standardized tests like the Program for International Student Assessment, which covers reading, math and science, where countries compete on outcomes. “There’s a race to get those indicators,” Dr. Lahmann said, “and arts don’t readily fit into that.” In part, that is because standardized tests don’t cover arts education .

“It’s that unattractive truth that what gets measured gets attended to,” said Mr. Booth, the arts educator who co-authored “Playing for Their Lives.”

While studies over the years have underscored the ways that arts education can lead to better student achievement — in the way that musical skills support literacy, say, and arts activities lead to improved vocabulary, what have traditionally been lacking are large-scale randomized control studies. But a recent research project done in 42 elementary and middle schools in Houston, which was co-directed by Dr. Kisida and Daniel H. Bowen, a professor who teaches education policy at Texas A&M, is the first of its kind to do just that. Their research found that students who had increased arts education experiences saw improvements in writing achievement, emotional and cognitive empathy, school engagement and higher education aspirations, while they had a lower incidence of disciplinary infractions.

As young people are now, more than ever, inundated with images on social media and businesses are increasingly using A.I., it has become even more relevant for students these days to learn how to think more critically and creatively. “Because what is required of us in this coming century is an imaginative capacity that goes far beyond what we have deliberately cultivated in the schooling environment over the last 25 years,” said Mariko Silver, the chief executive of the Henry Luce Foundation, “and that requires truly deep arts education for everyone.”

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