The publicist sent an early copy of a book for me to review. Wisdom Factory: AI, Games, and the Education of a Modern Worker by Tim Dasey, Ph.D. He is an MIT professor (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) thinking about the future of work. I wrote an introduction to this book last week.
Considering the media hype about AI and Dasey’s background working in AI, and that the book’s subtitle includes AI, you might think this is a book about AI. You would be wrong. This is yet another book about how we need to change the way we educate youth and adults for work in the modern world. Building on the derisive caricature of schools as industrial factories churning out kids who can follow instructions and learn details, he turns the word factory on its head and talks of “wisdom” factories.
This is a good book if you want a new view on some new techniques. However, seeing the need to teach wisdom is hardly new.
3,000 years ago a king in Palestine, the Kingdom of Israel, compiled wisdom sayings into a book along with his many insights into wisdom. Solomon was reputed to be the wisest man who ever lived. Yet, he was a terrible father. He burdened his people with taxes and work for his insatiable need to build more buildings. He took the sons into the army in order to expand his kingdom’s territory. He worshipped foreign gods.
The book of Proverbs is like a school, an education, in wisdom. It’s why I recommend reading a chapter a day every January (31 chapters/31 days) just as a reminder.
I think every course at every time in school should really be teaching thinking. In math, logical progression of ideas. In history, not only when, but why and what if. In grammar, how to express oneself clearly. In literature, what did the author mean, how are the characters related, what if the author explored a deeper emotion. Of course scientific thinking in science classes.
And yes, in the spiritual life. Not just memorizing Bible verses or writings of Aquinas or Augustine or Luther, but asking why is this there, what if they went a different way, how did this affect the people there at the time, how should this affect how I act and feel when I get up from the desk.
Read our Wisdom literature carefully. How much is about memorizing? How much is about how we act? Wisdom is at the intersection of spirit, experience, knowledge, reflection. And it should never stop growing in us.
Faith Venture 
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