“The paradigm is something new that replaces the old. The archetype is something ancient that renews the present.” —Michael Meade
Last school year, a seventh grade student at Pinewood American International School, wrote this reflection: “Now that we’re still in early grades when we learn how to learn or study, if we use AI, not only are we never learning, but also we will start depending on AI way too much.” (The full account is in our case study on Pinewood’s approach to powerful learning.)
If you have talked to adolescents in the last few years, then this student’s perspective will not surprise you. Whether or not they articulate it, students want to know:
Who am I becoming?
What will AI do to that person I’m becoming?
Yet so many of my conversations with educators (and so many news stories about AI) begin in different places:
How do we keep students from cheating with AI?
What should we be doing with AI?
Very different questions, and all important. So how do we reconcile them?
After I heard a podcast with the mythologist Michael Meade, I realized that the answer may lie in the difference between paradigm shifts and archetypes. A paradigm shift is something new that replaces the old. An archetype, on the other hand, is something old that renews the present.
AI is a paradigm shift. It is replacing old ways of working and learning (and for the foreseeable future will continue to replace them faster than we might like).
But AI is not an archetype. It does not renew anything in us. That seventh grade student at Pinewood is not worried about a new way or working or learning.
She is worried about something archetypal. Call if the Self, the soul, the identity, or something else—whatever the vocabulary, we’re talking about an ancient concept that can shed light on this current moment.
Pinewood gets this exactly right with their Portrait of a Graduate. Instead of focusing on paradigm shifts, they chose five archetypal concepts to describe their approach to student formation:
Phronesis (Greek): Practical wisdom. Judicious, practical thinkers.
Tohi (Cherokee): Balance. Ethically grounded human beings.
Ubuntu (Zulu): Relationship. Culturally fluent global citizens.
Ikigai (Japanese): Purpose. Purpose-driven, lifelong learners.
Meraki (modern Greek): Soul. Joyful, wholehearted creators.
Don’t get me wrong—every school has to answer the cheating question and the AI-as-tool question. But our conviction at Middle States is that schools must be human driven, and AI informed—in that order. Archetypes first. Paradigm shifts second.
If that still sounds confusing, go back to the Pace Layer Model. Archetypal thinking lives in Culture & Identity, the deepest layer of your school. Archetypal thinking should pervade your mission, values, portrait of a learner, and Declaration of Powerful Learning.
Paradigm shifts take place in the Governance, Infrastructure, Programs, and Practices layers. When schools struggle with AI (cue “How do we stop cheating with AI?” or “How should we use AI?”) they may be failing to return to their Culture & Identity layer.
At that point, the task is simple, even if difficult: we need to ask, “How might our Culture & Identity shape the way we govern, enable, and enact this paradigm shift?” I hope it does not surprise you that this is precisely the approach that our AI team takes in guiding schools through the endorsements in AI Literacy, Safety & Ethics and Essential Learning Experience with AI.
Middle States is here to inspire wise change in schools, and wise change depends on knowing the difference between what is new and what is ancient.
That seventh grader at Pinewood knows the difference. Let’s follow her lead.
