Philosophical approaches to smart education and

smart cities

Javier Teira-Lafuente1 , Ana B. Gil-González2 , Ana de Luis Reboredo2

1
University of Salamanca, Philosophy Faculty, Salamanca, Spain
2
University of Salamanca, Department of Computer Science and Automation, Science
Faculty, Salamanca, Spain
{teira,abg,adeluis}@usal.es

Abstract. The impact of technology affects the educational field in an

extraordinary way. The effect of technology must be treated from the
educational method itself as well as its horizon in the new paradigm
of citizen in this smart environment. This work proposes a revision of
the immediate future of education and citizenship, as determined by
the exponential impact of technology, based on relevant issues of classic
philosophy and specially along the history and didactic program of the
Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic).
The paper analyses firstly the perspective of the transformation of cur-
rent education towards a smart education. This transition is determined
by the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the reflection on
the competences of the 21st century, as something intrinsically related to
the issues of citizenship as well as smart cities; secondly, we review the
strategic and methodological proposals in accordance with this transfor-
mation, based on the theory of generative learning and on computational
and algorithmic thinking; thirdly, from the point of view of contents, we
analyse the importance of digital skills and, as a fundamental element
of these, programming skills. Our proposal is to recover and update the
contents of the Trivium, as a renewing and revitalizing element of the
methodology and contents of education in the 21st century. This pro-
posal is based on the assumption of the epistemological unity of these
disciplines and on the integral anthropological vision that supports them.
Both ideas acquire special relevance in the current context marked by the
impact of technology as a determining element of the medium (smart ed-
ucation), of the methodology (generative learning, computational think-
ing) and of the contents (digital skills and programming).

Keywords: Smart education, Logic, Rhetoric, Mindtools, Trivium, Com-

putational Thinking, Digital Skills, Smart cities

1 Introduction

The immediate future of education is determined by the exponential impact

of technology. This transformation of education is leading to what is known
2 JTL, ABG, ADL

as smart education. The International Association of Smart Learning Environ-

ments (IASLE) has defined smart learning as: “an emerging area alongside other
related emerging areas such as smart technology, smart teaching, smart educa-
tion, smart-e-learning, smart classrooms, smart universities, smart society. The
challenging exploitation of smart environments for learning together with new
technologies and approaches such as ubiquitous learning and mobile learning
could be termed smart learning” [13].
These changes can be analyzed under the classic project of the Trivium per-
spective. This analysis is made from both points of view; from the philosophical
reflections that emerge from its historical revision as well as from the content of
the disciplines that compose it (Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic).
The origin of the use of the term Trivium usually dates back to the 9th cen-
tury, when the first textual vestige of the term was found. Trivium means triple
way, referring to the first three liberal arts (Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic),
which together with the four disciplines of the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geom-
etry, Astronomy and Music) constituted the compendium of classical education
from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Later, they maintained an unequal presence
in the arts faculties of the universities, although they were relocated at different
rates within the framework of modern and contemporary education, losing their
central position, until they occupied the residual and testimonial place they hold
in today’s school systems. Nowadays, in any case, they do not have the charac-
ter of a block of fundamental and coordinated knowledge that they had in their
origin.

1.1 Scenario, Content and Horizon of Education

Technology is called to be the stage, the content and the horizon of education, in
the same way that it is called to be the stage, the content and the horizon of hu-
man life. The question of the technology-education binomial, therefore, overlaps
with that of the technology-human life binomial. This situation, which gener-
ates so many doubts in our days, receives a particular light if we look at the
meaning of education (paideia) in the Athens of the fifth century B.C., where
the origin of the Trivium is usually situated. The classical paideia was conceived
as education for life in the polis and, therefore, naturally, as education for life in
freedom. That is precisely why the ”liberal arts” received such a name, because
it was the education proper to free men in the polis.

The elements that determine this situation are not very different from those
of today, except for an absolutely new element that has to do with the 4th
industrial revolution. The city of the future, thus, is prefigured as an smart city,
and in a concordant manner, education, in and for the cities of the future, will
be smart education. The question obviously is: how does this affect the reality
of education?
With this basic conceptualization, throughout the following sections, the re-
minder of this paper is organized as follow. In section 2 we analyze, firstly, the
 Philosophical approaches to smart world 3

transformation of education in the perspective of Intelligent Education, deter-

mined by the development of applications carried out with AI, and the reflection
on the competences of the student in the 21st century; in Section 3, we review the
strategic and methodological proposals in accordance with this transformation,
based on the theory of generative learning and on computational and algorith-
mic thinking; At Section 4, from the point of view of contents, we analyse the
importance of digital skills and, as a fundamental element of these, programming
skills; Finally, Section 5 concludes the paper.

2 Smart Education and Smart City

2.1 Smart education and XXI’s skills

Zhu et al. [25], defined smart education this way: ”The essence of smart edu-
cation is to create intelligent environments by using smart technologies, so that
smart pedagogies can be facilitated as to provide personalized learning services
and empower learners, and thus talents of wisdom who have better value orien-
tation, higher thinking quality, and stronger conduct ability could be fostered”.
According to Coccoli et al. [3], the environments of intelligent education are
characterized by their richness, interactivity and changing character, in order to
be able to fulfill three objectives: (1) To take advantage of the range of technolo-
gies and services available in networks, (2) To enhance the skills and abilities of
individuals and (3) To encourage interaction in collaborative environments.
The consequences of this novelty take place on two levels, objective and sub-
jective. From an objective point of view, it confronts individuals with situations
for which, in principle, they lack tools and conceptual schemes. This objective
novelty encompasses the personal sphere, as it is progressively immersed in an
environment dominated by artificial intelligence; the work sphere, as it is con-
stantly faced with a variation and complication of work profiles; and the social
sphere, as it is subjected to the dynamics of intense social mobility and forms
part of a new social and civic space defined by the elements of digital citizenship.
Based on these assumptions, education must provide a high level of adaptability
through multi-disciplinary workers with a wide range of complementary skills
and competencies [22].
This means that learning environments must be transformed by promoting
synergies between formal education systems, which by their very nature are in-
flexible and resistant to change, and the world of industry and organisations in
general, both private and public, which are directly affected by technological
development in almost real time. Thus, in accordance with the work profile and
social needs, the format of education in protocols or reproducible practices must
be enriched with a model that, based on the knowledge acquired (knowledge
provided), facilitates the citizen of the 21st century to think for himself, con-
nect concepts and create knowledge adapted to new problems [16]. This brings
us closer to the second dimension of change. We say that there is a subjective
dimension to the consequences involved, since they bring about a situation of
4 JTL, ABG, ADL

insecurity and uncertainty that, in itself, constitutes an obstacle to the effective-

ness of individuals’ actions and decisions. This idea is emphasized by Segredo
et al. [22] when they state: ”Citizens of the future must have full confidence in
the tools and technologies involved in a smart environment”. Thus, an adequate
training must be an instrument of personal success also subjectively, favouring
attitudes and feelings of self-confidence and security. This can be achieved by
promoting key skills such as problem solving [15], creativity or resilience [17]
and that, in short, allow people to develop and ”live effective at work and leisure
time” (Zhu et al. [26]). Technology, therefore, is revealed in this context as a fun-
damental in education, but not enough. Segredo et al. [22]), provide us with a
precise and illustrative synthesis of recent reflection on competencies for the 21st
century, which outlines its main lines by determining its dimensions, skill levels,
main components, basic academic goals, and ICT skills. These works show that
technology should be a fundamental tool, but not the ultimate goal. Education
should also provide a deep cultural qualification that enhances and values not
only skills, but also the attitudes and preferences of citizens [3] with a view to
the responsible development of their digital citizenship, their quality of life and,
in short, their happiness.

2.2 Smart cities philosophical issues

At least five main blocks of questions emerge from the above considerations, in
relation to which a retrospective look at the classical world and the contents of
the Trivium can help us to shed light:

The need to include digital skills in a broad sense in educational de-

sign. One of the most striking methodological problems facing contemporary
education is defined by the operational and organizational difficulties produced
by the multiplication of disciplines, which goes hand in hand with the scien-
tific and academic specialization that inevitably produces the development of
knowledge. The need to introduce digital competencies in a broad sense, from
the use of applications to programming with code in a strict sense, aggravates
the problem of an already existing operational and organizational character, and
makes the conceptual problem of the unity or not of the knowledge system very
topical. A careful look at the history and components of the Trivium can help us
to shed light on these two problems, pointing to an integral solution that starts
from their common root. The origin and the definitive impulse of the complete
scheme of the ”liberal arts” as a systematic, complete and sufficient whole of
general culture that would embrace the foundations of what we would today
call letters and sciences, is rooted in the idea of unity: epistemological unity,
unity of reality, anthropological unity. The disciplines of the Trivium (grammar,
rhetoric, logic) and those of the Quadrivium (music, astronomy, geometry and
arithmetic) formed a coherent and complete whole (’enkiklios paidea’, encyclo-
pedic cycle of knowledge) that rested on a common epistemological foundation:
mathematics[12]. This fundamental idea of a coherent and organized whole is
 Philosophical approaches to smart world 5

what emerges, for example, in three key moments of prehistory and the history
of the Trivium that we will now comment on.
The first is Plato’s Philebus (18c), when Socrates invokes the number as the
origin of the invention of Grammar, mythically attributed to the god Teuth[19].
The second moment is the commentary of the neo-Platonic Proclo (412-485)
on the first book of Euclid’s Elements [12]: ”The importance and usefulness of
mathematics for the other sciences and arts, we can learn it if we think how math-
ematics imposes perfection and order to theoretical sciences such as Rhetoric and
to all those that are executed through discourse”. The third is Book II of the De
Ordine of St. Augustine (354-430), where the origin of all knowledge (and, there-
fore, also that which is consecrated to the study of ”the meaning of words”, that
is, the three disciplines of the Trivium) is attributed to the activity of ”reason”:
”In all these disciplines, wherever numerical proportions were encountered, they
shone with more evidence and brilliance of absolute truths in the very realm of
thought(...). He studied everything diligently, and realized that his strength and
all his power were in the power of numbers” [1].

The need to include communication and critical thinking skills. In

all the approaches to 21st century skills analysed, the importance of writing,
critical and inventive thinking, communication, problem solving and teamwork
skills stands out. This highlights the importance of all the tools that include
the cultivation of Rhetoric and communication skills in general, something that
stands out in all the literature, from classical antiquity to the present day.

Technology is essential but it is not enough. Objective economic and

employment opportunities are accompanied by subjective challenges in the per-
sonal and social civic spheres. This same idea emerges strongly in two of the
most famous myths found in Plato’s works, the myth of Prometheus and the
myth of Theuth. “The theft of Prometheus is not enough to guarantee full hu-
man life. It only serves for human nutrition, so that man becomes a craftsman,
a builder or a farmer, but not all professional arts together guarantee human
coexistence”. [9]. The other great Platonic myth, that points to the insufficiency
of technical knowledge, is Theuth’s myth, whose moral is that not everyone who
can discover something has also been given to understand the importance and
value of their finding. In the same way that for Theuth, the possibility of writing
down knowledge meant a revolutionary milestone of human consciousness and
evolution, the present era hopes that technology will make it possible, not just
an advance without precedents of knowledge, but even a qualitative leap forward
in the evolution of the human species. [7].

Previous training of a basic and propaedeutic nature, including lit-

erary and humanistic training, is necessary. This idea responds precisely
to the idea of paidea as ”general culture”, basic and preparatory to any higher
specialization. If general culture [12] is defined as a set of knowledge whose ac-
quisition is aimed at the maximum development of the personality, and only not
6 JTL, ABG, ADL

a professional specialization where it can distinguish in general terms 4 types:

Traditional, Rhetorical, Platonic and Aristotelian. A global and comprehensive
design is needed defining a progressive, interdisciplinary and complementary
skills curriculum. The cycle of the seven liberal arts, the first part of which is
the Trivium, was conceived as a whole of knowledge of a universal, coherent,
interdisciplinary nature, made up of complementary disciplines, each of which
played a specific role in the global project of training the free citizen of the polis.
Furthermore, the liberal arts cycle is a direct continuation of the tradition of the
enkyklios paideı́a, the encyclopaedia characteristic of Hellenism, which was joined
by Cato (Ad Marcum Filium), Varrón (Disciplinarum libri novem) and, in late
antiquity, other authors such as Macrobio, Boethius, Marciano Capela and, in
the early Middle Ages, Cassiodorus and Isidor of Seville with their etymologies
[12].

3 Methodology, Design and Educational Environment

With regard to smart education Zhu et al. [26] identify three essential elements:
smart environments, smart pedagogy, and smart learners. In this section we will
focus on the last two: pedagogy and learners. In relation to these, the main pur-
pose coincides practically with the purpose of knowledge in the liberal arts: to
provide higher thinking quality, and foster stronger conduct ability.[22] This def-
inition has two components. First, the idea of developing intelligence as ”higher
thinking quality”, which in turn can be assimilated to the idea of the soul’s access
through the faculty of reason to the intelligible element of reality. And secondly,
ethical formation as ”better value orientation”, comparable to the idea of clas-
sical formation in the virtues proper to the free man for life in the polis. From
the point of view of pedagogy, Segredo et al. [22] highlight three methodological
needs: (1) The design of learning processes according to the needs and preferences
of the students. (2)The Application of a generative learning model in which, in-
stead of giving priority to the reception of transmitted content, the active role
of a student who, supported by the educational potential of the intelligent en-
vironment, is the main factor, and (3) The Design of intelligent environments
according to a constructivist paradigm [22].
Underlying these three points, for different reasons, the central idea seems the
teacher is expendable. The emerging questions are respectively: Can knowledge
be effectively transmitted to an individual life if it is not from another individual
life? What kind of knowledge can be transmitted without the concurrence of the
personal presence and the living word of the teacher? Can something other than
the master himself and his living word carry out this majeutic work? Probably
it is this tradition of teaching, in which personal presence and the living word is
primordial, together with the fact of the natural rigidity and reticence to change
of the educational systems, which is at the base of the ”technological paradox”
of Salomon, to which Segredo et al. [22] refers as ”the consistent tendency of the
educational system to preserve itself and its practices by the assimilation of new
technologies into existing instructional practices”, in such a way that technology
 Philosophical approaches to smart world 7

is domesticated within the framework of the ”prevailing educational philosophy

of cultural transmission” [22].

4 Digital Skills and Educational Content

In recent years it has become clear that an effective way to improve educational
content in general and to introduce digital skills is to incorporate as a basis
for the development of thinking in a broad sense the models of computational
thinking, algorithmic thinking and programming as such.

4.1 Computational thinking

Since its first formulation at 2006 by Jeannette Wing [24], definitions of com-
putational thinking have proliferated. Certainly, there are discrepancies in the
formulation of its basic components, but its definition attracts a fundamental
consensus that becomes visible, for example, in how the International Society for
Technology in Education (ISTE) and, likewise, the Computer Science Teachers
Association (CSTA), state that the definition of computational thinking should
encompass the following dimensions: 1.Formulate problems with a view to their
solution by means of computers. 2. Organizing and analyzing data logically. 3.
Representing data through abstractions, models, and simulations. 4. Automat-
ing solutions through algorithmic thinking, that is, through a series of steps
ordered to those solutions. 5. Identify, analyze and implement efficient solutions.
6. Generalize the solution process to a wide range of problems.[22]

4.2 Algorithmic thinking

Algorithmic thinking implies the following skills: 1. Analyze given problems.
2. Specifying or representing a problem accurately. 3. Finding the basic and
appropriate operations (instructions) to solve a given problem. 4. Constructing
an algorithm to solve the problem following the given sequence of actions. Think
of all possible cases (special or not) of a given problem. Improve the efficiency
of an algorithm.[22]

4.3 Learn to program

Through programming we develop computer thinking, and this is a fundamental
dimension of thinking that we put into practice whether we use computers or not.
Programming, therefore, teaches thinking in general and also introduces com-
puter thinking, so essential in the technological environment for which education
must be prepared.
Assuming the importance of programming from the point of view of educa-
tion in general, which is evident in the reflection on computational and algo-
rithmic thinking, it is now a matter of exposing the reasons why the disciplines
of the Trivium are decisive in promoting and optimizing the transformation of
educational systems as proposed in [3].
8 JTL, ABG, ADL

4.4 Advantages of Trivium disciplines for 21st century education

Along this section we justify the utility of Rhetoric, Aristotelian Logic and Fred
Sommers’ TFL Logic System as Elements of 21st Century Educational Systems.
Given that the study of Grammar and Literature has been preserved in current
educational systems, our proposal for revitalizing education in the 21st century
based on the Trivium program includes Rhetoric and Logic and/or Dialectics,
which today we would call informal logic.
The justification for Rhetoric has already been noted in section 2.2. In re-
lation to Logic, our proposal takes place in two steps. First, in the form of the
natural language of Aristotelian term logic, and second, in the form of the alge-
braic version of Fred Sommers’ Aristotelian logic (TFL - Term Functor Logic).

Reasons for the introduction of Aristotelian Logic

– Being a logic that uses natural language facilitates learning, or otherwise
reduces the cognitive load.
– It is a logic that, through its basic operations, opens access to the under-
standing of reality from abstract categories and, therefore, to the operations
of formulation, organization, representation, abstraction and generalization
typical of computational thinking.
– It is a logic that allows an elementary and simple transition to the languages
of mathematics, electronic design and computer programming.
– The demonstration of the translatability of basic formal structures, from
natural language to the language of mathematics and the different logical
and computational languages, favours the capacity for abstraction and algo-
rithmic design and creativity.
– Its multidisciplinary nature makes it an irreplaceable methodological instru-
ment, with interdisciplinarity, adaptability and flexibility as essential ingre-
dients of citizenship and the labour market of the 21st century.

Fred Sommers’ logic. Known as Term Functor Logic (TFL), the system de-
veloped by Sommers and Englebretsen[11] is a formal logical language easily
assimilated into natural language, since it emerges as a translation of it. Based
on the idea that natural language is the ”genuine source of natural logic”, repre-
sents the categorical propositions using an arithmetic grammar that deals with
syllogistic by using terms rather than first order language elements such as in-
dividual variables or quantifiers. TFL provides a complete and simple correct
decision method for Aristotelian syllogism described in Table1. Given this alge-
braic representation, this plus-minus algebra offers a simple method to decide
syllogism [10]. According to this algebra, the four categorical propositions can
be represented by simple syntax. Its main advantages are:
– Its visible ”syntactic naturalness” and the simplicity of its reasoning rules,
which intuitively and immediately provide cognitively relevant information
and make it a ”logic of reasoning in natural language”.
 Philosophical approaches to smart world 9

– Its direct usefulness from the point of view of logical programming languages
[2]) and through the programming language TFL+ [4].
All of which adds important advantages in programming issues where natural
language interaction with humans is ubiquitous and in areas that aim to simulate
human reasoning about possibilities or inductions [5].

Table 1. The four categorical propositions TFL

SaP := -S+P= - S – ( - P) = – ( - P) – S = - (-P) – (+S)

SeP:= -S-P= - S – ( + P) = - P- S = -P – (+S)
SiP:= +S+P= + S – ( - P) = +P+S= +P – (-S)
SoP:= -+S - P = + S – ( + P) = + ( - P) + S = + (-P) – (+S)

5 Conclusions
Technology, thus, as we suggest at the beginning, constitute the stage, the con-
tent and the horizon of education, in the same way that it constitute the stage,
the content and the horizon of human life. The question of the technology-
education binomial, therefore, is the same of the technology-human life bino-
mial. In this paper we have attempted to offer some remarks in the following
conclusions:
– The historical outline and project of the Trivium provides a valuable basis
for reflection on the challenges raised by the technological revolution in the
field of education, from the point of view of aims and skills as well as from
the point of view of methodology.
– The adoption of the schemes of computational thinking and algorithmic
thinking and the introduction of digital skills, with programming skills at
their core, is reinforced in its principles and procedures with the introduc-
tion of the disciplines of the Trivium, especially Rhetoric and Logic (in the
Aristotelian version and in the TFL version of Sommers), in educational
curricula and in training programs in general.
– Finally, the Trivium disciplines (Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic) constitute
an appropriate basis for the design of mind-tools devices in order to reinforce
the context of smart-education.
Acknowledgments. This research has been partially supported by the De-
partment of Education of the JCyL and the project RTI2018-095390-B-C32
(MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE).

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