During a summer seminar at an elementary school in Chuncheon, South Korea, a class discussion about Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein quickly turned into a debate about artificial intelligence. When asked whether AI could be considered human, student Ma Yeonwoo argued that it could not, noting that while machine algorithms are intelligent, they lack creativity and a soul. Instead of listening to a lecture, the students examined the question together through open debate—an educational experiment aimed at teaching young people how to interrogate modern technology.
The program is based on the "Great Books" seminar model developed by St. John's College in the United States. Rather than following standard lectures and preparing for standardized tests, participating students sit around a table with teachers who act as discussion guides rather than lecturers. Students are discouraged from searching the internet for quick answers. Instead, they rely solely on their assigned texts, personal reasoning, and collaborative debate to analyze authors ranging from Aristotle and William Shakespeare to Korean Nobel laureate Han Kang.
Educators and local officials in Chuncheon, a city east of Seoul, see the program as a necessary response to changing study habits. According to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 51 percent of South Korean students report using AI chatbots to study at least once a week, even as international assessments show a decline in reading comprehension. Professor Lee Yonghwa of Incheon National University, who co-founded the country's first Great Books curriculum in 2019, warns that relying on AI tools undermines independent thought. Without the ability to reason critically, he argues, students cannot evaluate the quality or accuracy of the answers AI generates.
To counter that trend, Chuncheon's municipal government partnered with St. John's College to expand the discussion-based model across local schools, where roughly 770 younger students and 120 college students now participate. Advocates note that the seminars also cultivate civic awareness. In one high school session, students reading Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail connected his distinction between just and unjust laws to recent political struggles in South Korea. Chuncheon Mayor Yook Dong-han described the initiative as a meaningful departure from the country's intense exam-driven system, designed to give students the analytical tools needed to navigate an AI-driven society.