While I agree that education is necessary, we have different ideas of what constitute good education. Knowingly or not, who comes from the neo-liberal school of thought, that mandates state involvement of everything, so it makes it difficult to have a real conversation with him, when I am left of centre cryptographic socialist. Our disagreements don't just end at Public Education (I believe in education, but not organized education) but in terms of computer security. About the only thing we really agree on is that it's crazy how AI seems to be everywhere these days. I would totally go for a pet robot cat or robot rabbit, but wouldn't want an AI to write my autobiographical fiction on my behalf.
That's not to say I wouldn't want a robot to have a self-will of its own, and would even welcome it writing its own autobiography. But most novelists will tell you, most works of fiction come from something deeper than just putting words down on paper.
These self-love for AI permeates even the security world: I have a huge fascinations with classical pen and paper ciphers, and have even found a way split a Ceasar Cipher into key pairs. This knowledge can extend into splitting a Polyalphabetic Cipher into key pairs. That's not to say I don't think automated encryption is absolutely unnecessary, however not everything even needs to be automated. Suppose, and I do tend to think of the worst scenario, what if your internet goes down, or your computer system goes dead?
You'd still need a way to protect your information that you write down on pen and paper. Yet it seems like certain security professionals completely devalue the need for even teaching pen and paper ciphers. I still find websites that do teach them, but the big security guys don't even approach the subject.:/