Technologies Smarter, Humans "Dumber"?

In early 2026, the Center for Curriculum Redesign published a paper that independently articulates — from completely different starting points, using completely different methods — the core argument steamHouse has been building for eight years.

The paper: Technologies Smarter, Humans "Dumber"? (2026) The authors: Dr. Dirk Van Damme, former Head of the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, and Charles Fadel, OECD AI Futures Expert, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and founder of the Center for Curriculum Redesign.

These aren't bloggers. Van Damme ran the research division of the OECD — the organization that administers PISA, the world's most influential education assessment. Fadel's Four-Dimensional Education has been published in 23 languages and is shaping curriculum reform in 30+ countries.

Their paper matters because it arrives at our conclusions without knowing we exist.

The Argument

Van Damme traces how every major technological innovation — from agriculture to writing to printing to digital media to AI — produces both cognitive gains and cognitive losses. Technology expands abstraction, efficiency, and access to knowledge while simultaneously weakening embodied, contextual, and internally sustained capacities.

He proposes a five-layer model of cognitive competence:

LayerFunctionTechnology's Effect1. ProceduralRoutine executionProgressively automated2. InstrumentalTool use and applicationProgressively automated3. ConceptualUnderstanding and reasoningPartially automated, partially augmented4. IntegrativeSense-making across domainsCannot be automated — requires human judgment5. Epistemic meta-competenceReflecting on your own knowingCannot be automated — requires consciousness

The central finding: technology progressively automates Layers 1–3 while the capacities at Layers 4–5 — judgment, integrative sense-making, and the ability to consciously orchestrate your own cognitive environment — become both more critical and more neglected.

Their conclusion: education must shift emphasis upward toward teaching reflection, judgment, and epistemic meta-competence.

The steamHouse Mapping

Van Damme and Fadel didn't design their model to validate ours. But the alignment is striking:

Van Damme & FadelsteamHouseNotesEpistemic meta-competenceReflective Thinking + Objective ReasonTheir Layer 5 is our two most foundational principles combined"Offloading" vs. "outsourcing" cognitionAutomatic → Conscious → PurposefulTheir distinction between delegating tasks (fine) and surrendering judgment (dangerous) maps directly onto our three levels of consciousness"Intelligent reliance" on technologyFive Practices of AuthorshipTheir recommendation that people develop metacognitive capacity to decide when to delegate cognition is operationalized by our Recognition → Interruption → Reflection → Direction → Training sequenceEducation must develop Layer 5steamHouse's entire missionThey wrote the diagnosis. We built the method.

The convergence isn't approximate. It's structural. Their five-layer model and our three-level consciousness framework describe the same phenomenon from different angles — and arrive at the same conclusion about what education must prioritize.

The Equity Dimension

Van Damme's argument has an equity implication he names directly: epistemic opacity — when technology makes thinking processes invisible — disproportionately disadvantages communities that have historically been excluded from knowledge-producing institutions.

When technology automates cognitive tasks, those with meta-cognitive training can choose when to delegate and when to think for themselves. Those without that training are most vulnerable to manipulation, most dependent on systems they can't evaluate, and most likely to have their judgment outsourced without their awareness.

steamHouse's response to this is structural: an open-source, community-based framework that doesn't require expensive materials, credentialed professionals, or institutional adoption. Any community can use it. The credentialing system is designed to make development visible and verifiable regardless of family connections or institutional access. The equity argument isn't an add-on — it's built into the architecture.

Why This Matters for Partners

For researchers: Van Damme's five-layer model provides a testable framework for evaluating steamHouse's approach. Does steamHouse programming actually develop Layer 4–5 capacities? That's a publishable study.

For funders: This is current (2026), high-credibility (OECD + Harvard) independent validation of your investment. Van Damme and Fadel aren't steamHouse advocates — they're education researchers who arrived at the same place independently. That's the strongest form of evidence available for a design-stage initiative.

For program partners: The paper provides the "why" behind the "what." If you're wondering why a robotics team or theater troupe should overlay steamHouse's framework, Van Damme's answer is clear: because the capacities technology can't automate are the ones your program needs to develop — and most programs don't do it deliberately.

Read the Paper

Technologies Smarter, Humans "Dumber"? is available through the Center for Curriculum Redesign (curriculumredesign.org). steamHouse's full mapping of the paper's framework to our architecture is available in the Investment Case document.

[Read the Investment Case →] · [Back to Independent Convergence →]