A pair of North American intellectuals will present a paper at an upcoming conference in London that argues the modern model of education has become too standardized and has had a dehumanizing effect.

The paper titled "Re-Humanising Education" was written by Stephen Blackwood, the president of the new Georgia-based Ralston College, and Bernadette Guthrie, a professor at the University of Toronto, and will be presented at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship's inaugural conference in London later this month. Attendees at the conference are set to include intellectuals such as Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt, along with political figures from the United States, such as Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and several members of the United Kingdom parliament.

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Blackwood and Guthrie's paper labels three challenges to modern education: standardization, "loss of meaning," and a "crisis of attention." All three, they argue, have contributed to a broken view of education that has failed to cultivate great minds on the level of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, 19th-century novelist Jane Austen, and 17th-century artist Peter Paul Rubens.

The authors explained that modern education, especially higher education, has embraced a one-size-fits-all approach that has failed to account for the differences between people. All the while, depression rates have skyrocketed, and attention spans have shortened drastically to the point where delayed gratification is largely shunned.

"In our often-single-minded focus on institutionalized modes of education, we ... risk forgetting the rich legacy of other forms of educational practice," the authors wrote. "These forms, some of which were born of necessity due to material deprivation or institutional exclusion, reveal the ingenuity and wisdom of the countless individuals and communities who created and sustained them. Exploring this educational inheritance can help us discern — at a critical moment with much at stake — how best to meet the challenges of our own time."

Blackwood and Guthrie noted that education has taken various forms for different people throughout history, with Alexander the Great, a pupil of Aristotle, learning in the Greek "gymnasium," while the monastery was the classroom of 11th-century nun and philosopher Hildegard of Bingen. The authors also described English bishop John Henry Newman's famous description of a university, Austen's home education, Douglass's self-instruction, and Peter Paul Rubens' membership in an artistic guild in the late 1500s.

"The extraordinary lives of Alexander the Great, Hildegard of Bingen, John Henry Newman, Peter Paul Rubens, Jane Austen, and Frederick Douglass offer a glimpse into the rich cultural and intellectual possibilities of the historical sites of education, both formal and informal," they wrote.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Blackwood said the main interest of the paper was "the actualization of human potential, of human realization."

"Human beings are very different, one to the next," he said. "And so it would stand to reason that it takes a range of different kinds of formation to enable individuals who are actually different to realize their potential."

Blackwood said his main goal was to illustrate the fact that people do not need to go to college in order to flourish as human beings, and he added that the idea that everyone needs to go to college is "a perverse notion." He expressed hope that the paper will encourage people, including policymakers and educators, to rethink how they view vocational training.

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"What we are trying to suggest is there should be a very significant expansion of the possible range of pathways that will be more adequate to the actual diversity of real human beings," he said.

"College is a good pathway forward for many people, but not for all people," he added. "We need to think sanely about what are the range of ways of realizing the great diversity of human beings that are open to us and take them seriously."