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My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

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Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#321

Post by wngr »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #313
bestouff wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm rising 3 kids (in France, I don't know if it changes much). We have banned TV, very heavily restricted phones, and we closely follow homework. I'm persuaded it makes a difference wrt parents that don't do that, but somehow isn't a sure fire way of being a "great parent".

I don't know how that helps. Watching TV with my kid has been the best way to teach him I've found. There are great videos and shows that you can watch together and then discuss afterwords. Baking videos. Chemistry. Physics. History. Seeing something on TV is great way to fire up the imagination and inspiration for real world activities.

I totally agree with you, but those shows are not what parent means.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#322

Post by rhelz »

I'm transitioning to teaching math after a 30-year career as an engineer. I am really conflicted about the use of LLMs for homework.

One thing we *for sure* know that employers are going to want is that one employee does the work of 10 using llms. A

I'm wondering, why don't we give the employers what they want? Why not teach the kids to be super-effective with alms, and then We just give the kids 10x the amount of homework and tell them to get it done anyway they want to?

Sounds rough, but that's the reality which almost every creative writing professional is facing right now. And as soon as the technology makes it feasible, that's the reality that every software engineer is going to be facing. All this talk about 10x engineers...employers are going to expect all of us to be 10x engineers.

I mean, imagine a gym class which teaches kids how to run down an antelope. Because for 200,000 years running down an antelope was a core survival skill, and just because we had supermarkets doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to live off the land.

From John Henry vs. the Steam Hammer, to accountants using spreadsheets in the 80s, the whole story of technology is making 1 person able to do the work of 10. There's no use trying to pretend LLMs didn't happen. They happened, and they are not going away.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#323

Post by DylanDmitri »

jjice wrote: post #232
dcchambers wrote: post #219

I think one thing few are willing to admit is that a large blame for this can be placed on disinterested parents. Parents that believe it is solely the school/teacher's job to educate their child. When kids are at home, parents should be involved in the learning process. You don't have to be a helicopter and monitor everything, but you should take interest in the work your child is doing. If you check in at least onc…

> Parents that believe it is solely the school/teacher's job to educate their child. My sister works with kids on their speech at a school and she's said that it's _bad_ how many children can't read or tell you what letter their first name starts with. She says that the teachers are getting flack at parent-teacher meetings because of this, but those are things that their parents teach them! I thought the "kids are il…

Decline of the stay at home mom. Both parents tired from work means less quality attention, less consistent meals, etc..

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#324

Post by rhelz »

dcchambers wrote: post #219

I think one thing few are willing to admit is that a large blame for this can be placed on disinterested parents. Parents that believe it is solely the school/teacher's job to educate their child. When kids are at home, parents should be involved in the learning process. You don't have to be a helicopter and monitor everything, but you should take interest in the work your child is doing. If you check in at least onc…

// a large blame for this can be placed on disinterested parents //

Is this really something to which we need to attribute blame? I mean, after I learned how to program, I never again sat down and did 100 computations by hand. But I never felt a need to feel culpable or blame my parents.

LLMs happened. They are not going away. There is not an employer on the planet who would prefer their employees to do 1/10th the work by hand, vs. 10x the work using LLMs.

We have to be very careful not to prepare our kids for the world we lived in, or the careers we had. Their world is going to be very very different.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#326

Post by recursinging »

It seems to me that the fundamental tenants of "education" are being disrupted here. I have always found learning in order to do things far less intuitive and interesting than doing things in order to learn. The incentive structures of our education systems are wonky (reflected in this post). Maybe they could use a good shakeup.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#327

Post by Maxatar »

rhelz wrote: post #324
dcchambers wrote: post #219

I think one thing few are willing to admit is that a large blame for this can be placed on disinterested parents. Parents that believe it is solely the school/teacher's job to educate their child. When kids are at home, parents should be involved in the learning process. You don't have to be a helicopter and monitor everything, but you should take interest in the work your child is doing. If you check in at least onc…

// a large blame for this can be placed on disinterested parents // Is this really something to which we need to attribute blame? I mean, after I learned how to program, I never again sat down and did 100 computations by hand. But I never felt a need to feel culpable or blame my parents. LLMs happened. They are not going away. There is not an employer on the planet who would prefer their employees to do 1/10th the wo…

I think blame should be taken to mean "root cause" as opposed to a moral culpability. The degree to which a parent takes an active role in their child's education is incredibly important, more important than their teachers or the school they go to, and sadly many parent's do not take much of an interest in their children's education, thinking that it is mostly something schools manage.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#328

Post by crote »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #275
dowager_dan99 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we flipped the lecture/homework system upside down it would first solve some of the major issues with how we deliver education, but as a side effect prevent the appearance of doing the work while really it's just the student mindlessly copying prompts and responses. Assign the material for outside the classroom. Use the in-person contact time to work through the problems, with a mix of small group, pairing and men…

This is good. I've never understood the value of watching a live lecture without interactivity. You might as well watch a video. It works on multiple levels: it mitigates the cheating, but also takes advantage of the vast array of learning options available to replace the traditional lecture. I cringe at the "small group" suggestion, although I acknowledge it's probably good to learn to coordinate with others. Rarely…

> I've never understood the value of watching a live lecture without interactivity.

Because you're rarely just watching. It isn't a movie, you are supposed to ask questions. Similarly, the lecturer will ask the audience questions to gauge their understanding and tweak the lecture on-the-fly. There's also a huge value in interacting with classmates after the lecture, allowing you to discuss and refine your understanding of it while it is still fresh.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#329

Post by stevemadere »

I guess this signals the end of focusing on testing to prove one's "rank" as a student and actually start focusing on educating students rather than evaluating them.

The whole problem with factory mass-education is the almost exclusive focus on evaluation. A little bit of education happens as a side-effect of the unrelenting soul-crushing evaluation so we've put up with it and called it education for 100 years.

ChatGPT will make it nearly impossible to cause any educating to happen as a side effect of constant re-evaluation.

That means we are going to have to focus on education directly. Probably just train ChatGPT to be a really good tutor and everybody gets a 19th century rich boy's education instead of the junk we've had in feed-lot-style schools for the last 100 years.

Note that Waldorf schools are kind of immune to this problem since the kids don't get to touch a computer until they are in 9th grade and heck, they don't even read until 2nd grade.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#330

Post by nyrikki »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #176
nyrikki wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homework weights on grades is going to go down. Parents income and zip codes impact educational attainment more than class rank outside of the oligarchy anyways. Opportunity and social mobility is far more restricted in the US than most people realize. This is in part why the college debt is problematic, valuing a piece of paper over the education itself is already a bubble that has popped.

The US is one of, if not the most, socially mobile countries in the west. Countries like the Nordics have much more equality of outcome, but the chances someone leaves the economic quintile they are born into is lower.

That is the popular myth.

https://www.lisc.org/our-resources/resource/opportunity-atla...

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2022_FM...

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