291–300 of 368 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From The New York Times 1996, the internet is ruining education: https://archive.is/qTAXR It's an easy win for a journalist.
I mean, it kind of did... Look at our political leaders now vs in the 1990s as an example of how poorly educated we are now
An ex-gf of mine spent four years going through university to become an Occupational Therapist. She's severely dyslexic, so the university provided her with all sorts of assistance to get through her degree, from scribes in the exams to extra time for tests. She passed, and became a qualified Occupational Therapist. She landed a job in a local hospital. And on day one, was handed a huge pile of paperwork to complete.…
And lawyers also use paralegals, that doesnt mean we let law students hire them to write papers or assist during exams. Docs have nurses, but i believe docs still write exams solo. And soldiers have buddies, but you arent allowed to pay them to do your fitness test. That a tool is common in the real world is not an excuse to let students outsource the work that is the heart of learning.
And doctors do not "have nurses" in the way that you've said; they're entirely different professions. I'll allow that it's just a poor example of the point you're trying to make.
> That a tool is common in the real world is not an excuse to let students outsource the work that is the heart of learning.
This is, I think, the point: the work is not the heart of the thing. A blacksmith using a power hammer is not less of a blacksmith; the heart of being a blacksmith is not being able to hit a piece of metal really hard. As we are finding out with coding; writing code is not the heart of software development. The grunt work that an AI can do is not the heart of the learning that needs to happen. Guiding an AI to write software is similar to a blacksmith using a power hammer.
I spent the day using an AI to write documents. They're good documents. We need them. I was able to get way more done by using the AI to write them. I don't think this is bad. And if it's not bad for me, why should it be bad for a student?
Teachers can also use them to mark homework.
They are a boon as much as they are a bane.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in the day we were writing code on paper (or on punched cards, using them as a paper substitute, as there were a lot of them left over from the Soviet times and they looked very "computer-y"), so even during computer classes you didn't necessarily need a computer. Not that I really think that it can still work in the year 2025 and beyond...
I was just talking to younger coworkers about this recently. Mid-90s to early 2000s: FORTRAN, COBOL, C, and C++ classes all had handwritten code parts for homework, handouts, exams, etc. This wasn't just pseudocode, you had to have full syntax, variable declarations, correct spelling of functions, etc. You frequently had to show code optimization, debugging, etc even on paper. Wild times!! * All of those classes also…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Trying to exclude AI from education is not only pointless, it's doing the kids a disservice: AI is going to be a large part of their future, so it needs to be a large part of their education. Hard hard hard hard disagree. Everyone uses a calculator, even to calculate tips at a restaurant, but kids still need to learn arithmetic without a calculator's aid first. I spent my CS education learning things that I never c…
> Everyone uses a calculator, even to calculate tips at a restaurant, but kids still need to learn arithmetic without a calculator's aid first. citation needed I was rapped across the knuckles by a sadistic primary school teacher for failing to learn my times table fast enough. Everyone said I absolutely needed to learn this because I would not always have access to a calculator. Here I am, literally carrying a calcu…
One horrible teacher != Negating a useful skill wholesale
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From The New York Times 1996, the internet is ruining education: https://archive.is/qTAXR It's an easy win for a journalist.
I mean, it kind of did... Look at our political leaders now vs in the 1990s as an example of how poorly educated we are now
100% literacy, but all we read is garbage, and all we write is short and shallow. 100% computer literacy too, if that term means making accounts, clicking on links, scrolling up and down, taking videos of things, and commenting.
The internet has ended up being a massive drain on people's energy, and driven communities apart. Of course, there are exceptions here and there amongst the better educated classes, people who manage to shield themselves from the worst transgressions of the behemoths running the tech infrastructure that dominates people's lives.
And, of course, these exalted internet users then vehemently argue that the internet is great, and people just aren't using it right, like them. And round and round the thing goes, getting worse and worse for most people.
One of the things that doesn't seem to be emphasised enough is that LLMs can be great as Tutors for students. E.g. They could really help students not understanding fully a section of Mathematics and really break down the logic. Teachers can also use them to mark homework. They are a boon as much as they are a bane.
Especially with math, most LLMs will happy explain to you a "proof" for something that isn't proven or known false.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is fundamentally different. It replaces, and thus atrophies, cognitive faculties in a way the other tools you mentioned never aspired to.
No, it isn't. "Spellcheck removes the ability to spell" "Calculators prevent you from doing math." "Computer art will destroy real art" "Typing text will destroy cursive and handwritten". Same idea, that some form of tech will destroy something we should value.
I did IGCSE/A-levels (International school following the British school system). For IGCSE, around grade 8 (if memory serves), you're allowed the use of calculators, including during all exams. For AS/A Levels (grades 11 and 12), you're also allowed calculators in all subjects that have any kind of mathematics at all, like Physics, Chemistry, Maths etc.
On the front page of the exam papers, you also get a list of all formulae that might be relevant. For physics this will be things like the formula for calculating Force, or all the ones relating to electricity, or gravity etc. Similarly for math, you'll get common formulae for even the simple things that everyone is expected to know like Pythagoras' theorem.
The thing is, the calculators and the formulae were of very little use to you if you didn't know the theory behind it in the first place. This same concept applies for the basics like arithmetic, if you yourself have never done arithmetic without the aid of a calculator, you can plug in all the numbers you want, but you don't have that intuition for what looks roughly right or not and you won't get very far. I still have memories of me punching in some numbers in the calculator, and then being confused by the resulting number, because for years I practiced my mental arithmetic and was at a state where I know that the number just looked different from what I was expecting.
The thing here is that the years studying arithmetic weren't only relevant for just the math class I was doing, it was universally useful whenever I interacted with any numbers, including in other subjects like Physics (where you're often working with incomprehensible numbers that end with an `^11`, so having an intuition for orders of magnitudes really mattered) or Chemistry (similarly except it's ^-11). Even for the less STEM-focused subjects like Business studies, having an intuition for basic Mathematics makes a huge difference.
LLMs/AIs in this context would be replacing all those foundation building years, for basically everything. You as the student relying on AI for everything will take a look at that exam sheet, take a look at that list of formulae and will have absolutely no clue what any of it means, because you haven't practiced any of it yourself. You'll see some number spat out by the calculator and it'll be negative when it should be positive, and the order of magnitude will be ^21 rather than ^11, and you'll lack the foundational knowledge to know intuitively that number is wrong and the answer is wrong. Except this will apply for everything that an LLM can answer, not just numbers.
We already live in a world where people take anything they read online as gospel. People already don't know how to read graphs, and have no intuition for numbers. If something is said in an authoritative-enough tone, many people will just go with it even if the data shows the opposite of what is being said. We now want to introduce hallucination machines and have the future generations be dependent on them and to outsource all their thinking to them? Even though it's hilariously easy to get these systems spitting out absolute nonsense, just in a confident and well-written tone?
> "Spellcheck removes the ability to spell"
This has factually happened. How many people out there do you see that don't know the difference between your and you're, or that constantly mispell [sic] common words? Whether that's something that is important is a different discussion, but it is a truth.
> "Typing text will destroy cursive and handwritten".
This has also objectively happened. Again, whether it's truly important or not is a different topic, but I can use myself as an example, I basically have a child's handwriting because I haven't really written anything since high school. I still have to write from time to time, for example when filling out some gov't forms, and it's a genuine pain in the ass sometimes how terrible my handwriting is.
They seem surprised about this, but the cheating kids were always there. They just use different (and arguably easier) tools now. Blocking the AI won’t stop them from cheating, it’ll just make them revert to the old way of doing it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do contract network admin work for a K-12 school district and I'm hearing the same thing from the in-house sysadmin about his administration staff. The District superintendent is very enthusiastic about getting LLM tools into the hands of the students and teachers. The in-house sysadmin and I are both horrified at what we're enabling.
Respectfully, do you think you are helping K-12 students by withholding exposure to an AI world they will soon be expected to be competitive in?
Do you think we are helping K-12 students by letting AI doing hallucinated thinking for them? What incredible "AI skills" will they be missing out on if we restrict the exposure? How to type things in a text box and adjust your question until you get what you want?