Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

time.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 164 posts

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#101

Post by ARandumGuy »

mlyle wrote: post #29
golergka wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your opinion on calculators? Update: I meant to compare calculators to something like a slide ruler for logarithms. I'm not from US and I tend to forget that some people use calculators to take 20% of 500.

Not a super big fan, honestly. I'm a bit horrified when I see high school seniors who are smart, and have been through the entire HS math sequence... dig around in their backpack for a calculator to find 5 times 1.5 or 20% of 11. I'm glad that we have calculators and computing devices, but I'm not glad that they have made teens with basic numeracy into an endangered species. Many tools we use expand our understanding…

From my experience, the more advanced math you learn, the worse you become at arithmetic. I knew a lot of math majors in college, and all of them used calculators all the time.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#102

Post by righthand »

windexh8er wrote: post #98
righthand wrote: post #61

This kind of thing is going to be the split between the technically inclined and the non-technically inclined. Those that believe thinking and understanding is too hard or that school is not cool or whatever will have technology to slide by on. They will be apart of the non-technical society and they will languish there. Comfortable in their lower pay and social media and grocery store tomatoes. Truly one of the herd…

My concern is the assessment divide. In the district I live I happen to be on a parent board that's providing input to the leadership with respect to technology. Privacy and security are a huge component of LLMs currently, but beyond that I think the biggest area of interest is the assessment divide. Currently the district is looking at it through the lens of having students still "test" in traditional ways so that i…

They will also be passed over by others who put in the work and can use logic, reasoning, arguments to defend or attack work. When the time comes to review work or output, what will the clever LLM kids say without an LLM?

We’re basically asking people to stop being interested and stop having agency because a computer might have some incorrect but accessible summary of whatever topic.

A solution might be to eliminate homework, since anything outside the classroom can be cleverly mounted. What happens when students can only work on their paper during class time? Or maybe handing out paper assignments again. They can cheat all they want but filling out the answers with a pen would go a little ways to instill the non-researched answer.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#103

Post by lucianbr »

chx wrote: post #81
lucianbr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the result of chatgpt is even more kids skating through life without really picking up these skills... it may have tragic consequences. Learning to think well is the single most important thing I got from education. Do teachers have no role here? "If many kids make a certain choice, there will be big trouble". Maybe teach them to do better? Is the role of educator reduced to giving assignements and grading them…

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. We as educators can show the interesting parts, the wonders of a field but more we can't do. The author of the article seems to have not managed to get through. Truth to be told, such happens every day in schools because most schools use completely outdated ways to teach -- frontal pedagogy itself is such -- and so ChatGPT is not their biggest problem but it…

> You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

This must have been a problem before the invention of LLMs. How was it solved before? Why didn't teaching go out of fashion when TV was invented, or why didn't math disappear when calculators were built?

You yourself highlight problems that existed before LLMs, different problems in teaching. Obviously not all teachers quit because of those, and we still have schools. People still learn. Perhaps fewer, and less, but they still do. And perhaps more do. I'm not sure how this can be accurately measured for the entire planet. After all, science still progresses. We've invented LLMs.

Once again, as almost all discussions about AI, I feel the main point of this post is "ChatGPT is different than anything that has come before, and will change everything", without actual supporting arguments. Sounds a lot like advertising.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#104

Post by windexh8er »

pton_xd wrote: post #28
acbart wrote: post #13

I wonder what can be done. It's terrifying to realize how dependent students are going to become on these tools. Too many people are just not willing to live with the discomfort that comes with learning something difficult, when the alternative is so readily accessible. Short term gain over long term gain, exemplified.

I like the use of the word discomfort here. It does take an acceptance of some level of discomfort to engage with material you don't yet understand. Similar to how you experience some physical discomfort / strain when pushing your limits exercising. As you engage with discomfort your tolerance builds and what was once a difficult exercise becomes routine. The reward is worth the effort but I worry what the future loo…

> I like the use of the word discomfort here.

It really is spot on. I've been reading "The Coddling of the American Mind" [0] by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. The book's precipice feeds directly into this idea and has been a fun read thus far. It seems that LLMs will feed negatively into that "coddling", described in the book, in a very negative way as they are providing discomfort avoidance.

[0] https://www.thecoddling.com/

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#105

Post by SoftTalker »

mjevans wrote: post #42

IMO most of the reason this teacher quit is students using ChatGPT to get around the puffery and wasteful production assigned. It is important to have the skills to be able to do that kind of task, and transforming information rather than just transcribing it is a key way of training our biological supercomputers. However I can't recall even one example of that being the case when I was in school at any level. I thin…

> I think if it ever did happen it was as an accidental side effect rather than an intended part of the process.

It's a side-effect but it's not accidental.

The objective of most school work (below PhD-level research) is knowledge mastery and skill development. This comes from repeated "practice" assignments. Look at any code you wrote as an undergrad compared to what you write today. You weren't inventing anything new, and you will probably laugh at your coding style and quality, but that puffy and wasteful production was what developed the skills to think and the mastery of the information and techniques necessary to move on to solving novel problems and perhaps creating new approaches.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#106

Post by AndyNemmity »

Technology has always brought fear of dumbing us down, but it rarely does. When the internet came along, people worried we'd stop remembering things. When Google Maps appeared, people thought we'd forget how to read maps.

Wait... I'm not sure anyone can read a map... maybe you're right.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#107

Post by SoftTalker »

lucianbr wrote: post #48

> I noted where arguments were unsound. I pointed to weaknesses such as stylistic quirks that I knew to be common to ChatGPT (I noticed a sudden surge of phrases such as “delves into”). That is, I found myself spending more time giving feedback to AI than to my students. > So I quit. This strikes me as a non-sequitur. Her students were making a certain class of mistakes, so... she quit? Don't students always make mis…

He did those things. He said his students recognized the flaws and hazards of relying on AI. But they used it anyway.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#108

Post by mlyle »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #101
mlyle wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a super big fan, honestly. I'm a bit horrified when I see high school seniors who are smart, and have been through the entire HS math sequence... dig around in their backpack for a calculator to find 5 times 1.5 or 20% of 11. I'm glad that we have calculators and computing devices, but I'm not glad that they have made teens with basic numeracy into an endangered species. Many tools we use expand our understanding…

From my experience, the more advanced math you learn, the worse you become at arithmetic. I knew a lot of math majors in college, and all of them used calculators all the time.

Yes, I've gotten worse at arithmetic, too.

The point is, one is hard pressed to find anyone who can do much arithmetic-- even trivial things.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#109

Post by Eumenes »

A friend of mine teaches an intro to web development course - its a 2 day thing, usually over the weekend at a co-working place that does events, and the stories he tells me are insane. These are mostly college graduates and white collar professionals who want to learn some code. They are often perplexed by the idea of a file and folders. Right clicking something is novel for some. He gives all the instructions ahead of time so they can get started right away. That first day is almost exclusively helping people get the "dev environment" setup. Its just a folder on their desktop with some html, css, and js files.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#110

Post by lucianbr »

adamc wrote: post #78
lucianbr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the result of chatgpt is even more kids skating through life without really picking up these skills... it may have tragic consequences. Learning to think well is the single most important thing I got from education. Do teachers have no role here? "If many kids make a certain choice, there will be big trouble". Maybe teach them to do better? Is the role of educator reduced to giving assignements and grading them…

Most teachers have large classes. Their ability to monitor each kid and prevent them from using chatgpt or similar tools may be limited. I come from a family with many teachers. The harsh reality is that teachers can provide a conducive environment, but they just don't have enough time per kid to make nearly the impact that people expect, which is why your home environment is so critical. Teachers don't really teach.…

> Most teachers have large classes. Their ability to monitor each kid and prevent them from using chatgpt or similar tools may be limited.

I'm not a teacher, and I very well may be missing your point due to my own shortcomings. But I have to ask, would this sentence not apply to people not wanting to learn math because it's hard? (or learn anything at all)

> Most teachers have large classes. Their ability to monitor each kid and prevent them from cheating or simply not learning may be limited.

I have been in school, and have learned a few things, not many. Next to me were people who learned even less, because they didn't want to. ChatGPT didn't exist then, nor smartphones, and we didn't even have internet access.

That just points to schools being imperfect, and seems to have zero connection to ChatGPT.

Post reply on HN