Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

One of the skills teachers have always demonstrated, is to be able to detect when students copy. This has never pushed students to artificially add mistakes to their essays.

If now teachers abdicate this judgment to a software, students should be allowed to abdicate their duties to a computer as well.

I object to the idea that the LLM writing that these students are trying to distinguish themselves from, is actually good in the first place. Although students might well end up writing worse because people are trusting the detection of LLM content to other LLMs. (And really, it's bizarre that these massively complex systems required to produce roughly human-like output, apparently offer such simplistic reasoning for what they detect as non-human.)

Honestly, I lean towards shaming educators who do that. If you can't detect the whiff of LLM with your own senses, then it has been used properly and shouldn't be faulted. If that premise invalidates your assignment, change the assignment. It's not as if you're assigning this work to test the basic mechanics of writing (grammar, sentence/paragraph structure, parallelism, whatever) — I mean, how much of that did you consciously try to teach? My recollection is, not an awful lot; and I can only imagine it's gotten worse since I was in K-12 (and I went to pretty darn good K-12).

> I need to find ways to talk to people who want to hear and understand me.

I'm told blogging works for some. I don't really know how you build an audience, though, and it's hard to keep going (first-hand experience) without one.

Oh, well chosen. I keep forgetting that word, and lamenting that "diatribe" (or, er, "lament") doesn't quite fit in some situation.

The profit motive is corrupting and polluting every level of the education space.

Teachers are being hamstrung on curriculum. The districts enter into contracts that require the use of certain programs for certain amounts of time. We've known for decades (if not a century) that direct instruction works [1] but you can't sell devices, platforms and consulting services that way.

We're literally at the point in education we were in the 1950s when the health benefits of nicotine in your Q zone were lighting up the airwaves.

And generative AI means it's all but impossible to have take home writing assignments. But hey this is another opportunity to sell AI or cheating detection software, that's often just an em-dash detection [2].

We have a generation that gets to college quite possibly having never written a book. social promotion through grades and the constant distraction of electronic devices in classroom settings. I don't even necessarily blame the parents entirely either because we've constructed a society where 2 people need 5 jobs to make ends meet.

And while all this is going on we have a coordinated and well-funded effort to defund public education and move government funds to private schools based on the failing public education that's failing because we defunded it. This is usually backed up by some baloney study that shows charter shcool produce better results that really comes down to charter schools being able to be selective with enrolments while public schools cannot be. Plus we mingle in special education kids into public education because those programs got defunded too.

And really that's just a bunch of already affluent people who want a tax break for doing somethign they were going to do anyway: send their kids to private schools so they don't have to mingle with the poors and aren't taught inconvenient things like human reproduction, critical thinking and self-determination.

And after all of that we just end up teaching kids how to pass standardized tests.

[1]: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/di...

[2]: https://medium.com/@brentcsutoras/the-em-dash-dilemma-how-a-...