Teachers Are Not OK
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Have they ever been?
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Correction: Education is not OK.
AI is just giving poor kids the same opportunities rich kids have had for decades. Opportunities for cheating the system that was made specifically not to give students the best education possible but instead to bring them up to speed on the bare minimum required to become factory workers.
Except we don't have very many factories any more. And we don't have jobs for all these graduates that pay a living wage.
The banks are going to have to get involved soon. They're going to have to figure out a way to load up working-age people with long term debt without college being involved.
Rich and poor cheat the system in different ways.
The rich can afford to put their kids in supportive schools that will teach those willing to learn a hell of a lot, and those that don't want to learn can benefit from the network effect.
AI helps the poor cheat the system by avoiding the work and learning, depending on a language tool to process language for them.
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My ninth grade homeroom teacher seemed pretty okay but he kept a fifth of Jack in his desk so maybe that helped
Dare me to drive?
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Rich and poor cheat the system in different ways.
The rich can afford to put their kids in supportive schools that will teach those willing to learn a hell of a lot, and those that don't want to learn can benefit from the network effect.
AI helps the poor cheat the system by avoiding the work and learning, depending on a language tool to process language for them.
The poor aren't cheating any system, ever.
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We may have to revise our education system so that it's not connected to our credential system.
There's a story about Einstein teaching physics and letting the kids who didn't want to be there leave and do something else with the time. The ones who remained were quite attentive.
There are multiple models for teaching that do something similar, let kids approach a subject when they're ready. Yes, they goof off a lot early on, but eventually even STEM and literature call to them, and they pass equivalency exams in their late teens.
In the meantime even when I was in high school in the 1980s, our system was created to sort kids into sports stars that might become college players, STEM kids that might become scientists and engineers, and House Hufflepuff (common laborers).
The education system has only gotten progressively worse since then, as its budget increases have not kept up with inflation. And then there's the whole effort to insert evangelist Christianity (+ American Exceptionalism + Conservativism--Capitalism) into public school.
And to this day, we still use the lecture / lab / test model that excludes a lot of alternative comprehension and learning models. We're not looking to teach kids, rather we're looking to harvest the geniuses, and turn the others into bonded laborers and soldiers for billionaire vanity projects.
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We may have to revise our education system so that it's not connected to our credential system.
There's a story about Einstein teaching physics and letting the kids who didn't want to be there leave and do something else with the time. The ones who remained were quite attentive.
There are multiple models for teaching that do something similar, let kids approach a subject when they're ready. Yes, they goof off a lot early on, but eventually even STEM and literature call to them, and they pass equivalency exams in their late teens.
In the meantime even when I was in high school in the 1980s, our system was created to sort kids into sports stars that might become college players, STEM kids that might become scientists and engineers, and House Hufflepuff (common laborers).
The education system has only gotten progressively worse since then, as its budget increases have not kept up with inflation. And then there's the whole effort to insert evangelist Christianity (+ American Exceptionalism + Conservativism--Capitalism) into public school.
And to this day, we still use the lecture / lab / test model that excludes a lot of alternative comprehension and learning models. We're not looking to teach kids, rather we're looking to harvest the geniuses, and turn the others into bonded laborers and soldiers for billionaire vanity projects.
There are multiple models for teaching that do something similar, let kids approach a subject when they're ready. Yes, they goof off a lot early on, but eventually even STEM and literature call to them, and they pass equivalency exams in their late teens.
Can you link to some more information on this? I'm curious about alternative education models
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The poor aren't cheating any system, ever.
The system is cheating them
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There are multiple models for teaching that do something similar, let kids approach a subject when they're ready. Yes, they goof off a lot early on, but eventually even STEM and literature call to them, and they pass equivalency exams in their late teens.
Can you link to some more information on this? I'm curious about alternative education models
Unschooling and by extension, the democratically run Free Schools come to mind.
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We may have to revise our education system so that it's not connected to our credential system.
There's a story about Einstein teaching physics and letting the kids who didn't want to be there leave and do something else with the time. The ones who remained were quite attentive.
There are multiple models for teaching that do something similar, let kids approach a subject when they're ready. Yes, they goof off a lot early on, but eventually even STEM and literature call to them, and they pass equivalency exams in their late teens.
In the meantime even when I was in high school in the 1980s, our system was created to sort kids into sports stars that might become college players, STEM kids that might become scientists and engineers, and House Hufflepuff (common laborers).
The education system has only gotten progressively worse since then, as its budget increases have not kept up with inflation. And then there's the whole effort to insert evangelist Christianity (+ American Exceptionalism + Conservativism--Capitalism) into public school.
And to this day, we still use the lecture / lab / test model that excludes a lot of alternative comprehension and learning models. We're not looking to teach kids, rather we're looking to harvest the geniuses, and turn the others into bonded laborers and soldiers for billionaire vanity projects.
This is a nice idea, in theory, but once it touches reality, it falls apart, mainly for two reasons.
- Not everyone is high-IQ neurotypical with high intrinsic motivation.
As an extreme example, put someone with ADHD into a Montessori/Walddorf/Unschooling setup (three well-known systems that do pretty much exactly what you are demanding) and that kid will fail hard. That's the reports you read of 10yo unschooled kids who never cared for learning to read and who are now having an incredibly hard time learning anything at all, because material for that age group expects the kids to be able to read.
- The most important thing to learn at school is not the subjects/material
Apart from the very basics (reading/writing/basic math), 95% of the content taught at school can be (and is) safely forgotten once you leave school. There are more than enough reports on the fact that adults fail most school tests if they have to repeat them a few years after leaving school.
And that's ok, because what school really teaches you is how to efficiently learn material you don't care about no matter if you have motivation for it right now or not.
That's necessary to prepare the kids for higher education and work.
When I have to work on a new project with e.g. a new framework or some new stuff I don't yet know, then my boss won't wait around until I naturally accidentally find the interest to spend time learning the material. No, the project has a deadline in two weeks and until then I need to learn what's necessary and do what needs to be done, no matter if I feel like it or not.
And that lession, which is much more important than the subjects you learn in school, is not taught at all by free-form student-driven learning systems like Montessori, Walddorf or Unschooling.
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Yeah, lots of people don’t realize that the public education system was designed to prepare kids for factories. It goes all the way back to the Industrial Revolution, when parents were working 16 hour days in the factories. They needed some way to keep their kids occupied while dad was stamping steel and mom was weaving fabric. The factory workers lived in corporate-owned towns, and all of their needs were (hopefully) covered by the factory owners. And along this line of thinking, the factory owners started public schools, both to keep the kids occupied during the day, and to prep them to work in the factories once they were old enough to know how.
Basically everything about modern education is run like a factory. Everything is standardized to the median 85% of the population; students who deviate too far from that are punished or segregated via special education. You work (study) when the bell tells you, eat when the bell tells you, shit when the bell tells you. You’re expected to sit quietly and do your work, no socializing except when the bell tells you. Et cetera… The entire idea was to give students a baseline level of education that they would need to work in the factory, and prep children to work in factories under the same grueling conditions.
Except that most of that is still in effect.
Especially poor people still spend 12+ hours a day working, and even for middle class people it's quite common that both parents work 10+h a day.
Average work hours per year have gone up by ~10% since 1980.
And when it comes to the jobs: While we like to pat ourselves on our back about how creative our work has become, we are essentially still doing factory work, just on a desk with a computer instead of in the factory with a welding torch.
Most of the work that most of the people do is still the same mundane, formulaic toiling away.
Modern education is focussed on teaching kids to learn stuff they don't care for at exactly the time it's asked for. Same as at work. If I have to learn a new framework for a project, I have to learn it right now, no matter if I feel like it or not. My boss is not going to wait around until I naturally feel like learning what's needed for the job.
That's why it's ok that we forget all but the basics the instant we graduate from school.
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I'll extend this further - students are also not ok.
What I've observed this year is that a lot of students are opting for AI taught methods, or asking AI to summarise course materials for them. They then make bad copies into their notes, conflate these methods with those taught in class, then fail hard when an open note exam comes around.
The truth of the matter is we'll see a post-AI degree lose its value against a pre-AI degree, and this will create a new vehicle of intergenerational inequality.
Teachers are never going to be ok - we're "essential workers", and we all know what that means. Our students though, they believe their actions are buying them a better future; when they learn otherwise, they'll need all the support they can get!
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AI is so far from being the main problem with our current US educational system that I'm not sure why we bother to talk about it. Until we can produce students who meet minimum standards for literacy and critical thinking, AI is a sideshow.
