The US is fucking cooked
I can’t help but think this is a phenomenon unique to the US where education has been completely devalued. If the only point of education is to fulfill a requirement to make more money then it makes sense to shortcut as much as possible.
The solution is of course no computer
any education that can be ruined by chatgpt is an education that wasn’t valuable in the first place. you can’t force someone to learn, that’s always been true, this just reduces the burden on people who were never going to give it their all anyway. even if you manage to force some information into their brain that they’re not interested in, they’ll forget it as soon as they’re allowed. i think the solution is to structure all school like college and let kids choose which classes they want, ranging from as many as they can fit to zero. why worry about the academic integrity of kids who are literally prisoners having their time and energy stolen from them for things that they don’t think are important? everyone has interests they’ll pursue, they just need the right to choose how they spend their time and energy, and to be treated like they actually have some sort of control over their own brains. letting kids choose their own classes will not only make them happier and healthier, but more employable and more educated in what they were actually gonna end up being smart about anyway. they’ll also see the value in classes they find boring once they actually have something to apply them to. if you gave kids the option to just leave (something everyone should have at any time unless you believe in incarceration), you would see zero phones out in classrooms. also, get rid of grades, they serve absolutely no purpose other than coercion, they’re using chatgpt to get a report card that won’t make their parents mad.
Sometimes struggling with shit you hate is an important step to learning something that matters. I hated the Shakespeare plays I was forced to read and write about for the first couple of years they made us do it at school. But in the third year of this it all suddenly clicked. Had AI existed back then, I might have never come to appreciate Shakespeare.
Also, I didn’t know what the fuck I was interested in or good at as a teenager. Primary and secondary education needs to be broad and well-rounded.
I want to push back on this a little. All the time I spent in English literature class and French language lessons were wasted. I knew that wasn’t related to what I wanted to do for a long time, and it still isn’t. I forgot everything from those classes.
I literally took extra history classes that I didn’t need to because I was interested in that subject. But I couldn’t go all the way with them because I could only sit official exams on my official subjects.
Had I not been forced to waste time on English and French (especially french), I would have had a much better high-school experience. I might have taken up music as well.
The whole experience with subject choice really depends on the student.
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Sorry, but this is a pretty surface-level take. The Shakespearean plays and the French language are vessels for other skills. Literary criticism, argumentation, media literacy, acculturation to a shared literary canon, and even just how to talk about books are all additional aims to using Shakespeare in an English class, beyond “learn this book you hate”. A good English class can focus on these skills with any content, but Shakespeare is used for his contributions to the English language and literature in addition to his privileged place in culture (a valid avenue for argument).
The targeted plays might not be every student’s cup of tea, but some students will love Shakespeare and hate your favorite book. As long as the classroom is used as a social learning space, there will need to be shared central content used as a medium for the skills–which are more important and enduring than the exact content of the plays. It’s the same for the French grammar you don’t remember but which gave you the rudimentary skills to study another language more effectively.
definitely something every human being should have to consent to, thats all im saying
OMFG! THANK YOU!
I’m so tired of people acting like bad things are good. I know human nature is a prime beacon for chuds, but if we wanna talk about human nature, one of the things that seems so fucking lacking in a majority of people is theory of mind and empathy. It’s so ironic, because people talk about how humans “invented” those things, but then they go around and not even do it.
And I know a lot of people do have proper theory of mind and empathy BUT NOT ENOUGH FUCKING PEOPLE
I can understand that “Happy candy land where nothing goes wrong and everyone perfectly understands each other and nobody slights each other in any way” is a day dream, but people treat day dreams like we shouldn’t even consider them.
JUST BECAUSE PARADISE IS IMPOSSIBLE DOESN’T MEAN WE SHOULDN’T STRIVE FOR IT. The impossibility or difficulty of good things should never sway us from actually trying to make an effort to achieve them. Sorry for ranting, but I just needed to let that out.
Good post!
i fw what ur saying immensely. it bugs me when people reject an idea for something they like on the basis that it couldn’t happen, like why would they do their opponents’ job for them. we gotta ask for what we really want
I’m seeing rampant AI use in colleges as well. Allowing kids to choose their classes will not cause them to stop using AI if they still have requirements they need to fulfill (mandatory deadlines). I’ve even seen people use AI for their own personal passion projects.
At this point, we have to understand that people will use AI, there is no stopping it. We need better AI, stuff that is not so harmful for the planet and hallucinates less. Either that or we stop subsidizing existing AI infrastructure causing it to go under.
And even if schools allowed kids to choose classes, unless they straight up got rid of deadlines, most kids will still take shortcuts. They will want to maximize the amount of time spent socializing and minimize the amount of time learning unless the learning itself is a fun activity.
The ideal future of learning might simply look something like a more advanced version of khan academy combined with physical spaces where kids can use tools/materials to build shit. You could assess students using oral or written exams (they have a choice) that recur periodically and the kids can choose when they are ready. Another aspect that would be important is schools teaching children on how to take care of themselves properly (sleep + diet especially) so that students don’t walk in feeling like zombies. Remove the requirement that students have to be at a specific physical location at specific times (unless a teacher is holding a QA session or there is some combined activity).
a lot of the following is gonna be about me, i tried not to but i feel like you need to know to see where im coming from.
to be clear, i didnt mean to imply that college is ideal. i was kinda counting on how school before college (or at least before hs) barely has any stakes long term, you’re not there to profit. most people in college don’t really want to be there either, they go for the degree so they can get a good job (theoretically) or just because it’s what they’ve been told to do. i went to community college right before ai took off and i could definitely spot people who cared and people who didn’t, and for me personally (and i imagine most people?) it varied by class, the ones i didn’t like were the ones i was forced to take for my degree and really truly didn’t need. i can fr get into how i’d address this if you want, but it would get really really detailed explaining the whole system. i originally typed and cancelled an addendum to my post suggesting something pretty similar to the start of your third paragraph.
i have kind of a tinfoil hat theory about the thing about how kids want to maximize the amount of time socializing and minimize the amount of time learning, that definitely did cross my mind. i feel like kids are only like that because they’re so burnt out from doing schoolwork they’re not interested in, they’re given an insane amount of work for their age and it would be really strange if they were interested in anything other than relaxing in their little time off. i think when you let a kid get truly recharged and bored, they’ll have an uncontrollable urge to find something that challenges them and makes them feel accomplished. i dropped out in seventh grade and started homeschooling (with very minimal guidance or testing), and i ended up teaching myself a lot of IT just because i was interested in computers, i grew up and did a year and a half in community college for IT and already knew most of the stuff (straight A+s), got certs really easy, the point is i think i got a way better education simply by not going to high school, and i had friends in similar situations who had similar outcomes. i was rotting when i was in school, i only started learning when i dropped out. most people will never witness a kid actually free to explore what they want to, you spend every weekend and summer recovering from school, then you spend every weekend after that recovering from work.
Painfully accurate.
The Montessori School has already been disproven.
No, it hasn’t.