I teach 18 year olds who range in reading levels from preschool to college, but the majority of them are in the lower half that range. I am devastated by what AI and social media have done to them. My kids don’t think anymore. They don’t have interests. Literally, when I ask them what they’re interested in, so many of them can’t name anything for me. Even my smartest kids insist that ChatGPT is good “when used correctly.” I ask them, “How does one use it correctly then?” They can’t answer the question. They don’t have original thoughts. They just parrot back what they’ve heard in TikToks. They try to show me “information” ChatGPT gave them. I ask them, “How do you know this is true?” They move their phone closer to me for emphasis, exclaiming, “Look, it says it right here!” They cannot understand what I am asking them. It breaks my heart for them and honestly it makes it hard to continue teaching. If I were to quit, it would be because of how technology has stunted kids and how hard it’s become to reach them because of that.
Llms are like a calculator for writing. Not good for school. But out here in the real world I use an LLM to formulate answers. I then review those things. My reasoning being that I will get a draft and then I’ll perfect that draft. Llms are horrible at math, so any math is double checked.
Ah, but aren’t calculators always right?
Unfortunately writing is not binary LOL.
The reason I found the article interesting is because there were multiple quotes - anecdotes, not statistic, sure, but first-hand - of kids using LLMs and lacking critical thinking to even understand how to check it. You need to have a model in your mind of how things should be to check it - this seems like it may be replacing the model in kids’ minds.
So I really do wonder if there will be a generational divide, with analytical and compositional skills dropping precipitously. I don’t know, but thought it interesting enough to post.
I bet so. Its very easy to allow the thing to just give you an answer. I had one employee who used to be so so, then suddenly they’re presenting all sorts of interesting factoids. But their design level never improved… There’s no LLM capable of critical thinking so their actual designs were still the old crapola.
I think the whole issue is much deeper, and stems from the fact that we (as in humanity, not any particular country) have perverted the very reason and purpose of education (assuming it ever was clear and uncorrupted, but that’s another story).
Overwhelming majority of students don’t learn because they want to. They don’t want to become well read and spoken, they don’t want to be able to answer questions without having to check on their phones, and so on and so forth. They “learn” because they have to. Because if there aren’t enough check marks next to their name in an Excel spreadsheet somewhere, they’re going to get in trouble. And that’s why, if there’s an easier way to get those check marks, of course they’re going to use it!
Why spend days or weeks reading a long book if I can read an AI summary in 5 minutes and put a checkmark in the “read a book” column? Why spend time on writing an essay, if I can have ChatGPT do it and get a checkmark in the “essay” column?
I don’t have a solution to this problem by the way, because I used to be a nerdy kid that actually enjoyed learning and craved more of it, but the real problem is not AI or LLMs, it’s the whole approach to education (and to work afterwards: see the “oh shit, only a month until HR eval, what the hell were my personal goals that I made up at the beginning of the quarter?” situation so many of us face…)
“When the measure becomes the goal, it ceases to be a good measure”
Because we care about grades kids learn to get good grades. Oral exams can fix this, but it’s more time consuming for teachers.
How much of the issue is the system vs the students?
When I was in school, I remember dealing with hours of homework on top of extracurriculars and eventually working a job.
My choices were do homework or sleep. Either way I lost. So I definitely used chegg so I could get sleep and not fail.
I think our expectations for kids are just… not realistic? And I think that fuels a lot of the resentment for school.
Homework definitely is an issue, and a big one. I don’t find it useful at all, and sometimes it can actually be detrimental, because until it’s checked it can reinforce errors and make them more difficult to correct later… I’m not a teacher, but from a layperson’s perspective I would be totally fine with zero homework. People need some downtime to relax, and kids are people too (or so I’m told), so they should have time to rest, play games or do whatever after school…
The real solution is taking all that money that is going to these VC funds to milk public services and putting that into the actual service. It doesn’t take a huge amount of investment to do it, just make teachers happy to be there, and give them time to nurture children’s curiosity. So much education has ended up in this cycle based on exactly what you’re talking about, looking at spreadsheets and grades, and cramming knowledge into kids rather than teaching the process of learning.
The only reasons I like some of the things I like is because I had teachers behind me that saw that spark and nurtured it, not because of the stuff I crammed into my head. If anything you end up passionate about stuff in spite of the curriculum instead of because of it most of the time (in my case at least)
Great point. Somewhere along the way we started teaching facts and formulas instead of showing kids that learning is fun and encouraging them to do it on their own because they enjoy it and not because they have to…
Sigh, imagine an education system like that, instead of the current pipeline for creating obedient drones, holy crap…
I think the easiest way to achieve something like that is to homeschool together with a like minded commune that has the knowledge and passion for teaching, that way the kid doesn’t lose out on the social aspects of school, but it’s not ideal. Wish education would get more investment before other things, it’s the best long term investment for a country, invest in smarter future generations to get a better country for all
While I don’t like the right wing ideology behind it unschoolers have the right idea. Make learning enjoyable and tailored to the child’s interests and they will actually want to attend school. The idea that kids should all sit still all day and learn in the same way is deeply flawed.
Move to majority in-class assignments instead of piles of homework.
I understand the fear of technology stunting critical thinking but LLMs are pretty darn recent, what happened to these highschoolers the last 14-15 or so years that left them with little to no reading or critical thinking skills? Where is the talk of parental involvement, teachers and educational systems prior to this?
Teachers have an incredibly hard job but the constant stream of these articles feels more like they’re trying to pass off the failures of our education system and failures of parents/society for decades onto the admittedly retarded technology that’s very recently entered existence…
I teach at a college - there’s a LOT of resistance from the old school types who want to open the same lessons handed down to them from 25 years ago rather than change the methods and approach learning differently. I was just in a meeting on Monday where one department wanted the administrators to purchase a 3rd party $200k “AI detector” software thinking that would be the solution they needed. They were giddy about it solving their problem once and for all. I sat there face-palming 🤦♂️
I think it’s a long-standing problem, yes, but there’s no contesting that AI has demonstrably escalated the issue in a significant way.
And on the back of COVID where students got away with letting assignments falter or not showing up to things. There is a lasting effect of that as well and then the easy solution comes along. It’s a powder keg.
I think you’re onto something important there. COVID broke all daily routine habits, good and bad. I could imagine that resetting these kids’ ideas of what it means to learn, at exactly the wrong time.
I’m sure it has, my main thought is this focus on AI is essentially deflecting from systemic issues and without actually addressing those the problem will continue to get worse with or without AI.
They’re ok for high school, but they suck shit for academic writing. I have no idea why AI isn’t great with writing a transition sentence or thesis statement. Seems to love bullet points.
My kids don’t use LLMs because they take longer and do a worse job (still) than just writing it up themselves.
They DO use LLMs like people used to use Wikipedia, and Encyclopedia Brittanica before that: to surface information to investigate.
But I’ve taught them that writing is a method to communicate your knowledge, not to pass some sort of educational hurdle. So using ChatGPT would be useless anyway, as it doesn’t contain their insights.
That’s what I use it for. A slightly better Wikipedia, which is funny because when Wikipedia came out, schools were threatening punishment.
nah they dont threaten punishments, they just wont recognize wikipedia as a source in essays. if you go into a writing lab, sometimes the “moniter” will try to lecture if they see you using wikipedia.
Just copy the source from the Wikipedia article after you check that it clears the bar.
- Because most internet arguements wind up as bullet points
- Because we suck at grammar.
I’m just gonna repost my comment to the original post on the 404media community:
Here’s a funny story: I once got a D on an essay for my History of Physics class because it was so good that the TA was certain I had plagiarized it. The only reason I didn’t end up in front of the ethics board was because she couldn’t find any evidence of me doing so… because I hadn’t. How many students are in the same situation due to overzealous teachers who have a bone to pick with AI?
Notice how most of the proposed “solutions” focus on bans, and ways to catch and punish students with almost none on improving archaic teaching techniques. Oral presentations, debates, real-world projects, essays on local subjects, using class to discuss subjects students previously studied instead of pontificating for 2 hours, doing away with homework, actually engaging students so they don’t feel like cheating… there’s loads of ways to teach without AI being a hindrance but it requires teachers to actually adapt instead of being stubborn, lazy twats with an inferiority complex.
I would have students do their first few assignments by handwriting while in class as a way to gauge how their voice is and then let them use tech after.
I think that’s a decent way to weed out people using AI or not for their own thoughts on subjects.
That’s nice, but how do you remember a style of writting of 200 students? I see it working when one has 20 students to worry about, but that isn’t a common teacher experience.
This is a fair point. It sucks, but one could keep the written things for a while to check against. It’s a lot of work and not definitely not ideal, but it is a solution.
That’s exactly what I said not to do. Stop focusing on ways to “weed them out” and start improving your teaching. Assigning reading material and then discussing it in class is a much better way to gauge your students voice that any essay they could write by hand on however long the class lasts. It’s also a better use of your time; I can image few things worse than reading 50 essays written by undergrads.
Yes, BUT everyone needs to write at some point. Also, some people do not feel comfortable sharing in class and as a teacher we should not be forcing them to. There are different learning types so your approach works for some and not others. That is why there should always be multiple ways to convey learning.
My point is, you won’t get away from writing and you shouldn’t. So, find a way to make sure they know multiple ways to express themselves.
Everyone also needs to speak in public at some point and some don’t feel comfortable writing either. You’re entirely missing the point. I didn’t say “stop asking them to write”, I said “stop trying to catch them using AI and be a better teacher”.
I would have students do their first few assignments by handwriting
How? No one learns handwriting anymore.
Weird. I’ve been subbing and am in a master’s program for elementary education and I’m pretty fucking sure they teach handwriting or I’ve been in a virtual world the last half a year.
They definitely do lol. My kid uses chat gpt, and he also has critical thinking skills. I’ve taught him to look for evidence and apply logic, not trust blindly what anyone or anything tells him.
Mostly he gets frustrated that chat gpt struggles to precisely remember the imaginary dinosaurs he created with it’s help.
Oh yeah, and he knows how to write with a pencil on paper. He’d rather dictate and let speech recognition do the typing (which he is also capable of), but what kid do you know that doesn’t love a shortcut? I’d blame lazy parents, but most of them are just too tired after working 2.5 jobs to earn a living wage for them and their families you can’t really blame them.
If the educational system is not working, if AI has destroyed our educational system, and I think it’s fair to say it has, if teachers feel there’s nothing they can do to fix it, then throw it away and don’t waste our tears on it. We must find other ways to educate. This is imperative, education is non-negotiable. I am not giving up in defeat, I am saying we must retreat from battles that are simply not viable anymore. Use them as a delaying action if you can, but if kids are learning from LLMs and Video games and Netflix and Youtube and Tiktok now, we need to find ways to get as much good educational content as we can onto those platforms. We need to find ways to manipulate their algorithms. We need alternative platforms that aren’t corporate-controlled cesspools, where we can make the rules. Governments and institutions will be too slow to react. The only advantage we have is that we can act and react fast, even faster than the corporate interests that are burning down the Internet of Alexandria and blowing up the world into the next dark age. We can, and should, and must organize an educational resistance.
Literally nobody wants their kids to grow up like this. Not even the billionaires exploiting and profiting from this garbage. We have the advantage that everybody in the world will soon understand the scale of this problem as they are confronted with it themselves. Will it be too late? Maybe, but we have to assume it will be better if we at least try. Even if we have to rescue people one mind at a time, every effort is worthwhile and every victory is worth celebrating.
Why is this NSFW?
That’s weird. I specifically did NOT check NSFW. It must toggle it because my username is from lemmynsfw? I unchecked it, maybe it does that on the initial post assuming it’s NSFW and you have to edit it out.
Yeah, that must be it
This isn’t much different from what teachers said about the internet, search engines, and Wikipedia…
It’s quite different. The web in the 90s wasn’t dominated by 4 web sites controlled by an algorithm.
And they were right. Those tools are alright if you know how to verify information, but ease of access to information dulls that ability.
It is so much different.
Kids might have plagiarised, but they weren’t utterly inept and brainwashed by the almighty algorithm.
Kids didn’t all repeat the same lines they all heard from a thousand different sources.
Sure,some weren’t the brightest, but it wasn’t all lock step, no actual original thought, unconscious, gobbledygoook.
Even the less intelligent at least had something to say that came from within, not without.
And it isn’t just kids.
The amount of people I’ve tried to speak with who, though completely separate in life and station, repeat the EXACT SAME LINES.
We are fucked.
I dunno, I some of the same junk and oft-repeated lines decades ago. We literally have a phrase for it: “Old wives’ tales”.
Having taught “kids these days”, I have still seen independent and creative thought in the majority of them.
Well to be fair LLMs have blown up the rest of the world too.
