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.
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’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 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 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…)
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…
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?
