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My hot take is this is not a bad thing. American education prior to GPT had increasingly taken a turn in emphasizing homework over testing. My former high scho

My hot take is this is not a bad thing. American education prior to GPT had increasingly taken a turn in emphasizing homework over testing. My former high school, for instance, reduced the impact of testing to ~15% of total grade and made homework/classwork the vast majority. This steals time from the rest of kids lives, makes high school performance more a function of “time spent” than understanding, and completely misses the mark of what the goal of schooling ought to be in my view. I think GPT4 and the like spell the end of homework and that is a good thing.

nomel 3y ago
It will force a measure of actual aptitude, with proctored exams, with some lady with a ruler slapping your desk if you look at your neighbor. What's old is new!
- TheHypnotist 3y ago
  That lady is called lockdown browser.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - nomel 3y ago
    There are physical things that can be done. Currently, people get around video proctors by taping things to their monitor, then the camera can't see. A lockdown browser would assume the person owned exactly one computing device.
- palata 3y ago
  > It will force a measure of actual aptitude Which is almost impossible. Exams just measure your aptitude at passing exams, with the hope that they somehow don't generalize too badly. If we had a way to measure "actual" aptitude, job interviews would be very different. But we don't. The ideal school system is one where students want to learn, as opposed to one where students want to make good grades. Unfortunately that's hard to get, but it should not be forgotten.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    I think tests are probably one of the closest things we can get to. If I ask you a question about the thing you claim aptitude about, and you cannot answer it but we are claiming that doesn't measure aptitude, then I think we are getting into the weeds of what semantically aptitude is.
    - palata 3y ago
      > If I ask you a question about the thing you claim aptitude about, and you cannot answer it That's the trivial part, nobody denies this. The harder part is the reverse: if you ask me a question about the thing I claim aptitude about, and I can answer it, does it prove I have aptitude for that thing, or does it prove I have the aptitude to answer this question? If I learn by heart the 20 math problems you gave me to practice for the test, and then you test me on a similar problem, then I will be able to "do stuff" that is not completely meaningless by just mimicking the previous problems. Students often do that, and get the average even though they got the wrong answer. Many times, looking at their errors, you can be pretty sure that they just don't know what they are doing. But teachers cannot give none or all the points (or all minus 1 if there was a small mistake), it has to be a gradient. In my school system, students who get just the average grade for math problems have absolutely no clue what they are doing. If they did they would get one of the best grades. Still they pass. Same goes for tech interviews: people learn algorithms and keywords and problems by heart just for the interview. Doesn't mean they know how to write good software, just that they learnt those things by heart.
      - whimsicalism 3y ago
        > Same goes for tech interviews: people learn algorithms and keywords and problems by heart just for the interview. Doesn't mean they know how to write good software, just that they learnt those things by heart. For actually hard questions, I think this happens a lot less than is claimed. I would be astonished if someone without physics knowledge could 'learn by heart' and get anywhere close to a passing score on one of my college physics tests. Maybe I'm just rabidly pro-test, but I think a lot of the anti-test sentiment comes from... people having negative experiences with testing in their own lives, than an actual indictment on its utility. The obvious explanation for why people hate leetcode is because it gates them from $200k+ jobs, not because of some high-minded moral qualms with tests.
josefresco 3y ago
> I think GPT4 and the like spell the end of homework and that is a good thing. In my kids' case it hasn't mean the end of homework, rather it created a new policy that only authorized devices (school supplied Chromebooks) can be used while in school. Completing schoolwork on your own device even outside of school hours is also frowned upon. They say the change is about "network management" but parents and students both know the real reason.
- pixl97 3y ago
  I mean for most large businesses you will be provided with a company issued device and taking company work of said device may be grounds for termination. In business it's generally to prevent the leaking of trade secrets, but there are more than one cases where an employee was allowing a surrogate to connect to their device and do the work as a form of unauthorized subcontractor.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  1. Your school sounds atypical. 2. There is no way to easily enforce what you are describing. Homework will not be able to survive it.
  - riversflow 3y ago
    Pretty simple if you ask me, make everyone handwrite stuff. It's easier to handwrite from knowledge than it is to transfer work verbatim.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      If it is done in a non-proctored environment, there is no avoiding it.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  What's the real reason?
smogcutter 3y ago
Your personal experience notwithstanding, this is not the broad trend in education. Mileage will vary between states, districts, and even schools, but the big current trend is towards “standards based grading”. This means grades are based entirely on test, projects, etc. Individual work meant to assess competence. Homework, practice, group projects, class participation, etc count for token credit if at all. This is a huge, recent shift in direction, and probably came after your time in HS. I don’t have data for this, but expect public districts to lag charters, rich districts to lag poor districts (la cañada USD has no incentive to rock the boat), and privates to be the Wild West. But anyway homework has been on the way out for a little while now. This is great! Most homework is worthless.
- loa_in_ 3y ago
  I would like to point out that US education isn't exactly a paragon of quality compared to other countries, where this approach also (maybe coincidentally) isn't practiced.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  > This is a huge, recent shift in direction, and probably came after your time in HS. I am probably younger than you think and 'standards-based' approaches were a big fad at the time. Standards based grading in highschool ("SWBAT"-style) absolutely does not mean grades based entirely on test, projects, etc, and in fact generally translated to heavy weighting towards random classwork worksheets.
- com2kid 3y ago
  > Most homework is worthless. Math says otherwise, my mastery of math in college came through hours of slogging through problem sets (which the answers are often provided for!) until I understood all the many ways to apply a concept. Prior to college I had skated by w/o doing homework (I understood what was said in class, so why bother?) and it bit me really hard. Understanding what it said during a lecture is one thing, internalizing that knowledge, and knowing how to apply it, means actually putting in the time and effort.
  - 3y ago

nomel 3y ago

It will force a measure of actual aptitude, with proctored exams, with some lady with a ruler slapping your desk if you look at your neighbor. What's old is new!

TheHypnotist 3y ago
That lady is called lockdown browser.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nomel 3y ago
  There are physical things that can be done. Currently, people get around video proctors by taping things to their monitor, then the camera can't see. A lockdown browser would assume the person owned exactly one computing device.
palata 3y ago
> It will force a measure of actual aptitude Which is almost impossible. Exams just measure your aptitude at passing exams, with the hope that they somehow don't generalize too badly. If we had a way to measure "actual" aptitude, job interviews would be very different. But we don't. The ideal school system is one where students want to learn, as opposed to one where students want to make good grades. Unfortunately that's hard to get, but it should not be forgotten.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  I think tests are probably one of the closest things we can get to. If I ask you a question about the thing you claim aptitude about, and you cannot answer it but we are claiming that doesn't measure aptitude, then I think we are getting into the weeds of what semantically aptitude is.
  - palata 3y ago
    > If I ask you a question about the thing you claim aptitude about, and you cannot answer it That's the trivial part, nobody denies this. The harder part is the reverse: if you ask me a question about the thing I claim aptitude about, and I can answer it, does it prove I have aptitude for that thing, or does it prove I have the aptitude to answer this question? If I learn by heart the 20 math problems you gave me to practice for the test, and then you test me on a similar problem, then I will be able to "do stuff" that is not completely meaningless by just mimicking the previous problems. Students often do that, and get the average even though they got the wrong answer. Many times, looking at their errors, you can be pretty sure that they just don't know what they are doing. But teachers cannot give none or all the points (or all minus 1 if there was a small mistake), it has to be a gradient. In my school system, students who get just the average grade for math problems have absolutely no clue what they are doing. If they did they would get one of the best grades. Still they pass. Same goes for tech interviews: people learn algorithms and keywords and problems by heart just for the interview. Doesn't mean they know how to write good software, just that they learnt those things by heart.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      > Same goes for tech interviews: people learn algorithms and keywords and problems by heart just for the interview. Doesn't mean they know how to write good software, just that they learnt those things by heart. For actually hard questions, I think this happens a lot less than is claimed. I would be astonished if someone without physics knowledge could 'learn by heart' and get anywhere close to a passing score on one of my college physics tests. Maybe I'm just rabidly pro-test, but I think a lot of the anti-test sentiment comes from... people having negative experiences with testing in their own lives, than an actual indictment on its utility. The obvious explanation for why people hate leetcode is because it gates them from $200k+ jobs, not because of some high-minded moral qualms with tests.

josefresco 3y ago

> I think GPT4 and the like spell the end of homework and that is a good thing. In my kids' case it hasn't mean the end of homework, rather it created a new policy that only authorized devices (school supplied Chromebooks) can be used while in school. Completing schoolwork on your own device even outside of school hours is also frowned upon. They say the change is about "network management" but parents and students both know the real reason.

pixl97 3y ago
I mean for most large businesses you will be provided with a company issued device and taking company work of said device may be grounds for termination. In business it's generally to prevent the leaking of trade secrets, but there are more than one cases where an employee was allowing a surrogate to connect to their device and do the work as a form of unauthorized subcontractor.
whimsicalism 3y ago
1. Your school sounds atypical. 2. There is no way to easily enforce what you are describing. Homework will not be able to survive it.
- riversflow 3y ago
  Pretty simple if you ask me, make everyone handwrite stuff. It's easier to handwrite from knowledge than it is to transfer work verbatim.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    If it is done in a non-proctored environment, there is no avoiding it.
jimbokun 3y ago
What's the real reason?

smogcutter 3y ago

Your personal experience notwithstanding, this is not the broad trend in education. Mileage will vary between states, districts, and even schools, but the big current trend is towards “standards based grading”. This means grades are based entirely on test, projects, etc. Individual work meant to assess competence. Homework, practice, group projects, class participation, etc count for token credit if at all. This is a huge, recent shift in direction, and probably came after your time in HS. I don’t have data for this, but expect public districts to lag charters, rich districts to lag poor districts (la cañada USD has no incentive to rock the boat), and privates to be the Wild West. But anyway homework has been on the way out for a little while now. This is great! Most homework is worthless.

loa_in_ 3y ago
I would like to point out that US education isn't exactly a paragon of quality compared to other countries, where this approach also (maybe coincidentally) isn't practiced.
whimsicalism 3y ago
> This is a huge, recent shift in direction, and probably came after your time in HS. I am probably younger than you think and 'standards-based' approaches were a big fad at the time. Standards based grading in highschool ("SWBAT"-style) absolutely does not mean grades based entirely on test, projects, etc, and in fact generally translated to heavy weighting towards random classwork worksheets.
com2kid 3y ago
> Most homework is worthless. Math says otherwise, my mastery of math in college came through hours of slogging through problem sets (which the answers are often provided for!) until I understood all the many ways to apply a concept. Prior to college I had skated by w/o doing homework (I understood what was said in class, so why bother?) and it bit me really hard. Understanding what it said during a lecture is one thing, internalizing that knowledge, and knowing how to apply it, means actually putting in the time and effort.
- 3y ago