4 ms·

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. We as educators can show the interesting parts, the wonders of a field but more we can't do. The au

by chx 2y ago

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. We as educators can show the interesting parts, the wonders of a field but more we can't do. The author of the article seems to have not managed to get through. Truth to be told, such happens every day in schools because most schools use completely outdated ways to teach -- frontal pedagogy itself is such -- and so ChatGPT is not their biggest problem but it certainly makes a bad situation worse. Recommended watch: Ken Robinson's Ted talk Do schools kill creativity. Recommended reading: Carl Rogers Freedom to Learn: A View of What Education Might Become. For a shorter read, Aronson's Social Animal has a chapter.

lucianbr 2y ago
> You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. This must have been a problem before the invention of LLMs. How was it solved before? Why didn't teaching go out of fashion when TV was invented, or why didn't math disappear when calculators were built? You yourself highlight problems that existed before LLMs, different problems in teaching. Obviously not all teachers quit because of those, and we still have schools. People still learn. Perhaps fewer, and less, but they still do. And perhaps more do. I'm not sure how this can be accurately measured for the entire planet. After all, science still progresses. We've invented LLMs. Once again, as almost all discussions about AI, I feel the main point of this post is "ChatGPT is different than anything that has come before, and will change everything", without actual supporting arguments. Sounds a lot like advertising.
- falcolas 2y ago
  > why didn't math disappear when calculators were built? Because you can see a child using a calculator. > Why didn't teaching go out of fashion when TV was invented Laws (which put students in classrooms) and a lack of TV use in classrooms. TV use in classrooms was generally driven by the teachers. > "ChatGPT is different than anything that has come before, and will change everything" It's effectively undetectable when used, unless you have students write essays in your presence and on paper. That's what makes it so much harder to counter than previous aids. WRT writing large essays on paper - it's a skill that's not useful and is thus not emphasized in any class - a trend that's existed longer than ChatGPT. Reversing it now would impact all grades, and face major pushback from parents.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    You can see someone using AI too. The problem here is not with children. Children learn in classrooms with teachers who supervise them closely all day. Preventing them using calculators, smartphones, laptops, or whatever else, is very easy assuming you have the basics of classroom discipline in place. This genre of articles bemoaning the effect of LLMs on cheating is coming exclusively from universities, and it's noticeable how the most obvious solution of having students just do the work in class whilst the teacher watches is completely unthinkable to them. It works fine in high school, but universities refuse to do it. They could do, of course. It doesn't have to be the professors who supervise. Anyone can patrol a hall, or heck, why not use AI to do it? The local CS department can easily knock up some ML models that detect students using smartphones via CCTV. Provisioned laptops can be locked down with recorded screens, etc. Fundamentally supervising students can be done at scale, but universities would apparently rather let their classes and credentials sink (further) into meaninglessness rather than change their ways.
  - vonunov 2y ago
    >Because you can see a child using a calculator. Besides, a calculator no more threatens the study of math than a word processor does writing, or a rhyming dictionary poetry. One reason is that if you hand me a TI-84, I'm not magically going to understand how to do calculus. Maybe I could somewhat piece things together, but probably not without accidentally . . . learning calculus. The other reason is that, as I am led to believe, the particular values and operations that happen in the field of Serious Math are much more incidental to the actual concepts in question than it may seem early on. Hell, calculators haven't even really managed to supplant the study of arithmetic. They seem to have settled nicely into where they're useful.
- adamc 2y ago
  I don't think chatgpt created the problem, although it may contribute to it. Here's a hypothesis: The problem is that thinking analytically, rigorously, is hard work. People do not often seem to come to it by accident. It's something we have learned to do, and schools/teachers are one of many mechanisms we have used to culturally transmit these skills. Until (pick a date -- 1950, say) it was assisted by the fact that one of the most widespread forms of entertainment was reading. Yes, even by then movies were a thing, but most people couldn't afford to go to a movie every night, and they were limited to what was currently showing. So most people in western countries, where literacy was high, spent a fair amount of time reading. Reading, by its nature, tends to focus the mind. You learn to spend long periods ingesting and contemplating information. We also taught writing -- and we still do -- but it benefits hugely from all that time spent reading. It is much easier to learn to write if you read a lot. And writing further develops your thinking skills. The modern era has given us wonderful technologies, but there is a lot of evidence that people are struggling to focus in the way we once did. People read less, write less, and spend more time on other media. I'm not slagging on film or games or cell phones -- conceivably, other useful skills are imparted, and people enjoy them. But our ability to focus seems to be declining. Chatgpt is just another time-saver that makes it easier to avoid learning critical thinking skills. It's not impossible that teachers will find a way to compensate. I think there are some things working against that: 1) we don't fund schools in a way that is going to allow them to spend additional time per student. 2) societal expectations seem to be that teachers magically pour knowledge into children, rather than learning, fundamentally, being something the child has to do, and which requires a large parental investment. 3) a lot of what lead to focus in the first place didn't come from the schools, but from the social environment -- i.e., reading was the most practical source of entertainment -- and so we are expecting schools to compensate for a problem they didn't create and for which we may have no totally satisfactory solution. I suspect that's only part of it. The pace of life is very different than it once was. Even an illiterate in 1800 probably worked on fewer things per day and perhaps had more chances to focus. But that's sheer speculation.
- chx 2y ago
  Of course it has been a problem, I provided you with books from the 60s and the 70s to show a better way to educate people. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c for why TV or anything else didn't obsolete teaching.
- gopher_space 2y ago
  > This must have been a problem before the invention of LLMs. How was it solved before? - Encouraging the people who were bored to tears by 8th grade to go work in a lumber mill about it. - Encouraging parents to read to their children just all the fucking time. - Kicking out the troublemakers. But the main solution has always been parents caring about education enough to get involved and spend time with their kids on it. It's something parents need to prioritize right when things are getting complicated and interesting in their own lives, and it's way easier to see schools as a community creche rather than a de facto cooperative at that point.

by chx 2y ago

lucianbr 2y ago

> You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. This must have been a problem before the invention of LLMs. How was it solved before? Why didn't teaching go out of fashion when TV was invented, or why didn't math disappear when calculators were built? You yourself highlight problems that existed before LLMs, different problems in teaching. Obviously not all teachers quit because of those, and we still have schools. People still learn. Perhaps fewer, and less, but they still do. And perhaps more do. I'm not sure how this can be accurately measured for the entire planet. After all, science still progresses. We've invented LLMs. Once again, as almost all discussions about AI, I feel the main point of this post is "ChatGPT is different than anything that has come before, and will change everything", without actual supporting arguments. Sounds a lot like advertising.

falcolas 2y ago
> why didn't math disappear when calculators were built? Because you can see a child using a calculator. > Why didn't teaching go out of fashion when TV was invented Laws (which put students in classrooms) and a lack of TV use in classrooms. TV use in classrooms was generally driven by the teachers. > "ChatGPT is different than anything that has come before, and will change everything" It's effectively undetectable when used, unless you have students write essays in your presence and on paper. That's what makes it so much harder to counter than previous aids. WRT writing large essays on paper - it's a skill that's not useful and is thus not emphasized in any class - a trend that's existed longer than ChatGPT. Reversing it now would impact all grades, and face major pushback from parents.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  You can see someone using AI too. The problem here is not with children. Children learn in classrooms with teachers who supervise them closely all day. Preventing them using calculators, smartphones, laptops, or whatever else, is very easy assuming you have the basics of classroom discipline in place. This genre of articles bemoaning the effect of LLMs on cheating is coming exclusively from universities, and it's noticeable how the most obvious solution of having students just do the work in class whilst the teacher watches is completely unthinkable to them. It works fine in high school, but universities refuse to do it. They could do, of course. It doesn't have to be the professors who supervise. Anyone can patrol a hall, or heck, why not use AI to do it? The local CS department can easily knock up some ML models that detect students using smartphones via CCTV. Provisioned laptops can be locked down with recorded screens, etc. Fundamentally supervising students can be done at scale, but universities would apparently rather let their classes and credentials sink (further) into meaninglessness rather than change their ways.
- vonunov 2y ago
  >Because you can see a child using a calculator. Besides, a calculator no more threatens the study of math than a word processor does writing, or a rhyming dictionary poetry. One reason is that if you hand me a TI-84, I'm not magically going to understand how to do calculus. Maybe I could somewhat piece things together, but probably not without accidentally . . . learning calculus. The other reason is that, as I am led to believe, the particular values and operations that happen in the field of Serious Math are much more incidental to the actual concepts in question than it may seem early on. Hell, calculators haven't even really managed to supplant the study of arithmetic. They seem to have settled nicely into where they're useful.
adamc 2y ago
I don't think chatgpt created the problem, although it may contribute to it. Here's a hypothesis: The problem is that thinking analytically, rigorously, is hard work. People do not often seem to come to it by accident. It's something we have learned to do, and schools/teachers are one of many mechanisms we have used to culturally transmit these skills. Until (pick a date -- 1950, say) it was assisted by the fact that one of the most widespread forms of entertainment was reading. Yes, even by then movies were a thing, but most people couldn't afford to go to a movie every night, and they were limited to what was currently showing. So most people in western countries, where literacy was high, spent a fair amount of time reading. Reading, by its nature, tends to focus the mind. You learn to spend long periods ingesting and contemplating information. We also taught writing -- and we still do -- but it benefits hugely from all that time spent reading. It is much easier to learn to write if you read a lot. And writing further develops your thinking skills. The modern era has given us wonderful technologies, but there is a lot of evidence that people are struggling to focus in the way we once did. People read less, write less, and spend more time on other media. I'm not slagging on film or games or cell phones -- conceivably, other useful skills are imparted, and people enjoy them. But our ability to focus seems to be declining. Chatgpt is just another time-saver that makes it easier to avoid learning critical thinking skills. It's not impossible that teachers will find a way to compensate. I think there are some things working against that: 1) we don't fund schools in a way that is going to allow them to spend additional time per student. 2) societal expectations seem to be that teachers magically pour knowledge into children, rather than learning, fundamentally, being something the child has to do, and which requires a large parental investment. 3) a lot of what lead to focus in the first place didn't come from the schools, but from the social environment -- i.e., reading was the most practical source of entertainment -- and so we are expecting schools to compensate for a problem they didn't create and for which we may have no totally satisfactory solution. I suspect that's only part of it. The pace of life is very different than it once was. Even an illiterate in 1800 probably worked on fewer things per day and perhaps had more chances to focus. But that's sheer speculation.
chx 2y ago
Of course it has been a problem, I provided you with books from the 60s and the 70s to show a better way to educate people. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c for why TV or anything else didn't obsolete teaching.
gopher_space 2y ago
> This must have been a problem before the invention of LLMs. How was it solved before? - Encouraging the people who were bored to tears by 8th grade to go work in a lumber mill about it. - Encouraging parents to read to their children just all the fucking time. - Kicking out the troublemakers. But the main solution has always been parents caring about education enough to get involved and spend time with their kids on it. It's something parents need to prioritize right when things are getting complicated and interesting in their own lives, and it's way easier to see schools as a community creche rather than a de facto cooperative at that point.