[MarcScott]

I think teaching is one of the few roles that can't be replaced by AI. If you're a self-motivated learner, eager to gain new skills, then AI is perfect for you. Having a virtual Feynman coach you through a Physics course is perfect.

Most learners, the world over, are not self-motivated. The pandemic showed us exactly what children would prefer to do, when they don't have a physical teacher standing over them, which is bugger all. We send kids to school, in the hope they get some education, but the reality is that we use schools for free childcare while we work. If parents have to additionally monitor their child's learning, it breaks down pretty quickly.

I see AI being more of a teaching assistant, rather than a replacement for teachers. Having been in the education game for over twenty five years, I know the difference in impact when comparing virtual learning to in-person training.

[renjimen]

I really agree. And I think it's likely your detractors have not stepped foot in a classroom lately.

The issue is not engaging teachers. The teachers we have here in BC are excellent and love their subjects (my wife and many of my friends are teachers). The issue is behaviour, which has deteriorated significantly since COVID, though the changes have many other contributors.

Try asking an AI to engage with 30 kids who are on their phones with earbuds in. You absolutely need a human as a teacher.

That said, AI teaching could be a great teaching assistant.

[MarcScott]

I was walking to my classroom last Thursday, and a kid pushed another kid down the stairs, right into me. I went ballistic, and sorted it all out, but there is no way an online AI tutor can deal with that kind of behavior. So if you want social education, you need physically present teachers. If you want online education, then parents are going to have their work cut out.

[whimsicalism]

We use teachers as enforcers. But in my experience going to a big urban public school, the best enforcers are often completely orthogonal to the best knowledge-conveyers and I think we could have specialization for each of these roles.

In my opinion, the best enforcers generally are charismatic yet firm and come from a similar community/background to that of the students. The best teachers have an infectious passion for their subject, but oftentimes that trades off with their ability to enforce.

[renjimen]

Yes, a teacher's role is as much behaviour management as it is knowledge transfer. I think most teachers would love to shift the focus to the latter, but it seems to be shifting more to the former of late. Knowledge transfer is what teachers are actually trained to do, with very little of professional pedagogy training about behaviour management (at least, anecdotally from my teacher wife).

I don't know what the future of education looks like, but it sounds like there are significant behaviour problems in the classroom at the moment, with many teachers quitting or retiring early as a result of not being able to do what they are trained to do (teach).

[mirekrusin]

Why would you have more than one student per ai teacher?

[fritzo]

AI would engage individually with each student via those earbuds

[renjimen]

A large amount of engagement is reading and responding to body language. There are also no social ramifications of ignoring your laptop.

Don't get me wrong, I think AI has a role in the future classroom, but that should be lead by professional educators used to dealing with children.

There is also the social side to education that goes beyond course content. Teachers are not just there to dole out information, but to act as role models and part time parents.

[criddell]

I don’t think children are the initial target of this company, but I get what you are saying.

The type of person who’s going to sign up for a course from this company are probably already autodidacts to some degree.

If I were teaching sixth grade mathematics, I wouldn’t be too worried yet. If I were running one of the many mathematics academies that have popped up throughout a lot of more affluent ‘burbs, I’d be very worried.

[evanwolf]

Yes, it looks like this project is starting with helping highly motivated adult learners go deep into a hard to teach/learn material. Contrast this with the Khan Academy approach at https://www.khanmigo.ai/ targeting young students and their teachers and parents with broad assistance across subjects. Maybe they converge?

[BeetleB]

> A large amount of engagement is reading and responding to body language.

That's due to a limitation of the current medium, don't you think? When I started going to school, I had to improve my social awareness not because it's an inherently, objectively better way to learn, but because that's what was needed as a result of how the classroom is structured.

[renjimen]

But social awareness is part of adult life, and school is the place we prepare our children for adult life, not just to excel in academic tests.

[BeetleB]

> But social awareness is part of adult life, and school is the place we prepare our children for adult life

The school doesn't prepare kids for this. By most measures it does a rather poor job. There's a reason they say "A" grade students work for "B" grade managers who work in companies started by "C" grade students.

Other commenters have said it, but the social behavior kids are exposed to in schools doesn't match much with the "real" world. The way problematic people are handled is quite different. As are the metrics of what constitutes success.

[ImPostingOnHN]

> A large amount of engagement is reading and responding to body language.

I don't follow this assertion – it's possible to be engaged by something that doesn't even have a body. For example: the things currently engaging them in this scenario – their phones (or whatever's on them).

[renjimen]

Engagement being a two way thing between the teacher and student. In this case I was referring to the teacher reading and responding to the student's body language.

[exe34]

> There are also no social ramifications of ignoring your laptop.

you could absolutely have a digital social credit system the way you have game scores and leaderboards. once you get a competitive system like that going, it would sustain itself. top students could get to visit cool stuff like grown up labs and get involved in museums, etc. bottom ones could be celebrated with a virtual dunce hat on their avatars.

the problem is how mediocrity is now valued over hard work.

[renjimen]

No thank you. Keep Big Brother out of the classroom.

[exe34]

He's watching everything else already, he's even in your child's bedroom already due to proctor spyware.

[Neekerer]

Kids would just take the ai earbuds out

[OmarShehata]

> Most learners, the world over, are not self-motivated

this seems like a bizarre conclusion. In my experience, most people, the world over, are in fact self motivated. You won't see that if you have a very narrow definition of what is it that they're supposed to be learning

kids aren't motivated to do boring math drills, because they don't see why it matters to their life (the real answer is: it does not, they are not wrong).

I appreciated hearing this echoed by Conrad Wolfram in a recent PIMA episode: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-do-we-still-teach-peopl...

[MarcScott]

> In my experience, most people, the world over, are in fact self motivated.

In your experience? The world over? Can you tell me your experience. I've been a teacher for a long time. I've worked in the UK, the USA, PNG, and Kenya.

The vast majority of kids in the developed world don't really care about education. A few do, and they get great grades. Most care more about social status, their cliques, or just surviving the jungle that is school.

School is important. It teaches you how to deal with other people. It teaches you how to deal with people in authority. You can't get that at home, in front of a screen. Learning stuff is secondary. I'm sure there are plenty of people here that are not working in whatever they majored at.

[elliotbnvl]

Learning stuff is secondary? Found your problem.

School shouldn't be primarily about experiencing social interaction. It's an artificial environment that disappears as soon as you graduate, and which you'll never find again anywhere else in society. You can learn social interaction in plenty of other settings, most of which are vastly more efficient and realistic. Admittedly, none of them function as daycare...

School should be (and used to be) about learning to learn, building mental discipline and a base of knowledge sufficient to bootstrap whatever other studies appeal to the student, even more so than memorizing a particular list of facts. But it seems that that position has been largely abandoned.

[dash2]

Actually, until the mid 20th century almost everyone agreed that school was about building character, which can only be done in a social environment. As a British government report put it in 1846, schools should be "a little artificial world of virtuous exertion".

[elliotbnvl]

I believe we agree? Character and mental discipline are closely aligned, perhaps even the same.

[dash2]

Character was specifically moral character, which is related to how you interact with others.

[bdangubic]

Learning stuff is 100% secondary. If it wasn't these two below would have same-ish chances in life/career.

Student A: Went to College X and majored in Y. Finished all XXX number of credits and graduated with Bachelor's Degree

Student B: Went to same College X and majored in same Y. Finished all XXX-1 number of credits so is 1 credit short and never got a degree.

Student B is worthless even though she/he learned exactly the same thing as Student A. School (especially in USA) never was and never will be about learning ...

[elliotbnvl]

I agree that learning is secondary in practice, but in theory is the whole point of school, and society would be a lot better off if we managed to draw theory and practice closer together.

In your example, I would argue you haven't taken my position to its required logical extent. I don't believe in the value of college degrees at all, the way things are currently structured, and I would discourage my kids from going to college unless they had a very specific career path in mind for which the degree is required. The measurement of learning has become the goal of learning, unfortunately.

[techostritch]

This is circular, how do you propose making school about that? If you’re only goal is to maximize the folks who like to obey authority then great, and maybe that’s all you care to do, and maybe you don’t care about losing the kids who don’t have the academics to make it, but you also lose a whole mess of kids at the top end of the spectrum too.

[elliotbnvl]

I'm not sure which part of my comment would result in maximizing folks who like to obey authority. I'm more focused on improving individual outcomes in terms of functional individuals, their quality of life, and the contributions they're able to make to society as a whole.

In any case, we homeschool.

I haven't really considered how to improve schooling at scale (particularly in an affordable way), but my proposal would be to introduce a _lot_ more granularity to schooling by eliminating the idea of grades and classes and focusing more on individual assessment.

Obviously this is likely cost prohibitive, but perhaps promoting and subsidizing homeschooling and homeschool co-ops is a good start in that direction, and could give rise to more cost-effective solutions over time. Not all parents are equipped to homeschool, but homeschooling does make use of resources which could be improved and which others could leverage as well.

[techostritch]

I’m mixed, I definetly wouldn’t home school my kids and it doesn’t seem scalable and I do think there’s value in a population having a shared identity from education, but, at least from my own experience I suspect my kids will have their most valuable academic opportunities outside of school.

[simonw]

"You can learn social interaction in plenty of other settings, most of which are vastly more efficient and realistic."

What settings are those?

[afarviral]

Community gardens, sports, religious or interest groups, collectives, contributing in a large household, early work experience, hobbies/interests. It probably is a fairly finite list because societies have optimized for the individual and people are often only active within of a community at work or in education facilities. So a part of a solution in my view would be establishing more communities that are separate from the family... they might look a lot like schools though, so maybe we should just focus on those? There's more need for new communities to be established for other age ranges.

[elliotbnvl]

I pretty much agree 100%. We need more, smaller communities – and we need them offline.

Notably, this is largely an American problem, since America is built around cars, which given the capitalist nature of American society proves to be antithetical to establishing local communities.

European and other countries, whose layouts and culture were established in pedestrian days, are much better off in this regard.

[ozim]

Yes teaching how to learn is the way for schools, but it is hard to explain to kids and lots of adults.

Just a nitpick that school enforcing memorizing particular list of facts or memorizing poems - is indeed teaching people how to learn, because how else will you explain to a child or an adult "hey you know if you read this thing 10 times and then try to repeat it another 20 times from memory - guess what !!! that is one trick to learn to memorize something."

But if they spend time on finding out how to memorize hand picked for them stuff and how to perform on exams on limited and picked topics - that sounds like they will be able to learn anything but still too many don't realize what the real lesson there is.

[danenania]

If the goal is learning how to memorize, I think it would be better to have specific courses or lessons on memorization rather than making all the subjects needlessly boring and stressful just for the sake of learning memorization techniques.

Knowing how to memorize is occasionally useful depending on one’s profession, but I don’t think it deserves such a heavy emphasis. People naturally remember what is interesting and useful to them. Force-feeding facts or dates or speeches or poems into memory is not fun and has very little educational value. That time and energy would be much better spent on projects that use and integrate the knowledge.

[walledstance]

“It's an artificial environment that disappears as soon as you graduate, and which you'll never find again anywhere else in society.”

Whoa there, society functions like a school environment.

You have cliches, bullies, enforcers, popular kids, the weirdos, etc.

What are our political parties other than massive cliches?

Bullies you can meet on the road, in stores, and nearly any other place you go.

Enforcers are police, detention centers, and fines.

Popular kids you need look no further than influencers, movie stares, etc.

The weirdos are anyone that doesn’t fit into our cliches.

Also, Foucault would have a few words with you as society is also an artificial environment.

The drama of daily life that plays out just happens in a larger more chaotic scale, but when we left highschool, highschool never left us.

[elliotbnvl]

I won’t contest you entirely, but I do ask this: if society functions like a school environment, why do we need a school environment to learn social interaction? It seems at best a secondary or tertiary benefit of a structure that should primarily be focused on intellectual learning. It’s a facsimile of the real world, and facsimiles are always lacking.

Also, I think the biggest thing that present in school environments but missing from other environments is the forced segregation by age range, which prevents the more organic tribal self-organizational practices to which humans have adapted over tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

And I would also add that there are degrees of artificiality and what really matters is not so much whether we have constructed our environments so much as whether or not they have stood the test of time, and adapted to us as much as we’ve adapted to them.

[koonsolo]

How does being an employee differ so much from being a student? You still get either good or bad grades for your work. You do assignments, get rules and processes you have to follow, play well with your fellow students/colleagues, etc.

I would say it's quite similar.

[elliotbnvl]

I'm mostly talking about the rather artificial division of students into grades of equal ages without taking into account the individual's proclivities, abilities and achievements. This separation is entirely contrary to organic human self-organization (even in work places) from a tribal perspective and results in a great deal of social illnesses (bullying, cliques, etc.) that are, although found elsewhere, exacerbated by the artificiality of the group-making (which is necessary for the public school model as it currently exists today to function).

[koonsolo]

At age 12, kids get split up in groups according to their abilities, no?

[hackinthebochs]

Work environments tend to be class sorted. You also have recourse to handle people who behave horribly towards you. Disruptors are removed. Everyone is generally aligned towards the same goal. The two are vastly different.

[vundercind]

Anyone who hits someone, says truly horrible shit about others, doesn’t do the job at all, constantly distracts others while doing a poor job themselves, blatantly sexually harasses people, et c, is highly likely to get fired from a job, and may go to prison.

The same person as a student, gets tons of chances before maybe having to leave. Depending on what they’re doing, you could just be stuck with them for north of a decade. No escape.

I mean, we can joke about how actually such people still exist at work, but it’s a far less widespread problem and manifests differently.

You can look for other jobs if you want out of a bad work environment. Probably, you’ll be able to find somewhere else to go. Getting out of a bad class is way harder.

There’s a couple huge differences.

[koonsolo]

As discussed in another thread already, it seems my own Belgian system differs very much from the US system. (I basically found out with this discussion :D)

And to be honest, I have no idea how you can make the US system work, so I probably agree with you. Come to Belgium and let your kids study here :D.

[bmitc]

If I made be jaded here. I did extremely well in school(s). I was never a trouble maker and was a top athlete, student, and musician. I think education is supremely important. However, school didn't teach me any of what you mentioned. Because what life teaches is that unless you're Type A, you're not going anywhere. Life teaches that hard work and determination and doing the right things does not get you anywhere. Life teaches you that thinking differently is downright discouraged and rejected.

We mainly teach either boring material or outright lies about how life works. Because we try to put our education on rails, teaching students that that's how life and education works, that's why it's a complete failure. The fact that students in COVID didn't respond to remote lessons is partly because they weren't even engaged prior to COVID.

We don't teach students how to be present, to know nature, how to explore their thoughts and emotions, or how to collaborate.

[glial]

> We don't teach students how to be present, to know nature, how to explore their thoughts and emotions, or how to collaborate.

Montessori schools do. Wish they were more common.

[afarviral]

I mean ... many people went to school as students for a good 12 years. That's likely tainted experience, less objective perhaps, but nontheless valid experience.

[mrguyorama]

Those same people will say "I wish school taught me <X> (things like how to fill out a check book etc"

It did. You didn't pay attention. You want school to teach media literacy? It did, but you complained the whole time "when are we going to use this?". My school taught us how to interpret a "source", how to write well defended arguments (even if I don't always rise to that level), how to calculate mortgage interest rates and payments etc etc etc.

But people will swear up and down "school doesn't teach anything important"

because they didn't pay attention to what was taught!

The primary problem with education in america today is that a huge proportion of parents do not give a fuck about education, see school as just a thing you have to do instead of a constant opportunity. When a kid sees their parent complaining about education being "Liberal brain washing" every other day, why would they pay attention in class?

Education requires emotional and ideological buy in from parents and students for best results.

[afarviral]

Agreed. There's a really specific form of nostalgia where a matured and adhd-managed person would simply LOVE to do school over again now they see the benefit and realise how absolutely fascinating and achievable learning is. Imagine how easy school would be for a mature adult! I wish being held back a couple of years was normal and encouraged, especially for boys. My life satisfaction would be way higher.

[lmm]

> It did. You didn't pay attention.

It didn't. I specifically remember the hole where my class should've explained what a court case actually determines, how the process runs, because I noticed things were missing / being swept under the carpet (we did some mock jury stuff but without the right context for it to teach us anything).

> You want school to teach media literacy? It did, but you complained the whole time "when are we going to use this?"

Nope. I specifically remember watching movie "making of" videos and my teacher saying "write this down!" about irrelevant technical details that distracted from the more important stuff the director was saying.

> But people will swear up and down "school doesn't teach anything important"

> because they didn't pay attention to what was taught!

Nope. I was an engaged, attentive student (indeed a kind of star pupil). I still learnt more in spite of school than because of it. Indeed some of the stuff that's most important for my education and career is stuff I was actively punished for doing at school (poking at the computers to see how they worked). Schools, at least the standard-ish state school that I went to (which had good official ratings) teach the wrong things and teach them badly.

[afarviral]

While I'm thankful for schooling for teaching me a variety of things, occasionally recognizing my passions and helping to hone them, it is amusing the disruptive and annoying things I did with the school computers that ultimately became my carreer.

[BeetleB]

> Can you tell me your experience. I've been a teacher for a long time.

And as a result, your experience is mostly limited to kids who are forced to be where they don't want to be. That's a hugely biased data set.

> School is important. It teaches you how to deal with other people. It teaches you how to deal with people in authority.

And yet it does a worse job at it than those who are home schooled, as most studies show.

[abdullahkhalids]

> kids aren't motivated to do boring math drills, because they don't see why it matters to their life (the real answer is: it does not, they are not wrong).

Most kid athletes are also not self-motivated to run laps, or do boring repetitive drills, when they know from experience that these activities help them win games within the next few months. Usually need a coach to force them to do them. Same for young music players. Practicing scales endlessly does make you a better musician. But they won't do it till forced.

The primary reason kids don't like running laps or playing scales or doing math drills is because they are boring.

[nsagent]

Reminds me of a recent podcast with Staša Gejo [1], a top competition climber. She basically says the same thing. At times she hated being told to do drills growing up, but really valued that later because as a kid she sometimes didn't feel like doing the hard work necessary for the outcomes she desired.

[1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hg4jPdMnPyE&t=995

[seabass-labrax]

> Practicing scales endlessly does make you a better musician. But they won't do it till forced.

The value of such exercises, or any other drill-based curriculum, must be measured with its opportunity cost. If you practise scales for an hour a day, you can indeed reliably expect to be better at your musical instrument, but it could very well be that the same hour spent on improving another skill (sight-reading, articulation etc.) would make you considerably better still at your instrument.

I think it might be more generally useful to say that, in order to develop well-rounded competency in a given field, one should expect to sometimes have to perform boring drills.

[sillysaurusx]

I think it might be worth considering whether you’ve had a privileged upbringing. Thinking back on it, the majority of people probably would have been content to play games all day. You could argue that that’s learning, but unfortunately it’s not the kind of learning that society tends to reward.

I’ve heard that kids in upper middle class circles are totally different in this regard though. Maybe they want to do more on average.

[pigscantfly]

I think this perspective is belied by the vast over-subscription of free public education in places where it has previously been paid only[1] (at this point, mainly in Africa). It does seem like there is strong evidence that most children and parents recognize the value of education and are self-motivated to pursue it where it is accessible to them. I believe it follows that lowering cost and barriers to quality education will improve outcomes without a need to otherwise coerce participation.

[1] See, most recently, Zambia

[geodel]

Not really. In my experience it is mostly effect of socio-legal pressure that kids can't be anywhere but school. In primary schools most kids are bored or miserable as hell while in school. And further parents keep pushing it because apparently education is key to future success / great career.

For higher education there is charade of education to get jobs. So for office manager job where grade 8 would be enough, we have MBAs now because we all need advanced education to survive in global economy blah..blah.

[aleph_minus_one]

> For higher education there is charade of education to get jobs. So for office manager job where grade 8 would be enough, we have MBAs now because we all need advanced education to survive in global economy blah..blah.

This would actually be a good business opportunity: hire such "grade 8 educated" people as office managers, but pay them much less than MBAs. If they are nearly as good as MBAs, you save a lot of money on this group of employees, and thus your company has a strong economic advantage.

[lmm]

> hire such "grade 8 educated" people as office managers, but pay them much less than MBAs.

The trouble is it's performance all the way up and down. In the first place you're only going to get the weirdos / extreme gamblers, and then you'll struggle to attract investors, your clients/suppliers will wonder why your business development folks missed their classical references...

[TrainedMonkey]

> the real answer is: it does not, they are not wrong

The real real answer is that it probably does, but on a much longer timescale that we generally consider and it is really hard to explain why. Something like better math skills lead to better life outcomes. Maybe due to a better model of the world and sharper thinking, but I am just guessing.

[elliotbnvl]

I would tend to agree with your last (speculative) point. The breakdown lies in communicating this to students and ensuring that each student receives adequate support at their own pace and style of learning.

[DiggyJohnson]

What is a disproportionate amount of people are claiming to require a slower pace and visual-only learning style?

[elliotbnvl]

They very well may! Unfortunately, since our approach to teaching how to learn is flawed to the core, it results in peoples' ability to learn being compromised from the very beginning, requiring them to build their knowledge base and learning approach on shaky foundations.

The way to correct this is by imbuing students with the confidence and skills required to learn (according to their style of learning) correctly from the very beginning, so that they build on solid foundations instead.

[DiggyJohnson]

I guess what I’m saying is that the whole learning styles stuff seems to be bunk.

[skhunted]

There is evidence that a person’s ability to understand and succeed in algebra is mostly determined by whether or not they can do arithmetic with fractions. Number sense is important in my opinion. Relying always on the calculator or a CAS leaves students confused and befuddled. I see this all the time in calc classes that I teach. The CAS loving students just don’t understand as well.

[aleph_minus_one]

> There is evidence that a person’s ability to understand and succeed in algebra is mostly determined by whether or not they can do arithmetic with fractions. Number sense is important in my opinion.

My opinion differs a lot here. I would not say that I have a good number sense (I guess that people who have to do "numeric calculations" or "back-of-the-envelope calculations" as daily part of their job have a much better number sense than me). On the other hand, I find it rather easy to learn really abstract algebraic concepts (think Grothendieck-style algebraic geometry or similarly abstract mathematical topics), which many people (most of them with much better number sense than me) tend to find insanely difficult.

[skhunted]

The number sense I talk of is not being able to do numerical calculations easily or in your head but rather understanding how to operate with numbers and their different representations. A person who can understand algebraic geometry doesn’t have trouble understanding things like simplifying x + 5/3 x. People workout any number sense have a hard time with this. Knowing that 8/3 is just a different way of writing 1+5/3 is confusing to them.

[aleph_minus_one]

Textbooks about "abstract nonsense" rarely require you to do such routine calculations/simplifications - they rather require you to be capable of making sense of definitions that are (at a first glance) insanely far removed from anything you have seen in your real life: I would rather liken it to taking strong, dangerous hallucinogenic drugs, and making sense of the world that you now see (which is something that only some people are capable of); by the way: I don't understand why hallucinogenic drugs are illegal, but textbooks about very abstract math are not. :-D

On the other hand, textbooks about, say, analysis and mathematical physics (both in a broader sense) - which can also be very complicated - have a tendency to demand a lot of (also long, tedious) "routine" calculations from the reader (often to do by his own). For these areas of mathematics your argument surely makes sense.

[skhunted]

I studied commutative algebra in graduate school which is an adjacent subject to algebraic geometry. People capable of understanding Hartshorne have number sense.

[lmm]

> There is evidence that a person’s ability to understand and succeed in algebra is mostly determined by whether or not they can do arithmetic with fractions.

Evidence that it's causative? That would be utterly bizarre and I'd love to see a citation, because doing algebra has nothing to do with fractions. I'd think it's far more likely that there's a strong correlation between the two because they're both determined by the ability to understand and follow the rules of an abstraction/notation system, and if you taught people algebra first and then fractions afterwards you'd say that ability to understand fractions was determined by whether they could do algebra.

[skhunted]

Whether it is causative or not it is still the case that someone who doesn’t know fractions will have a hard time in algebra. It would be bizarre to teach someone how to add rational functions before they can add fractions.

[lmm]

> Whether it is causative or not it is still the case that someone who doesn’t know fractions will have a hard time in algebra.

Doubt. Do you have any evidence at all for this claim?

> It would be bizarre to teach someone how to add rational functions before they can add fractions.

Sure, rational functions obviously sit at the intersection of algebra and fractions and require both. But they're hardly some deep foundational piece of algebra; I'm not sure my classes even covered them.

[skhunted]

Do you have any evidence at all for this claim?

Only anecdotal evidence. I’ve taught beginning algebra courses at a community college for 23 years. Students who don’t know fractions have a very hard time in algebra. Those who can’t understand that x + 5/3 x is 8/3 x have a hard time understanding that 2xy+ay is (2x + a)y.

Understanding rational functions helps to understand what vertical asymptotes are and as such are a fundamental source of examples when learning limits. They also aid in understanding why tan(x) has vertical asymptotes where cos is 0. Every complete algebra curriculum includes rational functions. I say complete because algebra is usually broken up into 3 courses (2 at the pre-college level).

[endisneigh]

I’m curious - have you ever taught in a public school?

[ugh123]

>kids aren't motivated to do boring math drills, because they don't see why it matters to their life (the real answer is: it does not, they are not wrong).

I think you are partially right in that the dryness of much of math teaching hides a lot of the underlying material's applicability to life. I think one thing AI could do is help design rich situational lessons that could are prompted, vetted, and updated by teachers and then taught to the class. It could be trivial to create incremental difficulty of problem materials tailored to each student's progress and goal.

[choppaface]

Feedback is a critical part of education as well as motivation for learning. But the act of giving feedback is very hard to scale, even for virtual learning. Enter an LLM chatbot, which is imperfect but can fill a lot of gaps in expectation. Chatbots certainly aren’t for everybody, but the large gains in accuracy in years past make them on average more effective.

[moffkalast]

Yeah if anything, current education system is so garbage that it manages to completely demotivate curious kids who want to genuinely learn. It's designed around adults that need to run the place, runs at the wrong pace for most students and focuses on PTSD-inducing high anxiety testing constantly because it's easy to do for the teachers. Not to mention piles of pointless busywork as homework that's been proven to not help with learning at all.

[koonsolo]

> In my experience

So you are a teacher?

[trod123]

There are quite a number of experts who would disagree with your conclusion.

Upon reaching a certain threshold of technological dependence, the need for rational thought (which includes calculation) is tied to the need for food. The actual yield may be low based on other factors, but it is absolutely necessary for survival.

The alternative you suggest, is where technology no longer advances.

Logically then, population growth hits a malthusian trap, the old crowd out the young since they have the most influence, and then a depopulation occurs as the old naturally die off, and replacement births cannot sustain those dependent systems used to feed the masses.

You get a dragon-king event where everyone its a free for all over food and bare necessities, farming no longer becomes possible (because of looters), and the world order collapses to pre-agrarian levels, assuming the environment isn't destroyed in the chaos (i.e. MAD and Nuclear Fallout).

There are much better ways to calculate than are currently taught in schools, Trachtenberg System and Vedic Maths have worked well in many places.

Mental math has been around for quite some time, and the principles of math are all about finding uncommon knowledge or information that is not immediately apparent (though it becomes so via various mathematical transformations).

The current pedagogy of math is all about sieving and exclusion, and rote-authority based teaching, since it is a requirement for any specialized area of science (and is only taught in relation to mathematical concepts, instead of intuitive approaches). This is why they adopted a burn-the-bridge strategy right around trigonometry at the grade school level (intended to cause PTSD/suffering/torture), to safeguard against disruptive innovators at the source.

Algebra -> Geometry -> Trig

1 -> 2 -> 3

What do you suppose happens when the passing grading criteria in 1 is changed from just following the process (but not correct answer) to 2 (separate unrelated material which is passed) to 3 (correct process and correct answer).

If they fail Trig, and the problems are from Algebra (not something a teacher paid bupkiss will bother to look at), how do they go back if they passed Geometry? The students not knowing why they are failing are simply told, well you maybe you are just not good at math and should consider other paths if you can't do it.

This structure is called burning the bridge because it makes it so you can't go back from a progression standpoint. Ironically, this structure was adopted at the request of representatives from the National Teachers Union in the late 80s/90s, and largely remains the same today.

There are several other progression sieves embedded in academia intended to make it almost impossible for us as a society to develop a large number of creative people who reach einstein-level achievements in math and science (outside-self study, or specific environments/private schools).

This broad push largely started in the 1970s in publishing, and expanded from there.

[obastani]

This is exactly the problem we have found in our research on generative AI for education [1]. We ran a pilot in a large high school in collaboration with math teachers, and found that students basically copy answers from ChatGPT, resulting in worse performance compared to students not given ChatGPT. If students don't want to learn, ChatGPT isn't going to fix anything.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4895486

[verdverm]

You are just giving them ChatGPT with a bit of prompt engineering, and evaluating them on math problems, which we know LLMs make errors on because they are not calculators. You aren't putting in the effort needed to build a real tutor and learning assistant. I would not extrapolate from these results

There are also a lot of things that can come in before you build a full on tutor. One example is being able to tailor word problems (transform the nouns) to subjects interesting to the particular student. They could also be used to help understand where students are struggling. We are still at the early phases of useful AI, optimism is more appreciated, especially as contemporary times have become so pessimistic

Sal Khan provides a more optimistic take and demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo

[elliotbnvl]

> The pandemic showed us exactly what children would prefer to do, when they don't have a physical teacher standing over them, which is bugger all.

This is not true. The pandemic showed us exactly what children who are accustomed to being force-fed information and whose natural learning mechanisms and curiosity have been suppressed in favor of a generalized one-size-fits-all approach do when suddenly removed from the only learning paradigm they've ever been exposed to.

My kids (not yet old enough for school) are extremely self-motivated to learn and explore the world around them. So am I, and that never went away over the course of a full homeschool education.

[infecto]

Totally incorrect. The vast majority of the population are relying on schools and teachers to potty train, teach manners, instill excitement for learning and basically do everything a parent should be doing. Large number of kids have no real parent figure and thats from all types of backgrounds. We are not talking about kids who have strong households where learning and general manners are being taught.

[elliotbnvl]

I agree with you, but fail to see how our viewpoints are mutually exclusive?

[infecto]

While different teaching styles have their pros and cons, and a more hands-on approach might yield better results, the problem over the past 5-10 years is that many children lack parental support. Regardless of the pedagogy style chosen, without parents providing a strong foundation, meaningful progress in the classroom is unlikely.

Your kids clearly have a present parent who is engaged, it is a stark difference to many other kids.

[elliotbnvl]

It seems like that’s a societal problem that should be tackled at a societal level, rather than a fundamental failing of students.

It’s not something schools can fix, regardless of the style of pedagogy chosen; so why not improve school in its area of focus, and introduce solutions to students’ home life at the same time?

Easier said than done, I know, but focusing on the wrong area will get even less done.

[dontlikeyoueith]

The ignorance of this post is astounding.

You and your kids are not typical of society at large.

[elliotbnvl]

Could you elaborate? I would like to be less ignorant, if possible.

I went to public high school, public community college, and college. None of these experiences have changed my opinion, but rather informed it.

[skhunted]

There is an interesting physics education experiment. A random group of students are shown a lecture on a topic and take a quiz after watching the video. The students rate the lecture. Repeat with a different lecture on the same topic. The students did worse with the higher rated lecture.

There’s teaching students like. There’s teaching where students learn. Sometimes the two intersect. Will an AI education company optimize one that students enjoy or one where they learn better?

[ryanjamurphy]

Thanks for this comment. I think I found the article: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

Layperson coverage: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/09/study-shows-t...

[lacy_tinpot]

Most people that are academically inclined are self motivated and have a desire to learn more.

Most people aren't academically inclined so it follows that most people aren't academically self motivated. Therefore among those that are academically inclined it is important to provide them with all the tools necessary because they're the ones that will most likely excel in an academic environment.

It is odd that the curriculum tends to accommodate people that aren't academically inclined at the expense of those that actually want to learn.

People that aren't academically inclined should not be forced to learn, or at least forced only insofar as they're baseline literacy so that they function in today's world.

[pessimizer]

It's not odd to me at all. The most "academically inclined" (although I don't think that's just one type of person) are people who have the ability to help themselves with very little advice from others. We shouldn't be going out of our way to provide anything for them; we should provide all levels of materials for everyone. It's the stupid people who need to be coaxed and trained to use them, whereas for the smart people, it's enough to make them available and give them advice when they ask.

Teachers like gifted kids because they'll be successful no matter what they do, and the teachers can test out all of their dingbat social and pedagogical theories with no consequences. They can start with elite kids, finish with elite kids, yet somehow take the credit. Not impressed. Make dumb kids smart, then I'm impressed. You might even be holding back the smart kids, but they're probably smart enough to see through you and do well anyway.

That being said, there are some people who are motivated to learn entirely by the desire to impress teachers and other authority figures. They need attention to develop. However, I do not think that most people are like this, and I honestly think those people should be in therapy.

[corimaith]

Looking outside at places like China, society unfortunately does require more experts in specific domain fields than there are self-motivated workers.

You can't run a billion dollar chip industry on passion alone, you are going to pull in people who may be working for external reasons. What matters then I'd that the education they receive is effective regardless.

[bruce343434]

> Most people that are academically inclined are self motivated and have a desire to learn more.

Isn't that by definition? Most xes are x.

> Most people aren't academically inclined

Is that so?

> It is odd that the curriculum tends to accommodate people that aren't academically inclined at the expense of those that actually want to learn.

Well, if what you say is true, isn't it fair that the program is catered to the majority, who are apparently not academically inclined? For one size fits all mass education, catering to the largest mass is the best you can do.

> People that aren't academically inclined should not be forced to learn, or at least forced only insofar as they're baseline literacy so that they function in today's world.

Isn't that what the curriculum already accommodates then? Didn't you just say that?

[lacy_tinpot]

>Isn't that what the curriculum already accommodates then? Didn't you just say that?

No. The current curriculum penalizes people that are academically incline. Fast track programs are difficult to access for example.

>For one size fits all mass education, catering to the largest mass is the best you can do.

Yes. But we now have other options.

> Most people aren't academically inclined >>Is that so?

As OP pointed out most people need someone to guide them and give them directions. This is because a lot of kids are not interested in learning and do "bugger all" without supervision.

The kind of self-directed learning only benefits people that are already academically motivated.

>Isn't that by definition? Most xes are x.

Yes. This was in contrast to what OP was saying, which is "The pandemic showed us exactly what children would prefer to do, when they don't have a physical teacher standing over them, which is bugger all."

This isn't true for students that are academically inclined. Only true for those that aren't academically inclined.

[silverlake]

I worked on online learning for a bit. Turns out people are willing to pay for the inconvenience of in-person learning, even flying to another location. It's the only way most people can focus on a topic. Otherwise, work, kids, life interrupts and they can't stay on track. Replit's 100 Days of Python says only 0.4% of those who complete day 1 finish day 100.

[mym1990]

Weirdly enough I was not very curious in my schooling years, barely getting through classes. As I have grown up, I have so much more curiosity about the world and my willingness to actually learn has skyrocketed. I feel like this could be a great space for adults who are seeking to do the same. I always thought calculus would be daunting to learn(and I still do), but with AI tools I feel like I can approach it with a different mindset.

[pessimizer]

I don't think this is true at all. People failed to learn during covid because the technology is bad. I don't think most people are motivated very much at all by the disappointment of some stranger standing over them. I don't even see it as a desirable aspect of someone's personality that they can be extrinsically motivated by the approval of strangers.

What a teacher provides is a sometimes customized, sometimes flexible schedule, that (sometimes) pays individual attention to what aspects of a concept a student is falling behind at, and (sometimes) comes up with personal recommendations and alternative approaches to break down a student's involuntary resistance to a concept. This might be doable with A.I.. It's not doable with actual teaching anymore because class sizes are too large. A.I. will be cheaper.

And I'm not saying that teaching is so simple that A.I. can do it, I'm saying that teaching is so complicated that it might be that only A.I. is sufficient to largely replace it. I think that what I'm arguing against is that the idea that teachers could be replaced by glowering scarecrows, or fur-covered wire armatures like they once used in experiments to replace animals' mothers.

I don't think that teachers make as good parents as parents do teachers. I don't think most people are mostly motivated by the approval or judgement of their teachers.

What people need is constant, helpful, personalized guidance, and that is very expensive to get from employees.

[ilaksh]

AI certainly can't completely replace teachers, but the potential gains for personal tutoring from SOTA LLMs still seem enormous to me.

And I'm not trying to make a general argument against in person training. But I think the details of how virtual learning happens matters quite a lot. AI can make it much more personalized and make tutoring relatively affordable. Don't you think?

[dinobones]

AI has personally tutored me about obscure, deep linear algebra concepts. It's so great to get applied examples and be able to ask why/how something works, rather than reading a stuffy Wikipedia article or math textbook.

It's been extremely effective for me, where reading a math textbook/wikipedia article seemed like too much effort, but a friendly conversation with my AI tutor was just fine.

[brendoelfrendo]

How can you bring yourself to trust the AI? Just yesterday a friend and I asked Chat-GPT a physics question, and for some reason his assistant asserted that the speed of light was 3,000 m/s, which is off by two orders of magnitude. We know that's wrong so we can tell the AI to do it again but right this time, but if it was explaining a concept we didn't already understand, I can't see how the output would be any more meaningful than asking a random stranger and trusting their response.

[simonw]

How can you bring yourself to trust a human teacher? Humans are wrong sometimes too, often with confidence.

The trick to learning effective timely (with both LLMs and human teachers) is to recognize that you should learn from more than one source. Think critically about the information you are being exposed to - if something doesn't quite feel right, check it elsewhere.

I genuinely believe that knowing that an information source is occasionally unreliable can help you learn MORE effectively, because it encourages you to think critically about the material and explore beyond just a single source of information.

I've been learning things with the assistance of LLMs for nearly two years now. I often catch them making mistakes, and yet I still find them really useful for learning.

[aleph_minus_one]

> How can you bring yourself to trust a human teacher? Humans are wrong sometimes too, often with confidence.

If humans/AIs are wrong about a topic (in particular wrong in a confident way) multiple times, I will stop trusting them to be experts in the topic. What I experienced is rather that many human experts in academia tend to be honest when they are not sure about the answer.

[brendoelfrendo]

A human understands what they're saying. If a human teacher is working through a math problem and isn't sure of their work, they're able to stop and correct their mistake. An AI math teacher is trained on a corpus of data - probably very similar to the data that the human teacher was trained on, though I'm sure the AI was trained on far more data than any single human ever was - but can't do the introspective part. To put it another way, I think we agree that humans learn better by assessing multiple sources and thinking critically. An AI is very good at the former, but very bad at the latter, and I would rather have a teacher that can think critically about what it is saying to me.

[camdenreslink]

The problem is that LLMs in their current state confidently lie. They will tell you that 38 + 22 = 3822 without a shred of uncertainty.

If you are a 7 year old learning how to do arithmetic with fractions, there is no way that will help you learn more effectively.

[simonw]

Right, so don't use them if you are a seven year old. LLM-assisted learning requires skill in learning.

[danielmarkbruce]

To your point... if you trust anything, you already are at a big disadvantage in learning. It's the wrong attitude.

[camdenreslink]

If you can't trust a teacher or a textbook, then you are in big trouble. Especially if it is a brand new subject to yourself where you don't have an intuition about what is correct/incorrect. Part of a teacher/student relationship is obviously trust.

[gjm11]

Nitpick: Your number of orders of magnitude is off by a (binary) order of magnitude.

The speed of light is about 300,000,000 m/s. (In fact it's exactly 299,792,458 m/s, because that's how the metre is defined.) So 3,000 m/s is off by five (decimal) orders of magnitude, not two.

[brendoelfrendo]

Ha! Here I am complaining about Chat-GPT's obviously wrong answer and I get something so obviously wrong. Yes, thank you for pointing that out.

[BeetleB]

Counter nitpick: You can reduce any discrepancy to two orders of magnitude by changing your base :-)

[mecsred]

Trust but verify. If you're doing your homework you should be able to notice things not lining up and ask the model about them. Human teachers can also make mistakes (though usually less than an AI hopefully) and it's the same process dealing with those.

In my opinion the best teachers just direct your questions in the direction where the answers you find give you the most useful information. I'm optimistic that AI could be an improvement to the average for scientifically minded learners, though I wouldn't expect it to be more effective than a 1 on 1 with a good teacher.

[Auracle]

Ever since the step(s) beyond ChatGPT 3.5 I haven't noticed any huge errors like that, personally. Are you sure you were on a new model?

Also, how can you trust anyone? People are wrong. Teachers can be wrong. Web pages can be wrong. Books can be wrong. I think LLMs will probably soon be the least likely to be wrong out of any of those.

[Slyfox33]

I just asked chatgpt: "comparing 9.9 and 9.11, which is larger?"

and it responded:

9.11 is larger than 9.9.

When comparing these two numbers:

    9.9 can be written as 9.90 to have the same number of decimal places.
    9.11 remains 9.11.

Comparing digit by digit:

    The integer part (9) is the same for both.
    The first decimal place (9 vs. 1): 9 is larger.
    The second decimal place (0 vs. 1): 1 is larger, which makes 9.11 larger overall.

So, 9.11 > 9.9.

[BeetleB]

He's an AI. He's biased towards sorting algorithms :-)

[Auracle]

I should have put a big asterisk and mentioned that my comment didn't apply to straight-up math.

[TeaBrain]

My dad, a lawyer, has been trying to use gpt-4o to assist in writing legal documents. He has said that the documents are well written and convincing, but the cases that are cited by 4o to support the document are more often than not completely made up.

[dinobones]

Yeah exactly this, ChatGPT 4-o very rarely, if ever, hallucinates.

[aleph_minus_one]

A very easy way to get basically every current AI model to hallucinate:

1. Ask a highly non-trivial research question (in particular from math)

2. Ask the AI for paper and textbook references on the topic

At this point, already many of these references could be hallucinations.

3. If necessary ask the AI where in these papers/textbooks you can find explanations on the questions, and/or on which aspect of the question or research area the individual references focus.

[nathan11]

This problem isn't exclusive to current implementations of AI.

I had a US business professor explain in one of my business classes that making a bit more money might push you over into the next tax bracket and cost you more in taxes than you made.

This guy had a PhD, had been teaching for decades and apparently didn't understand the marginal tax system.

[BeetleB]

> I had a US business professor explain in one of my business classes that making a bit more money might push you over into the next tax bracket and cost you more in taxes than you made.

He's not wrong. You are correct if you consider only income taxes. But there are other tax benefits that lead to discontinuities with respect to income.

As an example, in my state you can deduct up to $5000 of contributions to a 529 plan if your income is under $250K. Go a penny above that threshold, and you can deduct only $2500. That extra penny just reduced your refund by a few hundred dollars.

[sensanaty]

But he's not really wrong, either.

In the Netherlands we have a marginal tax rate, so every Euro over X gets taxed 10%, everything over Y gets taxed 15% etc. (simplified numbers obviously).

However, often times it's better to stay in the top of a lower bracket because of tangentially-related benefits, such as healthcare subsidies, rent subsidies and other things like that. If you go from tax bracket 1 -> 2 because you get a 100 euro raise, sure you'll get 100 euros more (well, more like 95 but whatever), but you also lose out on more than that in the form of a loss in other benefits.

My partner went through this recently, she got a raise at work, but as a result she actually lost the subsidized rent money she got from the gov't. She had to request her workplace lower her wage so she was under the limit, because otherwise she couldn't have afforded rent on her own, and if the raise was even 2 euros/hr higher, she might've even been kicked out of her social housing situation.

That's because the benefits aren't marginal, they work on a hard cut-off limit. Anything over X amount and you're just cut off, you're not gradually weened off it until you're at a high enough income to not require gov't help.

[xanderlewis]

I also asked GPT-4 some very basic questions about modular arithmetic the other day, which it got confidently — and very badly — wrong.

[danielmarkbruce]

A likely truth no one wants talk about : LLMs will only help people who want to learn. Those people are likely already in very good shape in life. The amount of help from LLMs is likely very high for such people - as you note the ability to have a back and forth is very helpful.

For 99% of the population, they aren't going to do this. It is what it is.

[xanderlewis]

> obscure, deep linear algebra concepts

Could you give some examples?

[eldaisfish]

A major part of the learning process is your peers. Learning is groups has benefits especially when you can bounce ideas off other humans.

You cannot replace that with a machine.

[ilaksh]

Gotcha. So I guess the question is, can an AI run a Zoom meeting or interactive multiplayer learning game with a bunch of kids on it? Have to admit that might be a stretch.

[Ylpertnodi]

>The pandemic showed us exactly what children would prefer to do, when they don't have a physical teacher standing over them, which is bugger all.

Amend to: The pandemic showed us exactly what children's parents would prefer to do, when they don't have a physical teacher standing over their children, which is bugger all.

[KerryJones]

> Most learners, the world over, are not self-motivated

This is the exact opposite conclusion and methodology of Maria Montessori (and her schools with the same name). Children are naturally curious and want to learn, but they may not want to use a poor education system designed to mark grades in a hyper specific focus.

[whimsicalism]

the only people i knew growing up who went to montessori we’re very affluent white kids with hyper involved parents.

even when given access to school choice, less affluent and minority parents do not choose montessori and there is absolutely a reason for that.

[KerryJones]

Is the reason because montessori schools are often high-priced? Because that's definitely true (and you can easily say it's a privilege to attend one).

That doesn't, however, mean the methodologies don't work or don't apply. You can study the methods in any of her ~20ish books, or the more modernized recaps of them.

[ugh123]

> I see AI being more of a teaching assistant, rather than a replacement for teachers

That is exactly what he says in the tweet.

I think the problem with traditional teaching, as in any skilled profession, is often in short supply and underpaid, not happy, and unable to keep up with 25+ kids in a class. The world needs orders of magnitude more teachers that are highly competent and more easily accessible.

AI could massively scale high quality teaching with still a teacher in the loop.

[owenpalmer]

> I think teaching is one of the few roles that can't be replaced by AI

So far, AI can't replace good teachers. But there aren't that many good teachers. In my experience, GPT4 is better at explaining advanced concepts than 70% of college professors. Unfortunately, education is often oriented around this horrifyingly archaic method of instruction, which prevents people from imagining what an AI oriented system could look like.

[red_admiral]

I remember when the future was MOOCs. Let's get the top 30% (or 10% or whatever) of teachers to record high-quality videos, then everyone can have a top education. Even the rest of the professors might learn something!

AI based education might or might not be "MOOCs 2.0". Even for the less good teachers, having a real human in the room is one of the features that lots of people appear to be ready to pay lots of college fees for.

[p1esk]

His point is an AI teacher cannot force someone to learn, while a human teacher can (maybe).

[toomuchtodo]

https://www.khanmigo.ai/ is adopting this ideal, and I would agree you with your perspective. It's a tutor, not a teacher.

> Khanmigo is an AI-powered personal tutor and teaching assistant from trusted education nonprofit Khan Academy.

[627467]

The teacher/tutor certainly won't be replaced by an AI. But those we call 'teachers' nowadays - possibly even for decades - are struggling glorified janitors because society treats schools as daycare. It's understandable that 9-6 parents need daycare. But why do we keep confusing daycaring with teaching? And why do we expect teachers to be perfect at both roles? And why all 30 students in the class should focus exactly on the same aspect of education simultaneously? That's the main issue with 'teaching'.

[logifail]

> We send kids to school, in the hope they get some education, but the reality is that we use schools for free childcare while we work

We also send kids to school to learn social skills they can't learn by themselves.

My kids sometimes watch science shows (on TV as well as online) and tell me all kinds of fascinating facts about black holes and the human immune system and {insert_huge_list_of_stuff_I_don't_fully_understand}. That's the easy bit.

"Getting along with other people" isn't something you learn ... by yourself.

[whimsicalism]

May I suggest that the kids of HN commentators are being sampled from a very different distribution than the kids of the general public.

[zulban]

I imagine a world where a 19 year old takes a few courses in first aid, child psychology basics, and now they're a licensed "class supervisor". They aren't university educated but the AI is what offers personalized learning and expertise to the students.

Most teachers today aren't experts anyway, we just pretend they are. So I'm not sure "replaced by AI" is the right way to frame the conversation. Instead, it may change education.

[freejazz]

> Most teachers today aren't experts anyway, we just pretend they are

Experts in what, grade school math? Do you mean professors?

[zulban]

In anything. Like math, or math education. I was a teacher for years and studied education and I've seen some shit. The acceptance criteria for education degrees is often the lowest of any field in colleges/universities. The pay is extremely low. Great teachers exist, but often teaching is just a backup career for non-experts that don't know what else to do.

Outside North America teachers are sometimes respected and paid as professionals like a doctor or lawyer. Here they're more likely the butt end of a joke. You don't need to be an expert in anything to be a teacher in NA, generally.

[freejazz]

Sorry, but you didn't really answer the question. What would they be in an expert in? Grade school math?

[visarga]

I think online courses and AI education need the kind of supervision you mentioned. But they should also be able to give career advice, not just watch the room and push students to focus.

[zulban]

I'm not talking about the perfect classroom. I'm talking about something that could realistically be better than the ludicrously underfunded garbage we have today.

[whimsicalism]

My urban public school basically spent as much per year for me as it cost for me to go to Harvard. I am not convinced of this ‘underfunded’ as root of problem thesis.

[meindnoch]

Sounds fucking afwul to be frank.

[zulban]

Far better than many classrooms in North America today tho. Folks who disagree simply don't know anything about the huge waste of time that many kids are put through everyday.

[bruce343434]

> Most teachers today aren't experts anyway

Lmao what

[zulban]

Yes. Teachers in North America are not respected or paid as professionals. The typical university acceptance criteria to become a teacher is very low. The pay is rock bottom.

Great teachers exist too but generally teachers are not experts in anything, including teaching.

[eldaisfish]

this place is filled with people who are motivated to learn for themselves which creates a huge sampling bias.

You will see this come up in all sorts of discussion and i find it enlightening as to how exactly the decisions behind modern software are made.

Too many here fail to realise that real life has all sorts of edge cases and exceptions, including bad teachers.

Claiming that most teachers aren't experts is just another example of this. One student learns more about one narrow topic and then dismisses the teacher's broader, but shallower knowledge as being that of a non-expert.

Typical of the general population, myself included.

[whimsicalism]

You all clearly went to excellent schools, because as someone who went to a low performing urban one, what they’re saying is obviously true to me.

[zulban]

> One student learns more about one narrow topic and then dismisses the teacher's broader, but shallower knowledge as being that of a non-expert.

Perhaps you're talking about me (I said teachers are generally not experts in anything). I was a teacher for a few years and got a master's degree in education. That doesn't mean I'm right but I don't think it's smart to dismiss people on the internet as "probably just some dismissive student with narrow expert knowledge". I don't think I'm "general population" on this subject.

Teaching in North America has low professional requirements and even lower pay. The profession gets almost no respect. As a result, experts in anything (including experts in education) are pushed out of the career because it's a shitshow.

[Lichtso]

If the technology is truly as capable as humans in many domains (and that might still take a while), it will not matter anymore whether it is a good teacher or not. The need for (and thus value of) human labor will depreciate and so will its "supply chain" the education sector.

> hope they get some education, but the reality is that we use schools for free childcare

Exactly, teachers will be less and less pedagogs and more and more wardens.

[andrepd]

> Having a virtual Feynman coach you through a Physics course is perfect.

So would fusion power, unfortunately such a thing does not exist yet, nor close to.

[renonce]

Even as a self-motivated learner I fail to see the bigger impact of AI. For a “virtual Feynman” I would prefer the online video courses and books which exist without AI. The best I expect an AI to do is to answer my questions and confirm my understandings. At AI’s current state I can use it as a better search engine but due to hallucinations I can’t expect reliable answers yet.

[danielmarkbruce]

Using gpt-4o?

[renonce]

Asking it “3.11和3.8哪个大” (meaning “Which one is larger, 3.11 or 3.8?” in Chinese) and it answers 3.11 more than half of the time. I assume it’s because Python 3.11 is larger than Python 3.8. While it does work in its native language English, this failure doesn’t give me much confidence in its reliability, as we don’t know why it works in one language but not the other yet.

[danielmarkbruce]

Uh, I think people have a good idea why it doesn't work as well in other languages.

[fsndz]

When it comes to AI, self learning is dope, and Lycee AI is a pioneer: https://www.lycee.ai/courses/91b8b189-729a-471a-8ae1-717033c...

[SubiculumCode]

Most highschool / gradeschool is being forced to sit in a chair being baby sat until 3PM each day, with no opportunity to select goals, and act towards them. My daughter transitioned to a Montessori jr high, and she went from enduring school to actively engaging in self-directed learning.

[unraveller]

>teaching ... can't be replaced by AI.

Teaching is not the end goal of education though, the educated student is. Or so I was taught.

Part of the reason why teaching is considered noble is because it is an act of assured replacement, inspiring not dependency imparting skills of self-motivation and will power.

[azhenley]

We just published a paper on this topic. I wrote a summary of it, “Learning to code with and without AI”.

https://austinhenley.com/blog/learningwithai.html

[blackbear_]

What is the baseline performance of the LLM in solving those programming tasks? And did you test the performance of the students in the Codex group at the end of the course without allowing them to use Codex? Essentially I'm asking how can you conclude that these students didn't just learn to call a LLM, but actually learned to code independently?

[afarviral]

But how to harness "Bugger all" so that it results in educated students? Because my understanding is everyone likes to do stuff.. no one really does nothing, but often unproductive/consumptive things if not channelled.

[tomcam]

Disagree slightly. I think AI can be used to generate average quality course material, which may be useful to below average teachers, or good teachers thrown into a subject they haven’t taught yet.

Obviously someone like Andrej will totally crush it.

[yaj54]

Kids, when given the choice, will choose to play games (of many different kinds) above just about anything else.

The future of education is the playful gamification of relevant skills, knowledge, and behaviors.

[toofy]

kids will choose many different kinds of activities at any given time.a lot of kids really don’t like games, some do, some don’t.

i’m not trying to be pedantic, but anytime someone implies a human, particularly a kid will be at all predictable shows an incredible lack of understanding of people. the vast array of moods, time of day, quality of sleep the night before, are they hungry, mood of the parents when they drove them to school, how did their school/work day go, how was their social day, and on and on and on.

again, apologies, i’m not trying to be pedantic but i think in this particular topic it reeeeaalllly matters.

[yaj54]

My broad sweeping generalization was primarily meant as a counterpoint to this from parent comment: "The pandemic showed us exactly what children would prefer to do, when they don't have a physical teacher standing over them, which is bugger all."

My point is more that kids, when left to their own devices (with basic needs met), will find ways to occupy themselves that they find interesting that are not outcome oriented (I call this playing).

And I personally have never met a kid that didn't like playing in some form or another, though the form of playing is highly, highly individualized.

[signatoremo]

Is reading playing? Because most kids I’ve seen enjoy reading.

[cha42]

I don't understand at all my kids choices in game or way of spending time at all

It seems completely random but in a coherent way. It is wonderful.

Anyway, you are right and not pedantic at all.

[koonsolo]

I also noticed the material of an entire day can be learned or made in a few hours. So indeed I also realized it's mainly daycare with a bit of, or slow learning.

[dyauspitr]

Completely disagree. ChatGPT has taught me more than I could ever learn from any lecture and I have a doctorate. A moderately motivated student will do wonders with AI.

For instance, I’ve had trouble understanding exactly how heat pumps worked. Sure I knew the basic concepts of condensation and evaporation but not the nuances of pressures and boiling points at various stages. I asked chatGPT to explain it to me from the perspective of the refrigerant. It started with “I am R-134a, a refrigerant just leaving the evaporator…”, and proceeded to give me the most thorough understanding of heat pumps I could imagine, complete with working pressures, boiling points, pressure differentials at the escape valve etc. Follow up questions led me down interesting paths where it came up with a brilliant comparison to quantify the greenhouse potential of the refrigerant R22 ie 1 pound of R22 has the same greenhouse potential as a human being breathing for 787 days in a row.

[dimal]

> I see AI being more of a teaching assistant, rather than a replacement for teachers.

That’s what he announced he’s doing. Creating an assistant, not a replacement.

[surfingdino]

Except what you'll get will be an all-seeing, spying, hallucinating LLM.

[awahab92]

i think kids would be self-motivated with the right system.

I got a lot more motivated to learn when i learned programming.

during the pandemic, the world was in shock, so of course kids are going to play video games when their parents are anxious and filled with cabin-feever.

[hackinthebochs]

I do wish people on this website would stop using themselves as an example of the median anything.

[aleph_minus_one]

> I do wish people on this website would stop using themselves as an example of the median anything.

HN readers, in my opinion, are a decent median sample of the group of "self-motivated learners". :-)

[fragmede]

yeah. When trying to learn, say algebra and getting stuck on a problem, what's better for learning? staring at the problem until you get bored and wander off, looking at the back of the book for the answer and then maybe going back to figure out why, or individual instruction where you're able to ask someone who knows that they're doing about why you're stuck, and have them give you hints until you get unstuck, and then give you another, similar, problem for you to work through?

[onemoresoop]

AI can augment teachers though.

[surfingdino]

How?