[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