[ytoawwhra92]

I was allowed to use a scientific calculator in all my high school math exams. My parents were shocked by this because it would've been considered cheating when they were in school.

Homework, exams, essays, assignments and so on are all tools designed to help students achieve learning outcomes. Those tools are becoming less effective due to the technology to which the students now have access.

Making adjustments to the educational tools makes more sense to me than banning the technology.

[array_key_first]

No, we should ban the technology, at least until we can somewhat verify the students understand the underlying concepts.

Like, yes, we allow calculators for highschoolers. But we'd never give a calculator to a 3rd grader learning their times tables. Because then they'd never learn that 9 * 9 is 49, and now they're permanently handicapped in math. And now, when they are in high school, the calculator doesn't even matter, because they can't do math at a basic level.

Or, consider reading. Certainly high schoolers can use audio books. But imagine if we didn't teach reading at all, and just used audio books, from kindergarten. Would anyone know how to read? I doubt it.

Learning is unique in that it builds on lower-level stuff. If you just skip that stuff, sure, it might look efficient - but it's not. You actually learn much less if you do that. It's not like me at my job, where if I use AI I finish a project in half the time and I'm better off. No, if I learn in half the time, I've learned less!

[ytoawwhra92]

> No, we should ban the technology, at least until we can somewhat verify the students understand the underlying concepts.

I didn't learn how to prove addition until advanced math in late high school, so obviously there's a point at which we're comfortable glossing over the underlying concepts with young students and skipping to the parts that are actually meaningful to the learning outcomes that we've decided are appropriate for their age.

> Like, yes, we allow calculators for highschoolers. But we'd never give a calculator to a 3rd grader learning their times tables. Because then they'd never learn that 9 * 9 is 49, and now they're permanently handicapped in math. And now, when they are in high school, the calculator doesn't even matter, because they can't do math at a basic level.

Research doesn't support this.

> Or, consider reading. Certainly high schoolers can use audio books. But imagine if we didn't teach reading at all, and just used audio books, from kindergarten. Would anyone know how to read? I doubt it.

Right, so if the learning outcome is "the student knows how to read" we'd judge that teaching method a failure.

I'm saying that our focus should be on helping students achieve learning outcomes, not on the tools we use to evaluate whether or not they've reached those learning outcomes.

The point of education is the learning, not the evaluation, so when the tools used to complete the evaluations become useless due to technology we should be replacing those tools rather than clinging to them desperately.

[array_key_first]

Evaluation is a proxy for learning, because we haven't yet invented mind reading to find out what people know.

I can get on board with OUR CURRENT tests being obsolescenced, yes. I cannot get on board with testing, as a concept, going away.

If you just let people do whatever and hope for the best you're gonna get shit results. Most kids would eat so much candy they need their stomachs pumped, if you let them.

No, we need structure and some well-formed method of assessment. Yes, that might require a controlled artificial environment, one without calculators or AI. That's not perfect, but we have no alternative.

Ultimately, school is not intended to make you successful in a capitalist system. Because you can be dumb as rocks and evil to your bones and successful. We don't want to optimize for that.

[sgarland]

I know this will come across as a trope, but a calculator doesn’t seem to me to be at the same level as AI in most circumstances.

If we’re talking about grade school children who are learning multiplication, then yes, a calculator is unhelpful to their education. If we’re talking about a high school physics exam, it probably doesn’t matter if you can show your work on converting units so much as it does that you knew which formulae to use.

[ytoawwhra92]

I think it's easy to say this now, because calculator technology is ubiquitous, assessment methods have been adapted to account for calculator use, and we now have multiple generations of adults who used calculators in schools as students.

And yet the debate on calculator use in schools raged for a good 40 years or so before it quietened down - only to be replaced a short decade or two later by AI cheating.

> If we’re talking about grade school children who are learning multiplication, then yes, a calculator is unhelpful to their education.

FWIW, research doesn't support this:

https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/INFORMIT.46244543468...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42802150?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...

https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:176139

[denverllc]

> it would've been considered cheating when they were in school.

Doubt. What field of study?

The predominant calculation helper was slide rules, which were allowed in engineering exams in the 60s and 70s.

Besides, in engineering you had to show all of your work and that had a large impact on the grade you got.

[ytoawwhra92]

I said high school.