| > 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. |
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.