A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

An ex-gf of mine spent four years going through university to become an Occupational Therapist. She's severely dyslexic, so the university provided her with all sorts of assistance to get through her degree, from scribes in the exams to extra time for tests. She passed, and became a qualified Occupational Therapist. She landed a job in a local hospital. And on day one, was handed a huge pile of paperwork to complete. No scribes, no assistance, just "this is the job, get on with it". She failed the job, left after 3 months, spent a couple of years rethinking her entire life, and switched to a completely different career with less paperwork.

My point is that education has to be aligned with the actual world outside.

Everyone uses AI now, for all sorts of tasks. And if they don't now, they will in the next few years. Trying to exclude AI from education is not only pointless, it's doing the kids a disservice: AI is going to be a large part of their future, so it needs to be a large part of their education.

If we follow the implied course of TFA we'd reduce AI use in schools and go back to old-skool teaching methods. Then that cohort of kids would get their first job and on day one they'd be handed an AI and told "this is the job, get on with it". Like with my ex-gf, everything they were taught would be useless because the basic foundation is different.

I know education is not entirely vocational, but if it moves too far from the world of work that everyone actually spends most of their time in, then it gets too theoretical and academic. AI is part of it, education needs to change.

> Trying to exclude AI from education is not only pointless, it's doing the kids a disservice: AI is going to be a large part of their future, so it needs to be a large part of their education.

Hard hard hard hard disagree.

Everyone uses a calculator, even to calculate tips at a restaurant, but kids still need to learn arithmetic without a calculator's aid first.

I spent my CS education learning things that I never come across in my practical career, but I would have been done a disservice and be worse at my career if I just practiced what my career was going to be.

> I know education is not entirely vocational, but if it moves too far from the world of work that everyone actually spends most of their time in, then it gets too theoretical and academic.

Again, hard disagree. Most people's jobs go up a ladder where the entry level is not at all like academia, and as you become responsible for larger and larger autonomous units and divisions, etc. your work becomes more and more theoretical and academic, more about experimenting, formulating theses about the world, testing your hypothesis, being flexible as the results come in, etc.