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A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

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222 points dougb5 | 3 comments | 04 Sep 25 02:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.275s | source
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marcus_holmes ◴[05 Sep 25 07:35 UTC] No.45135955[source]▶
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.

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sandworm101 ◴[05 Sep 25 07:57 UTC] No.45136101[source]▶
And lawyers also use paralegals, that doesnt mean we let law students hire them to write papers or assist during exams. Docs have nurses, but i believe docs still write exams solo. And soldiers have buddies, but you arent allowed to pay them to do your fitness test.

That a tool is common in the real world is not an excuse to let students outsource the work that is the heart of learning.

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1. marcus_holmes ◴[05 Sep 25 08:51 UTC] No.45136419[source]▶
I bet we'd have better lawyers if they did teach them how to manage paralegals to do the grunt work. I really wouldn't hold the legal profession up as "this is how to do it".

And doctors do not "have nurses" in the way that you've said; they're entirely different professions. I'll allow that it's just a poor example of the point you're trying to make.

> That a tool is common in the real world is not an excuse to let students outsource the work that is the heart of learning.

This is, I think, the point: the work is not the heart of the thing. A blacksmith using a power hammer is not less of a blacksmith; the heart of being a blacksmith is not being able to hit a piece of metal really hard. As we are finding out with coding; writing code is not the heart of software development. The grunt work that an AI can do is not the heart of the learning that needs to happen. Guiding an AI to write software is similar to a blacksmith using a power hammer.

I spent the day using an AI to write documents. They're good documents. We need them. I was able to get way more done by using the AI to write them. I don't think this is bad. And if it's not bad for me, why should it be bad for a student?

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2. GeoAtreides ◴[05 Sep 25 10:29 UTC] No.45137024[source]▶
>And if it's not bad for me, why should it be bad for a student?

See, this is exactly the kind of logical fail you get when you don't exercise your critical thinking skill.

3. sandworm101 ◴[05 Sep 25 10:40 UTC] No.45137106[source]▶
Paralegals are also a totally different profession than lawyers. The relationship is very similar to that of doctors and nurses. They each deal with different aspects of the client "care" chain and work directly together at various meet points in that chain. And as seasoned nurses watch over new doctors, seasoned paralegals often watch over new lawyers.