mictter
Peterhad dinner last night with a couple of kids from Texas and their assessment is that the education system is completely fucked. it's all teachers using ChatGPT to make lessons that kids complete using ChatGPT and then teachers grade the work using ChatGPT. you couldn't undermine a society more effectively if you set out to do it on purpose.
i'm so angry at what the billionaires have done to us because of their psychotic greed and lust for power. the harm to the public is incalculable. Nuremberg trials for the AI financiers and then public executions.
7heo
Frank Bennett 🇯🇵@peter There do need to be consequences.
Kevin Neely 
@peter I wouldn't blame it on the use of LLMs. The billionaires' promotion of dis-investing in education -especially in states like Texas- goes back way before 2022.
Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷
Space Hobo@peter
No!
Death's too good for them.
Aria <3 
@peter No public executions.
Making a show of executing your enemies when you've already won is meaningless violence. Get above that, it's the 21st century in case you haven't noticed.
Petra van Cronenburg
MissConstrueI applaud your ethical stance, but may I offer a counterpoint?
Yiorgos 
F4GRX Sébastien
HeliosPi
Alerta! Alerta!@peter We as a society have allowed them to do that to us!
we need to get away from the narative that someone else did this to us.
@peter It might be easy as that's not something we can do anything about.
But we can! Each and Every One of us!
But that is hard! And takes effort! And is uncomfortable!
But it is *our* society! Not theirs!
Quiou@heiglandreas @peter We as a society have allowed the whole system to exist. AI will just add new inequalities to that mess. Quality education will becoming again a thing only the rich can afford.
My Privacy DNS - Matrix@peter
Well, the Nürnberg Trials were largely for show, giving the public a sense of relief and a feeling that justice had been served after what they suffered in World War II.
Well, the Nürnberg Trials were largely for show, giving the public a sense of relief and a feeling that justice had been served after what they suffered in World War II.
GroßStadtPflanze 
@peter Jetzt müssen wir nur noch die Schüler*innen und die Lehrkräfte da raus kriegen und GPT mit sich selbst arbeiten lassen. Dann haben die Menschen wenigstens selbstbestimmte Freizeit.
@peter The reason this is happening is ChatGPT is a perfect fit to what the education systems has demanded all along, which is busywork for the sake of busywork, lengthy writings that hold no meaning, time-consuming assignments that serve no purpose.
LLMs are *great* for this! It's not that they've fundamentally messed up the system that was, it's that their presence is shining a spotlight on how shitty it's always been.
Azarilhⓥ@ariarhythmic @peter Actually good point. Schools have to be made more fun too, and teach why learning things is important.
x0@Azarilh @ariarhythmic @peter I ran into a surprising manifestation of this when I was in high school in the 2010s, which I assume happened due to some shift in guidelines. Suddenly everything was about critical thinking! Critical thinking is a good skill yes. But nobody even bothered to explain what it was. How it works. How you go about training it. They just expected everyone to have it from the off. And while I may or may not have it, can you explain to me how the fuck you define it? I was a very confused autist.
CJ@ariarhythmic @peter I’m not an expert on our educational system as a whole, but my wife is a teacher, and this doesn't reflect her commitment to teaching at all. She puts a lot of work into her lesson plans, assignments and grading. Based on some of her student evaluations and comments on sites like Rate my Professor, it's clear that some students won't give her methods a chance and write her assignments off as pointless.
@cj @ariarhythmic i hate the practice of rating teachers, as if students are consumers to be served rather than people to be educated.
@Kaliah @ariarhythmic yes yes yes, don't agree with OP saying to go out and hang people though.
Wolf480pl@wolf480pl @peter Any reason I shouldn't block you?
@ariarhythmic
Sorry for the shallow response. It was a shortcut that I forgot I'm not supposed to use when talking with strangers
Clearly we have vastly different experience with school, probably because we went to school in different parts of the world
I'd be interested in discussing those differences, and what kinds of tasks do and don't make sense in the context of education
But if you don't want to, that's fine, I won't bother you again
If you want to block me, that's fine too
Jacob Ibáñez 🔒
@peter but they did do it on purpose
ghost_shit@peter Kid #1 reports the same from her abandoned writing & editing course. What the fuck, people?
Hugs4friends ♾🇺🇦 🇵🇸😷@peter Isn't it on purpose?
Leeloo
PoloniousmonkI hafta say--it was deliberately fucked a long time before that. Hell, I'd say forced schooling was deliberately fucked from the get-go. The medium is the message, it teaches punctuality and obedience. It teaches to never learn more than the bare minimum necessary to bullshit the rest, and never admit when you don't know something. Forced schooling was deliberately instituted to extend childhood, hence the age-segregation. What we consider an eighteen year old maturity level today would be a thirteen year old a hundred years ago. A lot of people never develop further, and who's easier to manipulate and control than a child? People like Dewey used to brag on that stuff. Forced schooling was implemented to destroy ethnic identities. Grandpa became a silly old guy who talks funny rather than a venerated source of cultural continuity. Forced schooling ain't a positive, but this is just the historical stuff. These days...
It was bad enough when I went through in the 80s and 90s, but after bush2 stole his election, it fell off a cliff. The very idea that phones are allowed in the classroom is absurd. They changed fucking math. I tried to help my gf's kid with her algebra homework but couldn't understand it. I can do calculus, and offered to teach her how to do algebra, but she preferred to jump through hoops to pass algebra class. And as far as I know, the children still have power over the teacher's salary, and even employment. That is an absurd power inversion. I was in a county college when I was in my mid 20's, taking classes with teenagers straight out of high school, and they were spoiled obnoxious. I saw them break a physics teacher. Nobody did the homework so homework review took the whole class so no new topics were ever introduced. Since even at the collegiate level, you're not allowed to fail a whole class despite the fact they all deserve it, after the mid term the prof gave up on teaching physics and just gave everyone a B.
LLMs simply formalized the hollowness of American forced schooling. It's great for producing amoral frat-boy salesman types and general infantry. Terrible for producing artists and scientists. And informed voters.
Education is a lifelong, self-directed process, and forced schooling exists to subvert that and replace it with a bare minimum of received wisdom.
Mattsdspatch@Uair @peter Forced schools were also established to indoctrinate children into christianity. But it is changing. And now bare minimum secular education became important. While i agree that it has many flaws, it doesn't mean we'd be better off without forced education. Because the alternative is utter ignorance. More educated people make better choices, you can tell by comparing countries with different education levels.
@Uair @peter Or how people that are more educated tend to have more political beliefs that are about equity. And while most of those polls are about university education, so not forced schools, in a way that is still de facto forced in wealthy countries. Plus students cheat with AI there too, it's no different. Because people feel forced to go to university to be able to get a good job.
Reality has a liberal bias.
A liberal is a conservative who's been mugged by reality.
In the US, the schooling system is designed to squash liberals and empower reactionary fabulists. I'm saying to fix the schools, not abandon them.
I'm not a "defund the police" guy either, despite being fully aware of how shitty they are. Law and order are necessary. Without it, power devolves to the biggest bastard with the most guns. I'm just saying there's a better way, and it's not like the better way is any kind of a secret. As a species, we know all the answers to create an educated, safe, equitable, sustainable society. It's just that things like forced schooling sabotage any ability to achieve that.
@Uair @peter My first semester teaching philosophy 101, I realized that 80% of the class was going to fail. And not because the material was difficult, but because they wouldn’t do the work. Granted, the philosophy department had a very high failure rate, but I went to the dean and was like “um?”, and he said “yep, teaching to the test students. Your job is to teach them how to think for themselves. Have fun with that.”
I did not last long in academia.
Deep Breath; Start Again@MissConstrue @Uair @peter
I had a friend who was a philosophy professor. She had a student complain about a test being too difficult. She asked if the student had read the assignments. Her response? "I don't do books." My friend retired that year.
I had a friend who was a philosophy professor. She had a student complain about a test being too difficult. She asked if the student had read the assignments. Her response? "I don't do books." My friend retired that year.
"I don't do books" stuck with me. I have to finish the dialog.
"Then what the fuck are you doing here? Drop out and go to vocational school or something. Sell drugs. Whatever. You are here to read books--that's like joining the sports team and insisting you 'don't do balls'."
Then I'd hammer the student in every class. "Do you do books yet? Then sit down and shut the fuck up." I'd make it a personal mission to drive that student all the way out of school with emotional abuse. Sorry, spoiled child. This is the way the real world works. If you want to be that big an asshole, it'll be done to you at every job you try.
*****
I'm really temperamentally unsuited for a lot of careers :) My HS guidance counselor gave me that aptitude test and told me I'd be a good in-flight engineer. That's the person in the airport who teaches a flight attendant how to repair the landing gear with a seat back tray table and then land the plane because both pilots had the chicken Kiev for dinner. I'm both smart enough to find workarounds in airplane engineering and cool enough in emergencies to manage it, plus I'm a master communicator.
And how many of those jobs actually exist? I would have been better off if he'd told me to be a rock star or professional athlete.
I'm relatively sure I was meant to be a Patrician, in the Terry Pratchett sense. (Matrician, I suppose.)
Quietly, efficiently, ruthlessly, but with a touch of humor and self deprecation, ruling the world.
Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to test the theory, so it goes unproven. But should the chance to fix the world arise, I shall jump, verily leap upon it.
I'd actually make a very good cult leader. I've got an incredibly powerful personality and can't help but shape the thinking of vulnerable people with whom I spend any time. The big problem there, besides the fact I have morals, is that the message of my cult would be "think for yourself", which is kind of self-defeating. That Siddhartha kid tried it and it only took a generation or two to become a control method same as any other religion.
@Uair @MissConstrue @peter
Such a full response! I love it. 😂😂😂
She wasn't of the nature to respond that way, but instead took it as the sign that it was time to quit working and enjoy her time. She'd already experienced the move away from reading and critical thinking in the classroom,, and that experience was the nail in the coffin for her.
I literally lol'ed. Thanks.
Y'know, I'd actually like to run a class or two. I really am in honorary doctorate territory in my own unique way, and am a natural teacher. My class would very quickly end up looking like Johnny Depp's in 'The Professor', except mine would self sort. I'd just be hard ass about learning and shit on people who didn't do the work until they left of their own accord. The ones that stayed would learn more in a semester than they would in four years if they had to carry the rest of the idiots.
I would like to do a home economics course, but in the same sort of "if you don't want to be here, don't be here" sort of way.
My kid was an AP student, and she graduated without ever being formally taught the first thing about home ec. Such as; how to balance a checkbook, how to reconcile accounts, how taxes work, how to do a budget, how to do forward budget planning, how to shop seasonally, how to can and preserve, how to cook basic food, how to clean, how to disinfect, how to launder....
These are all incredibly important life skills that we are now almost 3 generations away from teaching formally.
I would like to *take* a shop class, but practical, like how to fix stuff around the house that doesn't require a licensed professional, how to know when to call a pro, why is my miter box lying to me, a picture frame can't be this hard, that sort of thing.
I worked as a handyman's helper for about five years. Part time, under the table. That's how I learned the basics of household stuff. I'm sure any handyman around would adore having a professional helper like yourself. Mostly they employ a revolving door of drug addicts and useless morons.
I taught myself how to cook. It's not hard to learn.
Amusingly, I don't balance a checkbook or keep a budget, but not because I don't know how. Because I found a way to live without doing that. I let the computers balance my checkbook for me and simply trim my needs down under my penurious income.
I'm gen x and was never taught that stuff in school, either. In the smart classes, I did learn basic civics, but the reason something like 40% of Americans can't name the three branches of government is that civics education has been chucked by the wayside along with all of that other practical stuff.
The giant vocational school where I grew up got rid of welding and auto shop and replaced it with dance and theater. I guess there's more jobs for a stripper than for a welder, but I thought it a bad idea to prioritize the next generation's pole dancers over welders.
Cavyherd
paulhttps://beige.party/@amiserabilist/112519335956855861
it is insanity.
i consider it a good way to kill any curiosity in kids.
this is not even taking into account the bullying and shooting.
glasspshr
Schroedingers_Cat@peter I think it is one more example of the problems with our education systems - across the west at least.
We have never found a way of actually educating children - the whole range of them - in a sensible way.
It is all too results based. And we end up with an uneducated populace. And we see the results of this in our politics.
Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷@peter "Someone" _did_ set out to do this on purpose.