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- Hacker News
- If you structure learning in such a way that makes learning just a means to some end, and overindex on that end being the ultimate goal, that's what you get.
This is a pedagogical problem that AI merely exposed. Educators need to figure out How to make students choose the scenic route instead of having them optimize for the most efficient completion of a task.
by lxe - Taking a forklift to the gym increases the number on the bar, but mysteriously your gains go down.by pjc50
- College stopped being about getting an education a long time ago.
It's just a low pass filter for the job market. Students aren't actually interested in learning anything, they have been condition for a long time to jump through the hoops.
It would be much better if we actually returned to exam and performance based evaluation of students, and stopped giving everyone As just for trying hard. But parents look at college fees as buying their kid a job opportunity, and so grade inflation has basically ruined the SNR of academic performance for all but the lowest performers.
by qeternity - Education sustem is not about the actual knowledge, but about training various aspects of the brain during kids development. So even memorizing literature have benefits, even though it doesn't bring any career use.
If you skip this, well your brain won't develop as much at period of life it's able to do so.
by shuwix - For some of the classes my kids were in, the lessons and homework time were reversed.
Learning the material (using the text book and videos) was what they had to do at night and class time was spent working through problems or applying the material in some way.
by criddell - Moneyshot: "The results are eye-opening. After six months, pupils using ai saw their average homework score rise by 18% across all subjects. The time they took to complete each assignment fell from an average of 64 minutes to 45. But come exam time, the same students scored 20% below their classmates who had not called on ai’s help. Homework scores once predicted exam performance; now those who score highest are, perversely, more likely to do worse in exams."
Study design: "David Stromberg of Stockholm University and Victor Lei and Wu Yanhui of the University of Hong Kong set out to fill the gap. They tracked 27,000 pupils aged 12-18 in China, where ai adoption has been fast. Around 80% reported using models such as Doubao and DeepSeek; the other 20% formed the control group."
by andsoitis - All AI did here is exposed an old problem in education. Kids are expected to get everything perfectly for the first time but a lot of them don't so the class gets easier next year to keep up pass rates.
We need to restructure the system to treat failure as a signal instead of a disaster. Grades should come from hard randomized exams with unlimited retakes so one bad day won't hurt you. Homework should be optional material for self study, evaluated by teachers if you choose to do it but never forced.
Hold back students for individual classes instead of a whole grade so failing one can't ruin your social life and teachers are more willing to do it. F students will realize they have to study, start actually learning and then pass on the second time. No big deal. It happened to my friends in college, no reason they can't do it in high schools.
Discipline is a skill and it's one you have to get from experience. If you try and force kids to study when they don't want to "for their own good" you're not actually helping them. Everyone needs to find their own path. Let people fail.
by tancop - The kids who used AI and studied for a similar amount of time as the non-AI high performers apparently had similar (slightly higher) performance. The kids who used AI and did poorly used the AI to do the homework for them (this is what the article says).
I believe AI is basically an amplifier of bad and good. I’m cynical about the world and assume it will be used more for bad than good, but I don’t doubt some of the best people in every field will be using AI to amplify their work in good ways.
by GPerson