ASK HN: AI in high school. Will teachers and schools have to compensate?

2 points by qrsbrrr 311 days ago | 3 comments

School's main task is to teach you learning. If you are not an exception somewhere left of the bell curve, it'll work.

I'm relearning precalculus at the moment. It's learning, really, since my German Gymnasium slowed down the learning speed and reduced requirements for/due half our Jahrgang because let's not get into that.

Things in most industries beyond science and the crafts are turning into child's play, so, theoretically, kids can enter the work force even dumber than in the last two decades, in which a lot of complaining about low-quality, low-motivation (Bachelor) university graduates overshadowed a lot of other systemic issues in workforce onboarding.

Should governments, teachers, heads of ministries up the priority of compensating the negative offsets in cognitive abilities due to the use of AI or will the progressive improvement of youngsters in/with/due AI use be enough?

If yes, how? How and which subjects could adapt the curricula appropriately and accordingly? As far as I remember, there was at least some discussion that school curricula were not up to date at all. Neither with culture, nor with the psycho-social spectrum emerging from that culture and sub-cultures.

If someone can provide relevant citations, I would be grateful.

gus_massa 311 days ago |

Hard question. Probably...

I have more information about Calculus for the first year of the university here in Argentina. Officially nothing changed, but we are not teaching some of the weird substitutions for integrations, like x=sen(theta) (or it was in the other direction?) for Integral[(sin^3(t)+cos(t))/(sin^5(t)+7cos^3(t))dt]. Wolfram Alpha can solve it, and unless you work in a very specific are it's not worth.

Linear substitutions like x=7t+2 are very important, and students MUST learn that. Not linear like x=t^2+1 are very useful and there are a lot of interesting tricks, probably worth learning.

Integration by parts, I'm not sure. In the first year it's only a nice trick but it's useful for some statistic results, like Integral[xe^{-x^2}dx] that have a lot of applications that are studied by many careers without more math courses. It's also useful in some branches of advanced math and physics, but perhaps it can be delayed in those cases.

A big chunk of teaching if giving a general understanding of the topic, later they can use the integrations tables, Wolfram Alpha or AI. It's very hard to understand the topic if someone only types the question in Google and copy whatever Gemini says. Some may claim it's important to teach critical thinking, but that's even harder than integration and it's even harder if someone wants to think critically about the AI results with zero understanding of the simple cases.

Back to your question... I don't know how the government can compensate that, unless they add 2 more years to high school. But everyone will complain and they will lose the elections and everyone will continue complaining.

incomingpain 311 days ago |

From what ive been seeing. schools are hostile toward cellphones and AI.

Which is the complete opposite of what I would do. Id be actively teaching this new learning tool to the maximum.

That perhaps classrooms being >30 students and overworked teachers doesnt need to be solved, instead the endless questions from students could be sent to regulated AI options. Making the teacher's job that much easier. Perhaps even on average ending up with significantly better educated students.

>Should governments, teachers, heads of ministries up the priority of compensating the negative offsets in cognitive abilities due to the use of AI or will the progressive improvement of youngsters in/with/due AI use be enough?

There's a great deal of sensationalism, fake news around this at most.

qrsbrrr 311 days ago | |

> There's a great deal of sensationalism, fake news around this at most.

Been there, it's not. There was a Studienrat in one of my past Ex's family. They do care! But for the same reasons they lowered the reqs for "some segment" like others did for some part of my "Jahrgang", they don't get to fulfill their potential, so ... relax, it's a thing we can overcome easily.

> From what ive been seeing. schools are hostile toward cellphones and AI

Regarding my inquiry, that's a step towards intention. Intention that goes against the "currently trying really hard to force a reaction" .... dogma ...

> even on average ending up with significantly better educated students.

... think long term, think synaptic connections, think character TRAITS (singled out vs product) [linear transformations vs non-linear ones, .......]

Tangential: this is one of the topics I'm NOT bored of instantly, some people didn't just work A LOT for that one line in their resume ... there was an init

AI agents bore me back to planting red beet at the right time and what the fuck I should do about the snails that attack my "early peppers"

Nothing beats effective democracy in multi-variable contexts ... except optimized democracy (in/on multi/poly-species planets/environments)