A startup idea: "exam machines". An low cost/ancient laptop with locked-down software and special cloud service. They provide a way to write a text and submit it, maybe also reference or spellcheck or calculator (if teacher enables), but nothing else, in particular no access to websites like ChatGPT. Teacher (or proctor) hands them out in class during exams, and oversees the use to make sure no one is using ChatGPT on their phone or something.
This will allow teachers to grade the works without having to read students' handwriting.
Yes, many HN readers would be able to make something like this with the right application of security policies. But many non-CS teachers could not, and I am sure some of them would be happy to pay a bit to smooth out exam process.
amy214 · 1d ago
This business model will have its lunch eaten by the software stack that claims immunity to hacks, but can still run on the students' hardware, thus massively changing the cost and logistics landscape. Now the student has to manage it.
Of course it's true, the student-owned laptop may in theory always be modded to bypass any software stack. But in practice, the software stack has a huge edge. Any remaining lunch to be eaten, whereby one is insistent that this testing be performed on non-student hardware, can be had by the university computer lab.
jxjnskkzxxhx · 2d ago
I feel for these teachers. From the way they write I can tell they're all well intentioned.
However, I think that the argument "how can I tell my students XYZ when other people aren't doing that?", which appears multiple times in this article, is weak. Just because the world has a lot of dumb and lazy people put there, that doesn't mean you shouldn't demand better from the students you're teaching. It makes me question if these teachers can think for themselves, or they're just parroting to the students stuff they had parroted to them.
In fact, it's not the first time this argument appears in the context of education. A teacher coould also say "how can I ask my student to learn how to multiply by hand when in the real world no one does that?" That betrays that the teacher doesn't really understand why we've chosen that those things should be taught in class.
jmarchello · 2d ago
I think AI is simply exposing problems with academia that have always been there. In my personal experience with both high school and a completed bachelor's degree, 20% of the process is actual learning while 80% is proving what one has learned for the sake of grading and measuring.
As soon as one graduates and enters the real world, the ability to learn is paramount, but the ability to grade said learning is never used again. We need to re-think the system from the ground up so that a student can leverage all available tools, AI included, and still develop a core ability to learn.
What's more, the current focus on grading has been shown to stunt the love of learning, because we're not stupid and we know when we're doing something that does not gain us anything beyond a grade.
If academia responds to this change properly we can eventually see a system that actually serves our students better than what we currently have.
thaumiel · 2d ago
So are the teacher supposed to stop grading the students works?
Some people never leave the academia, and that is not a bad thing. What kind of research would done if there is no academia around for that?
If people barely learn how to read, write or think critically how are they expected to handle predatory companies?
How can we expect students to learn anything, if they are using tools which cannot be trusted to tell the truth?
There is not one educational system. So if US changes their system according to your idea, what would happen to us students if other countries does not follow suit? Will they fare better or worse?
Why should they study if they would get the idea that AI can help them with everything?
prossercj · 2d ago
Strong agree. This reminds me of one of my pet theories: that research and education are fundamentally different skills. A good researcher should be flexible and open-minded, almost to a fault, but a good educator needs to be committed to certain beliefs in order to teach them. More important, an educator should instill good habits (even if those habits involve asking good questions) and set a good example, a requirement entirely lacking from research.
So why do all of our universities only employ teachers who have been trained as researchers?
I think much of the 80% grinding that you describe is just the publish-or-perish mindset of graduate school, which the teachers pick up along the way (I'm not faulting them so much as the process). It's more about appearing to know, rather than knowing. This may be what you have to do to survive in a competitive research environment, but one is left wondering what any of that has to do with educating our children, especially the majority who will never become researchers.
username223 · 2d ago
There's no way I could say what percentage of my schooling was "actual learning" versus assessment or "busywork." The modern obsession with standardized testing and constant measurement has certainly made things worse.
I disagree that "ability to grade said learning is never used again." Stack-ranking is very much a thing; the grading just gets fuzzier.
What the article points to is that, when a teacher gives an assignment meant to encourage students to think and learn, e.g. picking themes out of a novel, most students completely miss the point, instead getting an LLM to generate words in the shape of a student essay. They're crippling their future selves to save some time.
What would I do if I were a teacher? My impulse would be to make all assignments ungraded or pass/fail. Students could choose to learn or cheat as much as they liked. But then their grades would depend upon a midterm and a final, either oral or written in-person. For the ones who had been cheating their way along, the midterm would hopefully be a wake-up call, and they could redeem themselves on the final.
incomingpain · 2d ago
>"Honestly, if we ejected all the genAI tools into the sun, I would be quite pleased."
Well that's not going to happen. Teachers are not OK because education design is just plain antiquated.
Education needs to adapt. Which frankly has not been the case for 100 years. They still follow the 'factory model' of complete obedience, uniformity, and feeding into 'higher education' with creativity and curiousity is crushed out of students.
30 kids in a class is still insane. You either adopt segregation for neurodivergent kids or leave them behind. The top level kids can be ignored as not-a-problem(giving up the chance to make little einsteins). The mid tier kids dont get the help they need to elevate; and so teachers are burnt out attempting to make failing kids try to pass. Everyone is lost.
education is ridiculous. They spend days teaching pythagorean theroem over and over and nobody uses it. Whereas financial literacy is practically ignored. civic knowledge is biased toward the political party that promises to give teachers raises.
Modern technology is not taught, it's being seen as evil and needs to be ejected into the sun?
Imagine instead where pythagorean theory is taught by a video from the best teacher; and then standardized tested on it. The teachers who waste them time year over year can now spend it working with all the kids, parents have live up to date digital report cards available all the time.
No longer do you accept 51%. It's more about, where in the path the kid is on their journey of education. They might be grade 2 reading, but grade 12 in math. It's not that they are failing english, its that they need help from the teacher to get further.
username223 · 2d ago
> 30 kids in a class is still insane.
It's also what happens when you can only hire that many teachers.
> The top level kids can be ignored as not-a-problem(giving up the chance to make little einsteins). The mid tier kids dont get the help they need to elevate; and so teachers are burnt out attempting to make failing kids try to pass. Everyone is lost.
I've been there, teaching programming at a decent university, and it's basically triage. The top students will indeed take care of themselves, and the bottom ones are beyond help. Your job is to encourage the top when you can, but mostly to teach the middle, and help those at risk of falling into the bottom. It's grim, but it's the best you can do.
theamk · 2d ago
> 30 kids in a class is still insane. You either adopt segregation for neurodivergent kids or leave them behind. The top level kids can be ignored as not-a-problem(giving up the chance to make little einsteins)
When I was in high school (few decades ago, and it was pretty average US high school), this was not a very big problem because students got to pick their classes. If someone needs more help with math, there are optional classes like pre-algrebra. On the other hand, if someone wants to do Calculus to 9th grade - more power to them, and the school would accept credit for math classes from local colleges too.
This will allow teachers to grade the works without having to read students' handwriting.
Yes, many HN readers would be able to make something like this with the right application of security policies. But many non-CS teachers could not, and I am sure some of them would be happy to pay a bit to smooth out exam process.
Of course it's true, the student-owned laptop may in theory always be modded to bypass any software stack. But in practice, the software stack has a huge edge. Any remaining lunch to be eaten, whereby one is insistent that this testing be performed on non-student hardware, can be had by the university computer lab.
However, I think that the argument "how can I tell my students XYZ when other people aren't doing that?", which appears multiple times in this article, is weak. Just because the world has a lot of dumb and lazy people put there, that doesn't mean you shouldn't demand better from the students you're teaching. It makes me question if these teachers can think for themselves, or they're just parroting to the students stuff they had parroted to them.
In fact, it's not the first time this argument appears in the context of education. A teacher coould also say "how can I ask my student to learn how to multiply by hand when in the real world no one does that?" That betrays that the teacher doesn't really understand why we've chosen that those things should be taught in class.
As soon as one graduates and enters the real world, the ability to learn is paramount, but the ability to grade said learning is never used again. We need to re-think the system from the ground up so that a student can leverage all available tools, AI included, and still develop a core ability to learn.
What's more, the current focus on grading has been shown to stunt the love of learning, because we're not stupid and we know when we're doing something that does not gain us anything beyond a grade.
If academia responds to this change properly we can eventually see a system that actually serves our students better than what we currently have.
Some people never leave the academia, and that is not a bad thing. What kind of research would done if there is no academia around for that?
If people barely learn how to read, write or think critically how are they expected to handle predatory companies?
How can we expect students to learn anything, if they are using tools which cannot be trusted to tell the truth?
There is not one educational system. So if US changes their system according to your idea, what would happen to us students if other countries does not follow suit? Will they fare better or worse?
Why should they study if they would get the idea that AI can help them with everything?
So why do all of our universities only employ teachers who have been trained as researchers?
I think much of the 80% grinding that you describe is just the publish-or-perish mindset of graduate school, which the teachers pick up along the way (I'm not faulting them so much as the process). It's more about appearing to know, rather than knowing. This may be what you have to do to survive in a competitive research environment, but one is left wondering what any of that has to do with educating our children, especially the majority who will never become researchers.
I disagree that "ability to grade said learning is never used again." Stack-ranking is very much a thing; the grading just gets fuzzier.
What the article points to is that, when a teacher gives an assignment meant to encourage students to think and learn, e.g. picking themes out of a novel, most students completely miss the point, instead getting an LLM to generate words in the shape of a student essay. They're crippling their future selves to save some time.
What would I do if I were a teacher? My impulse would be to make all assignments ungraded or pass/fail. Students could choose to learn or cheat as much as they liked. But then their grades would depend upon a midterm and a final, either oral or written in-person. For the ones who had been cheating their way along, the midterm would hopefully be a wake-up call, and they could redeem themselves on the final.
Well that's not going to happen. Teachers are not OK because education design is just plain antiquated.
Education needs to adapt. Which frankly has not been the case for 100 years. They still follow the 'factory model' of complete obedience, uniformity, and feeding into 'higher education' with creativity and curiousity is crushed out of students.
30 kids in a class is still insane. You either adopt segregation for neurodivergent kids or leave them behind. The top level kids can be ignored as not-a-problem(giving up the chance to make little einsteins). The mid tier kids dont get the help they need to elevate; and so teachers are burnt out attempting to make failing kids try to pass. Everyone is lost.
education is ridiculous. They spend days teaching pythagorean theroem over and over and nobody uses it. Whereas financial literacy is practically ignored. civic knowledge is biased toward the political party that promises to give teachers raises.
Modern technology is not taught, it's being seen as evil and needs to be ejected into the sun?
Imagine instead where pythagorean theory is taught by a video from the best teacher; and then standardized tested on it. The teachers who waste them time year over year can now spend it working with all the kids, parents have live up to date digital report cards available all the time.
No longer do you accept 51%. It's more about, where in the path the kid is on their journey of education. They might be grade 2 reading, but grade 12 in math. It's not that they are failing english, its that they need help from the teacher to get further.
It's also what happens when you can only hire that many teachers.
> The top level kids can be ignored as not-a-problem(giving up the chance to make little einsteins). The mid tier kids dont get the help they need to elevate; and so teachers are burnt out attempting to make failing kids try to pass. Everyone is lost.
I've been there, teaching programming at a decent university, and it's basically triage. The top students will indeed take care of themselves, and the bottom ones are beyond help. Your job is to encourage the top when you can, but mostly to teach the middle, and help those at risk of falling into the bottom. It's grim, but it's the best you can do.
When I was in high school (few decades ago, and it was pretty average US high school), this was not a very big problem because students got to pick their classes. If someone needs more help with math, there are optional classes like pre-algrebra. On the other hand, if someone wants to do Calculus to 9th grade - more power to them, and the school would accept credit for math classes from local colleges too.