And what do you have to say about those in the Deep AI clutches who claim that all writers will or should be using AI editors by the end of the year? That publishers will be requiring it? That AI is being usefully used to catch fraud and plagiarism? That's surely a cheer for teachers. Why teach reading or writing at all if AI is the only future?
Oh boy. It’s a rainy day here in Southern Oregon so I happily indulged reading all four parts of your essay series on AI and learning. I now have a massive hyperlinked garden and I intend to learn more from it myself. But also a huge headache because I really had no idea how bad it was in the public schools. This explains much in my current parochial school (where I am only a volunteer tutor) and how they had Common Core infestation.
Your essays helped greatly because I have been able to ignore most AI debates until recently. Now I am fortified for battle.
" .. reading is the keystone of abiding understanding, clear thinking, and effective problem-solving"
Exactly. The architects of our civilization want a much smaller (numerically), compliant, controllable and dependent population. This is why they are building systems that ensure each generation is less capable than the previous.
Developing illiterate people is not a bug. Its a feature. Until enough people with influence broaden their minds and start thinking the unthinkable, they will continue getting what they want.
As a mother of 3 kids, 10 years apart, I can confirm you are correct. The iPhone was the end of any serious learning in jr. high, high school, and college. And teachers who just don't care about cheating, are the norm.
I teach in a public high school. In our school every teacher is required to spend the first 15 minutes of class on a reading and writing assignment — regardless of the subject they teach. That’s because there’s not enough time in English classes to give all the students meaningful feedback and follow up instruction. This is compounded by other factors such as the widely varying degrees of proficiency the students start with, do they work full time out of school (many do), etc.
As an English teacher, I appreciate your sacrifice, but I also think it's not a great policy. I'd much rather that your students do reading, but it should be meaningful and tied to what they're learning and ideally, help them become better at the skills you're teaching them in class.
I would probably use the Feynman test occasionally in a class like yours though.
No proof of this and I’ve never seen it talked about, but I think the phone has created a physical hurdle to reading books. A line of text on my phone is about 2”, in a paperback it’s about 4”, in a college textbook it’s 6” for a single-column book. After a while on my phone, I find it harder to follow a 6” line of text due to the muscle memory of my eyes wanting to “return” to the next line faster than they should. Also because we scroll lines up into our field of view, my eyes stay on level and just go back and forth versus stream all the way across a page, then accurately return to the left side of the page again, move down a single line, and continue reading. I can’t help but think developing eye muscle memory based on a phone trains the body against the physical requirements of reading a book, making it harder, inducing treatments for XYZ disorder but never addressing the real issue. And this on top of the other issues listed.
Oh, I"m sure there's proof of it. Anything you do enough times is going to create new neural pathways in your brain, i.e., habits of mind. I ama starting to realize myself just how immportant the habit of reading is and it must be inculcated, to the RIGID EXCLUSION of screens -- from a young age.
"We immediately run into trouble because teachers aren’t content experts, as I detailed in my last post."
This is a high-education example, but one survey art history professor assigned an essay on one of two paintings, of which he knew all the lit. Even an expert can be missing specific content knowledge. It would be boring as hell and it would require such flexibility in the curriculum, but let teachers assign a subject that all students have to write if the objectives are reading comprehension and descriptive writing. I am assuming that teachers are already skilled at detecting papers plagiarized from other students.
After listening to Sold a Story I’m wondering if the same thing is happening in math. I’m on a board of a Christian school and we had a hard time finding a math curriculum. The one we chose is one most people complain about but it is still the most popular. It emphasizes critical thinking and finding creative ways to solve problems but for the elementary students sorely neglects rote memorization of math facts. When kids take their math home and their parents can’t figure it out it makes me wonder.🤔
Curriculum is a big responsibility. I don't know enough about math to speak intelligently about the proper steps for teaching it, but have you ever looked at Ray's Mathematics? It's a very old program (it was in schools with the McGuffey Readers) but it's sequential. You'd need somebody tough to pull it off, but it's super logical and it's free on-line. Here's my post on it, https://educatedandfree.substack.com/p/how-to-teach-your-child-math, but you can find this on this guy's WordPress here: https://raysarithmetic.wordpress.com/rays-free-arithmetic/
If you can get them started early, Ray will kick their little butts but they'll be FIERCE lovers of math once they see they have the chops for it. ;)
I teach in CA as well. My school has a 68% chronic absenteeism rate, yet our admin pressures us to give no more than 20% of our students a failing grade, D or F. Any teacher who gives out more than 20% fails (which is all of us) has to meet with admin and do a write up about how they’ll “do better”. In effect, by twisting teachers’ arms, the school has codified students’ ability to pass a class with minimal effort and zero learning.
Infuriating. I know admin doesn't care, but can they not see the second order effects of incentivizing teachers to be totally unethical? So disheartening.
Thank you. Please tell people far and wide that they're NOT crazy, that the schools ARE not doing anything well anymore, and send them to my substack if they think you're talking out of school. I just want people to understand the cost benefit analysis for most kids just isn't working anymore.
And what do you have to say about those in the Deep AI clutches who claim that all writers will or should be using AI editors by the end of the year? That publishers will be requiring it? That AI is being usefully used to catch fraud and plagiarism? That's surely a cheer for teachers. Why teach reading or writing at all if AI is the only future?
https://substack.com/@fitzyhistory/note/c-100141473
I didn't directly respond, so here's what I think.
They're lyinng liars who lie and they don't care that it costs our kids because they can't see how much it's costing them.
Oh boy. It’s a rainy day here in Southern Oregon so I happily indulged reading all four parts of your essay series on AI and learning. I now have a massive hyperlinked garden and I intend to learn more from it myself. But also a huge headache because I really had no idea how bad it was in the public schools. This explains much in my current parochial school (where I am only a volunteer tutor) and how they had Common Core infestation.
Your essays helped greatly because I have been able to ignore most AI debates until recently. Now I am fortified for battle.
It’s all I can do, but I’m glad there are courageous people like you out there who will fight for kids.
I wrote a 4-essay series on Ai and learning and in schools. You might like it. Here’s part I. https://open.substack.com/pub/educatedandfree/p/artificially-intelligent-part-i?r=b8lae&utm_medium=ios
Fuck you John Dewey 🖕🏻
HEAR, HEAR!
Just today…
https://nypost.com/2024/10/04/lifestyle/elite-colleges-shocked-to-discover-students-dont-know-how-to-read-books-my-jaw-dropped/
I've been all over this on Twitter. :P
Me too, unfortunately...
https://x.com/EnglishChamp1/status/1842408488850321853
" .. reading is the keystone of abiding understanding, clear thinking, and effective problem-solving"
Exactly. The architects of our civilization want a much smaller (numerically), compliant, controllable and dependent population. This is why they are building systems that ensure each generation is less capable than the previous.
Developing illiterate people is not a bug. Its a feature. Until enough people with influence broaden their minds and start thinking the unthinkable, they will continue getting what they want.
I fear you're right.
As a mother of 3 kids, 10 years apart, I can confirm you are correct. The iPhone was the end of any serious learning in jr. high, high school, and college. And teachers who just don't care about cheating, are the norm.
It's so frustrating being on the teaching side of all of this, but to be a parent who feels trapped by it... I can't imagine.
I teach in a public high school. In our school every teacher is required to spend the first 15 minutes of class on a reading and writing assignment — regardless of the subject they teach. That’s because there’s not enough time in English classes to give all the students meaningful feedback and follow up instruction. This is compounded by other factors such as the widely varying degrees of proficiency the students start with, do they work full time out of school (many do), etc.
Teaching has never been harder than it is now.
As an English teacher, I appreciate your sacrifice, but I also think it's not a great policy. I'd much rather that your students do reading, but it should be meaningful and tied to what they're learning and ideally, help them become better at the skills you're teaching them in class.
I would probably use the Feynman test occasionally in a class like yours though.
No proof of this and I’ve never seen it talked about, but I think the phone has created a physical hurdle to reading books. A line of text on my phone is about 2”, in a paperback it’s about 4”, in a college textbook it’s 6” for a single-column book. After a while on my phone, I find it harder to follow a 6” line of text due to the muscle memory of my eyes wanting to “return” to the next line faster than they should. Also because we scroll lines up into our field of view, my eyes stay on level and just go back and forth versus stream all the way across a page, then accurately return to the left side of the page again, move down a single line, and continue reading. I can’t help but think developing eye muscle memory based on a phone trains the body against the physical requirements of reading a book, making it harder, inducing treatments for XYZ disorder but never addressing the real issue. And this on top of the other issues listed.
Oh, I"m sure there's proof of it. Anything you do enough times is going to create new neural pathways in your brain, i.e., habits of mind. I ama starting to realize myself just how immportant the habit of reading is and it must be inculcated, to the RIGID EXCLUSION of screens -- from a young age.
"We immediately run into trouble because teachers aren’t content experts, as I detailed in my last post."
This is a high-education example, but one survey art history professor assigned an essay on one of two paintings, of which he knew all the lit. Even an expert can be missing specific content knowledge. It would be boring as hell and it would require such flexibility in the curriculum, but let teachers assign a subject that all students have to write if the objectives are reading comprehension and descriptive writing. I am assuming that teachers are already skilled at detecting papers plagiarized from other students.
After listening to Sold a Story I’m wondering if the same thing is happening in math. I’m on a board of a Christian school and we had a hard time finding a math curriculum. The one we chose is one most people complain about but it is still the most popular. It emphasizes critical thinking and finding creative ways to solve problems but for the elementary students sorely neglects rote memorization of math facts. When kids take their math home and their parents can’t figure it out it makes me wonder.🤔
Curriculum is a big responsibility. I don't know enough about math to speak intelligently about the proper steps for teaching it, but have you ever looked at Ray's Mathematics? It's a very old program (it was in schools with the McGuffey Readers) but it's sequential. You'd need somebody tough to pull it off, but it's super logical and it's free on-line. Here's my post on it, https://educatedandfree.substack.com/p/how-to-teach-your-child-math, but you can find this on this guy's WordPress here: https://raysarithmetic.wordpress.com/rays-free-arithmetic/
If you can get them started early, Ray will kick their little butts but they'll be FIERCE lovers of math once they see they have the chops for it. ;)
I teach in CA as well. My school has a 68% chronic absenteeism rate, yet our admin pressures us to give no more than 20% of our students a failing grade, D or F. Any teacher who gives out more than 20% fails (which is all of us) has to meet with admin and do a write up about how they’ll “do better”. In effect, by twisting teachers’ arms, the school has codified students’ ability to pass a class with minimal effort and zero learning.
Infuriating. I know admin doesn't care, but can they not see the second order effects of incentivizing teachers to be totally unethical? So disheartening.
I feel your pain.
Thank you. Please tell people far and wide that they're NOT crazy, that the schools ARE not doing anything well anymore, and send them to my substack if they think you're talking out of school. I just want people to understand the cost benefit analysis for most kids just isn't working anymore.