Remote Learning, AI in Education, and the adverse incentives of change
You look online and every once in a while I’ll see a reddit post or an instagram post or something talking about the current state of education. Be it students graduating without being able to read, charter schools teaching weird curriculums, or the ever growing teachers crisis as teachers get squeezed out of a role both momentarily and their passion to educate.
It’s difficult to look at a passion lead career like education and teaching and see it slowly dwindle. Not because teachers no longer want to teach nor because the passion for it is dying but because they cannot afford to be there anymore. Mentally or financially. How do governments fuck up a role that quite literally has one of the most natural motivational pipelines. I mean we could talk about the fact that many communities rely on volunteer firefighters but we will park that topic for another time.
I’ll preface this with the knowledge that anyone who was educated in the pre-covid era knows. I too cut corners. I would forget to do my homework and then (without the existence of AI) need to come up with a reasonable excuse to why I didn’t that doesn’t include the fact the homework is currently crumbled up in the bottom of my backpack which I hadn’t checked since the day before.
I have gone to classmates before the start of class and asked for the answers for the homework before. My classmates and I have collaborated on things that were meant to be personal. I have taken learning opportunities and ignored them, purely to copy the answer down instead.
I have used chegg. I have used wikipedia as a source of knowledge without proper citation. We all have at least once in our lives done one of these things. So believe me, I get it entirely. But believe me when I say that I regret these things now. These moments to build better habits, to learn more but also learn how to learn more. They are opportunities for life lessons I ended up stealing from myself. And therefore, I look at the current situation with abject horror.
Remote learning
I guess remote learning has been a thing for a while now. I mean taking homework or book reports or essays, they are all forms of remote learning. But in the context we are talking here, I guess it’s remote educating. So where your teacher is not psychically in the same space as you.
The TV show abbot elementary did a quite good episode tackling the concept. I mean it came out post covid, so if you are like me and you hate the COVID episodes of TV shows, you are in luck.
Now I actually did experience some remote learning. The last year of my university degree, the moment everyone looks forward to (graduation) was remote. It was a difficult time, I mean the pandemic was going on. Early stage too, so nobody really knew what was going to happen. But I can assuredly state it was not the same as being in person learning. Physically writing things down or seeing your classmates or being in a shared space with your teacher can not be replaced by remote learning. That was clear to me from the beginning.
And people had variations of the same experience. I know plenty of people who saw remote learning as no school. I saw people who were stuck at home constantly because now they were just sitting in class and at their desk all day (I guess good covid precautions but still).
I do think like remote work, remote learning has likely normalised a fair bit. There has been good innovation in the space in terms of better classroom software, interactive ways to vote and engage. But none of that removes the disconnect.
The ability to google while in class. Or distracted by something else. Or purely attending with your camera off while in bed. All these things impact the way you absorb information and stay engaged when trying to learn.
And the problem is that testing got easier to cheat on. Yes we have these lockdown browsers and we have school computers, but if you think that the grade average points going up while in remote learning is because “the students are happier being at home” I got a bridge to sell you. And a stand up table actually, if you are in London looking for a sit stand desk, I have one for sale. Hmu.
I know this has lessened drastically since the pandemic being over. And I know that there are cases and individuals who suffer from anxiety or disabilities who can massively gain from this. But for the average Joe, I do not think that remote education is fruitful for the gaining and application of knowledge.
AI in Education
Holy shit, had you given me AI prior to my frontal cortex being properly formed, I think I would’ve delayed its development by years with AI by my side. And I don’t even mean literally, like I get AI psychosis or something silly but through its application.
Using it for research, using it for writing. If I was in middle school or high school, I completely understand why the fuck they feel so tempted to use the AI. But it quite literally is a monkeys paw wish. I wish for this essay to be completed for me, but the drawback is your brain literally shrinks.
There is an episode of Abbot Elementary talking about AI. It’s a bit lighthearted to be honest. Not as good as the prior. And once, I randomly put on the Cable TV In a hotel. And I saw one of the new Simpsons episodes. Holy shit why am I seeing brand names and iPhones and what the fuck is going on in that show.
Anywho, there are such long term consequences of this that I can’t even name them all. But the lack of critical thinking skills, the inability to work on your own, the constant need to use it. It becomes a crutch for your own mental. The thing is, that for educated people, AI doesn’t seem that smart. I mean it makes mistakes. Subject matter experts scoff at the output sometimes because it lacks context or knowledge or expertise in a subject. But for children and teenagers? The AI might be the smartest thing in the world.
Im not even going to talk about AI slop, AI girlfriends, using AI as a therapist or as a bully tactic against others. And only briefly will I use mention the last thing: AI to undermine your teacher.
I love teachers. But we have all had a bad teacher before. Some story of a diehard teacher being wrong about something but somehow you come out in the bad after correction. It must have been annoying enough to have students correct you, even more annoying to have students google something you just said but oh my god, if a student uses an AI answer to correct a teacher, I think I would lose my shit.
Trends in Academia
To add onto the fuckery that is the two factors above, Id like to talk about the whole concept of participation trophies and no child gets left behind. And before you start, two disclaimers: I am not here talking smack about participation trophies in sports but I mean it in a more metaphorical sense. Secondly, I know NCLB is an American thing. I also know they already replaced it with another version of it. But I want to state that it is a mindset that has been in education for a while. Perhaps not the highest levels of universities but in high school and middle school? Yes. You could pass classes with minimal effort and max charisma stats.
I don’t have much to say. I think both of those two points speak for themselves a bit, but there is a culture of allowing kids to pass and continue when they are infact not ready to do so. And I’ll tackle the problem/source of this a bit lower in this blog post, but you have kids like Rakai (I hate that I know him), a popular twitch streamer (?), who recently graduated from his high school despite not doing any school for the last two years of his education. A quite literally a case of “not my problem” and moving him on.
And the problem is that he will be a voter. He will be a participant in our society. And with a stamp from society to say “he knows the bare minimum”. Does he? Does any kid who ends up “gaining” from being passed without proper knowledge? Time will tell.
The fuckening of our future
Now I want to highlight that this is currently ongoing. All of these three factors are currently in place in some way shape or form. And it does not matter which education system you are in, where around the world you are, or how strict you are. And its ESPECIALLY DOES NOT FUCKING MATTER IF YOU ARE HOMESCHOOLING. HOMESCHOOLING IS NOT THE ANSWER TO BAD EDUCATION SYSTEMS, POLITICAL WILL AND ACTION IS.
So maybe check if your 10 year old uses AI. For literally anything, it’s a slippery slope in critical thinking.
But this problem has scales to it. Like I said, to some degree, in some way shape or form, do the things above this actually impact your Childs education. But there is a specific cohort of individuals I’d like to highlight. Which is the current group of individuals entering the workforce for the first time.
I want to highlight this with this is not based on a specific person I know. I have met these types of individuals many times in the last year and it spans geographies.
This individual started their middle school as the internet was becoming more normalised. Youtube and early stage brain rot was a part of their life. They enter high school where doomscrolling and being obsessed with internet influencers has become mainstream. They start saying things you don’t understand and don’t care to understand. As their high school continues, they experience the pandemic. Remote learning AND the pandemic? Little education is being done with that combo in mind. Students are passed, students are cheating and students are getting by without the necessary work being done. As they graduate and move into their bachelors degree, they slowly transition out of remote learning and directly into the age of AI. They are hip, they keep up with the internet and the happenings of technology and they knew about AI far before you did. Far before their teachers did. And they coasted through their degrees with a combination of remote learning and AI.
And now? Now they are entering the workforce. There was a small period of time, prior to the normalisation of gamified technology (K.I.S.S: keep it simple stupid), where the youth could come out and use their technological familiarity to have an upper hand in the market. I mean goddamn it, I did excel courses in High school, my first job I was a wizard with the shortcut functions.
But now? Those kids who used AI don’t know how it works. They don’t know how their computers or iPhones work. They can’t do much critical thinking without getting bored and requiring a kick of dopamine through the form of short form content. And Im really not coming at this with a “kids these days don’t know how to work” approach. Im not coming here and saying they are lazy, In reality, Im here saying they have been failed.
The problem
Society failed this generation. I really do not know how the government has moved so slow to create protections. And when they do, they decide to use them as blanket policies to implement bad policy like constant surveillance. Because “think of the children” won’t ya?
And I will place some blame with the parents. Not all, but there definitely some parents out there who are allowing AI or technology raise their kids. But what I am saying is that it is detrimental regardless of the total extent of the problem.
The thing is, we are in a very difficult situation here. And the problem reminds me a little bit of the problem with nepotism. Is getting your kid a job at your company or using your connections to help secure a job elsewhere nepotism? Some would argue that you are a purely a connection of theirs (lol imaging defining your relationship to your family in LinkedIn speak). Would your child approaching a family friend of yours himself a connection or is that also nepotism? Is there a scale of nepotism? Is securing the job different from helping them get past the first round or just making the connection? Who knows, not the point today.
But there is a follower effect. Let’s say you are a dignified person who stands by their morals and acts on them on a day to day basis. You never litter (littering should be capital punishment but alas we move on), you drive an electric car and you only buy organically. But your kid has just graduated and the job market is tough. Their friends are all getting jobs via Nepotism and you start to doubt whether holding on to your morals is worth putting your child on the backfoot. You hesitate and go back and forth on this until in the end, you call your best mate at another firm, he hooks up an interview and you kid got the job. You tell yourself that all he got was an interview, he still earned it by being the best at the interview. Life moves on.
There is a similar problem with managing your kids education. If your kids teacher told you to hold your kid back a year or several because he can’t read at the age of 18, would you do it? Sounds like he needs atleast 2-3 years just to be someone who would barely pass. Do you want your kid graduating high school at 21? What would your friends say? What would he think? He will lose all his friends, his face, his momentum. And anyway, it’s not his fault he can’t read, it’s all his previous teachers faults for letting him move on back then! Why didn’t his 5th grade teacher hold him back?
You say no, we will not hold him back. He graduates. He somehow gets into university. He fails out months later and is now at home thinking his next steps. Mhm.
And the same problem is with AI? Are you going to ban your child from using AI? If all his class mates are cheating or using it, and they are getting 95% grade averages and your child is getting 60%, will future admissions offices understand his personal essay where he says “I didn’t use AI so we need to scale my grade up”? Im not sure thats going to be believed.
So you let him use AI, he gets good grades. He graduates, and gets into his favourite university. The university is more stringent and uses other testing methods than high school. He fails out. He lacks a passion because AI filled the exploration of passion. Mhm.
Your kid hates going to school. He seems like a bright kid, but the environment just isn’t for him. You enrolled him online school and he stays home everyday. Graduates with fantastic grades. Has a little trouble getting into university as not everyone accepts online education. A misjustice you say to yourself. He gets into university, fails to adapt to in person learning or socialising. Drops out. Mhm.
Now these are all very real scenarios. And like I said, there is a time and a place for everything. But we are about to experience a generation of new workers who are unable to do the work for themselves. And yes, AI is becoming more prominent in the workplace, but where is that going to take them really? As the first on the chopping block when the AI overlords start replacing humans? We are not preparing these children for success with the means that we currently have.
I don’t have a solution. I am not your education board, I am not your governor, your mayor, your PM, your president or your local political leader. I am not even a teacher talking about this. But I want to question these things because I feel like it’s a bit of an under spoken concept in this new normal we live in. New normal post covid, new normal post AI, new normal changing its goal posts on the daily. Its insidious. Because even if your local leader enacts change, all it does it put your communities kids behind compared to the rest of the world / nation. And if a single political leader was the final reason your child failed out of school? You wouldn’t vote for them.
Im purely here to start a conversation. A conversation looking at the literal impacts of AI in education and not the marketing material. I mean fucking hell, look at what you find on google when you search the title of this blog. These are all AI generated infographics stating purely the benefits of AI in education. Like come the fuck on.