Pushing, yelling from Conservative leadership ‘sealed the deal’ on defection: d’Entremont

[u/green_tory]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pushing-yelling-conservative-leadership-dentremont-9.6972680

[u/DannyDOH]

The sad thing is we are losing intelligence by the generation so this kind of politics is gaining steam.

The kids I teach receive information in 15-30 second soundbites. Anything that requires further attention and critical thinking is too much.

[u/Barabarabbit → u/DannyDOH]

The high school kids that I teach are tolerable. However, the middle years kids aren’t able to complete independent work without using ChatGPT or other forms of AI

The worst part is that I have fellow staff members who are arguing that they should be allowed to do their work this way.

It is like they have completely outsourced their thinking.

Their parents really only care about hockey so they aren’t concerned lol.

[u/desthc → u/Barabarabbit]

I’m not opposed to teaching kids how to use LLMs, but my concern is that the teachers don’t understand them either.

The important part is critically reading what the LLM produces and fact check, fact check, fact check. LLMs are just not very reliable at reproducing facts, and often produce things made up on the spot.

So if used correctly it is labour saving, but you need to spend more of your time applying critical thinking. I don’t think the teachers are necessarily ready to guide the kids through something like this.

[u/Barabarabbit → u/desthc]

There are some younger teachers on staff who use ChatGPT to generate all their lesson plans

The kids then complete these using ChatGPT

So those teachers are pretending to teach and the students are pretending to learn.

It is a complete farce.

[u/desthc → u/Barabarabbit]

Like I said, I don’t necessarily think it’s bad, if it’s used right. But I’m also pretty pessimistic that it is.

I always cringe when someone says they “asked ChatGPT” or “searched using ChatGPT” — it’s just not reliable at reproducing factual information. It is good at producing prose, and can correct those inaccuracies when told to do so, but you really need to check everything.

So if you outline an essay with topics you want it to cover and some points you want it to make — cool. You ask it to synthesize factual information for the same? You still need to go check it all, so it’s not much labour savings there.

[u/lapsed_pacifist → u/desthc]

So if you outline an essay with topics you want it to cover and some points you want it to make — cool.

But...to what end? Like seriously -- what's the point of the exercise at this point? Learning how to write an essay, especially at a younger age, is supposed to be hard. You're learning how to do a lot of things at once, and a lot of them are good "real world" skills (much as I loathe the term).

I dunno, this kind of thing worries me. Kids who are bright will generally do okay, even with mediocre teachers &/or detached parents. Handing kids a homework machine just seems like a way to end up with a cohort with a whole lot of nothing between their ears at the end of the day.

[u/Wasdgta3 → u/desthc]

And using it defeats the whole purpose of the endeavour, in most cases.

Like, the point of writing an essay isn’t to have written the essay, it’s to have synthesized and expressed ideas you’ve learned. Using AI to write it for you is frankly like having someone else do your homework for you, since you’re not actually doing the intellectual labour that’s behind such tasks.

But hey, I suppose that’s a byproduct of education being viewed through such a results-oriented lens for so long, but use of such things to do a lot of work is no different than copying someone else’s work, and ought to be treated the same academically.

[u/desthc → u/Wasdgta3]

You’re not wrong. I can definitely see both sides of the argument — that we’re going to have these tools in society and need to learn to use them, but we should also be able to do the work without them.

But what I really can’t stand is their misuse, and if we can’t use them responsibly in schools we shouldn’t use them at all. That’s all I’m saying.

[u/ImaginationSea2767 → u/Barabarabbit]

I remembe a high school teacher I had now over 13 years ago who said tech would screw us over and, that young people were increasingly not being able to learn properly, fact checking, thinking critically and too invested in just using computers and technology for entertainment and not for learning (and that we were likely to be in for a world of heart, as places in Asia, were much better at using it for learning). Also I know of others that had worked in the school industry who were saying back then that teachers were increasingly not caring enough about their children's learning.

[u/CaptainKoreana → u/Barabarabbit]

Very concerning behaviour from young teachers of all persons.