Relentless advancement to produce new gen of blob-no-thoughts seppos

I asked Wendy if I could read the paper she turned in, and when I opened the document, I was surprised to see the topic: critical pedagogy, the philosophy of education pioneered by Paulo Freire. The philosophy examines the influence of social and political forces on learning and classroom dynamics. Her opening line: “To what extent is schooling hindering students’ cognitive ability to think critically?” Later, I asked Wendy if she recognized the irony in using AI to write not just a paper on critical pedagogy but one that argues learning is what “makes us truly human.” She wasn’t sure what to make of the question. “I use AI a lot. Like, every day,” she said. “And I do believe it could take away that critical-thinking part. But it’s just — now that we rely on it, we can’t really imagine living without it.”

  • Carl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    I have a hypothesis that college can solve this problem by “inversing” lectures and homework.

    edit: sounds like a lot of places do this already so that’s cool.

    Have your students watch lectures and do reading on their own time. Hell, they can ask ChatGPT to summarize it for them if “it’s just a tool” and they want to use it! But everything that gets a grade should be done in class. You will write the essay by hand, you will do the math with no more powerful a calculator than a TI-83, you will give a presentation to show that you understand the material. Book is open, accommodations for special needs are available, and the teacher is here to help and give guidance and clarification, but internet connections are banned.

    Buuuuut American colleges would never do this because ensuring that your graduates actually learn things was never the point.

    • Losurdo_Enjoyer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      You will write the essay by hand

      i would have failed out of highschool/college if i was forced to write everything by hand, i think i have some mild form of disgraphia or something like that but it takes me at least 10x as long to write something by hand as it does to type for me, not even just with how fast i can type compared to how i write but it’s a fucking nightmare trying to collect my thoughts when im handwriting a paper. also if im making my handwriting actually legible for other people it takes even longer.

    • Sasuke [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      everything that gets a grade should be done in class

      I’m a language teacher at a European high school, and this is what we’ve been doing for almost three years now. All graded writing happens at school with limited internet access, and (almost) all verbal assessments are conversation based with no aids. Most subjects have also moved away from homework entirely.

      It takes up a lot of time that could be spent teaching, but I actually think it’s more fair to the students than what we did before.

    • NoGodsNoMasters [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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      I think i generally agree with this, although this seems like it basically removes the need to actually look for sources yourself, which feels like it’s an important thing to learn to do. That said i don’t think i have a better idea so

      • Carl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        Ideally I think researching and critically evaluating your sources should be taught and reinforced well before college, but from what I’ve heard from my friends who went to high school in the States (I’m American but I lucked out in this regard) attending an American High School is like being one of the feral children in Logan’s Run.

    • Lamprey [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      That was my immediate thought as well but that’s assuming colleges even actually care lol

      Its been the joke that college is just a way to purchase a degree. Now it’s literally that. The kids still gotta pay for it, which means for capital there’s been zero change

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      My art degree (and AFAIK anywhere else you go) did this. You produce all of your work in class with extra time spent at home to finish (usually 2 hours per hour spent in class). Classes were 3~4 hours each session. It makes it impossible to commission someone else unless you have them also go to your classes for you.

      Also made it rough scheduling multiple studio classes each term. Usually 2 studio classes and 1 or 2 lectures. Every once in a while I’d put 3 studios all on the same days, which meant 12 hour “workdays,” a day between to do any homework, but I got 4-day weekends each week with no homework. The real killer was finals where it was like 60 hours worth of projects between 3 classes in a single week, which is the main reason I didn’t do this very often.

      Surprised more degree programs don’t use this model. I think some of the performing arts do similar class setups along with medical degrees, but I that’s it.

      • Carl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 day ago

        Same. All my classes where I got As were classes like this, or classes where they gave us all the homework at the top and I was able to essentially ignore the lecture and do the work at my own pace during class.

    • CarlMarks@lemmygrad.ml
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      Treating homework and quizzes as participation credit and only grading tests is fairly common in US universities. Probably a minority, but still common.

    • T34_69 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      My university does “flipped” lectures/homework for a lot of the engineering courses and yeah it’s pretty dope a lot of the time, it’s an efficient way to do things… but it also means some students just don’t show up, and the professors tend not to like that (for a synchronous course).

      • Simon 𐕣he 🪨 Johnson@lemmy.ml
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        but it also means some students just don’t show up, and the professors tend not to like that

        TBH I hated when attendance was graded in college because I just did the course work instead of going to class most of the time. Engineering schools tend to have the worst teachers.

        • T34_69 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          Yeah same, they tend to justify it as “professional development” but the thing is… the lesson is redundant because most of us have had jobs already lol

          • Simon 𐕣he 🪨 Johnson@lemmy.ml
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            Yeah it was crazy to get labor disciplined by people who’s only real time tables (they mostly make their own schedule, some day by day) were having to talk to a room of 20 year olds for an hour. Y’all don’t even go to work every day M-F.

    • Cimbazarov [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      I had a professor that tried this and didn’t work out. To be fair though, one of the issues I had was that it was the only class structured like this so it made it a pain when taking 5 other courses alongside this inverted course

    • Simon 𐕣he 🪨 Johnson@lemmy.ml
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      Buuuuut American colleges would never do this because ensuring that your graduates actually learn things was never the point.

      It starts earlier. What you described is not possible because the system in both collegiate levels and in K-12 has been shrinking educator labor rather than expanding it.

    • Formerlyfarman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      I probably can’t write my name without a keyboard, not enough dexterity in the paws, but I agree with the calculators, in fact I’d say no calculators at all, if your test requires logarithms a log table should be provided.

      • Carl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        a log table should be provided.

        I did flight school with a slide rule twentyish years ago, so I would be at home with this.