Schools are bad but I will grudgingly allow they may have some value
A friend sent me a podcast episode about AI schooling in Arizona and Texas. He had some interesting thoughts on it, and he asked me mine.
My first reaction is from the gut — schooling? Bad, ick, disgusting.
My second reaction is — I hate anything "now with AI so it's MODERN! THE FUTURE! come on and get with this PROGRAM of PROGRESS, y'all!" On the other hand this sounds like a thin excuse to do (in a sense) less schooling so I'll allow it.
Rationally I'll allow that schooling might possibly have some value. When I'm feeling anxious/dishonestly agreeable I'll say "probably has" instead of "might possibly have." I can think of lots of very rational arguments starting from reasonable principles that say schooling has value. But my heart's not in it.
First I want to cover what I dislike about schooling, and then I'll circle back to the concrete intervention.
Schooling sucks because it teaches (intentionally or not) first a reflexive orientation around authority and orthodoxy and second, normalcy. While admitting schooling might have some value and acknowledging that emotionally I'd rather obliterate the whole system, what I like about AI schooling is that from the sound of it, it means less net schooling.
I.
School teaches two thing best: (a) Reflexive orientation to authority and orthodoxy, and (b) normalcy.
When I say reflexive orientation to, I don't mean obeisance to authority and orthodoxy. Schools generally "work better" (in a certain sense) and would like it if you did that. But in another sense they "work fine" (continue to exist) even if you rebel against authority and orthodoxy. The problem is that schooling teaches you to think first of authority — whether you want to obey it or rebel against it — rather than your own interests, your own sense of what is to be done.
Said another way: Schooling teaches you that you can't trust yourself to know what is important, that you are wrong about what is important, that what is important to you is not important. I think it is self-evident the way in which this sucks, so I'm not going to belabor the point.
(and I know someone of a certain generation is going to say, but people need to learn [something very similar to that], and — eh, that's an argument for a different day.)
The other thing schools teach is normalcy. Visakan Veerasamy has written excellently about the pitfalls of normalcy — here's one example — and his writing informs a lot of how I think about it. To me, normalcy means the fear of sticking out, the worry you will suffer for doing or seeing things differently. To be "normal" means to live by such fears. Unfortunately, when we act "normal," we act within some assumed, fixed social role — some proscribed circle of what others have allowed us to do with minimal judgment or retribution. This minimizes the risk of terrible outcomes while also minimizing the risk of amazing outcomes.
Formal education creates normalcy, but only partly through instruction. One point my friend raised is that the point of K-12 is socialization moreso than education. I'm not sure if that was meant to be a defense of schooling, but incidentally I agree socialization is a big part of K-12 — and in one important way, a bad part. I think socialization is the other half of how you get normalcy: Kids judging each other and their actions, and learning by practice to accept other people's judgments as truth. Bullying, sure, but also passing judgments between friends. What makes it worse is that because we learn not to do them out of fear, we are very poorly calibrated about how bad the worst outcomes of (mainly socially) "risky" actions may be.
Normalcy encodes outdated fears of the world. Some of the fears may have made sense in the distant past — hundreds if not thousands if not tens of thousands of years ago — but they don't make sense anymore. For example, normalcy includes the idea that rejection is a terrible thing and you should avoid it at all costs. It mean avoiding doing anything where you might embarrass yourself. It means weighing social costs higher than social gains. All that means people experience/cause fewer "really bad" outcomes, but also fewer amazingly good outcomes.
Said another way: Schooling creates a more boring world. Gandhis and Obamas and Herzogs happen despite schooling, not because of it.
intermission.
I was home schooled with no social group. I got some of the bad parts of school anyway but less of it than I gather traditional/mass schooling may reinforce. It's hard to orient so hard to authority when your education is premised on your mom rejecting the authority of the school system.
The normalcy I got, I blame on the socialization I did get. Outside the family, that was mostly through the Internet, impersonal and impersonally harsh. But that's a whole other story.
II.
So, schools suck. But accepting that they exist, and that they probably will continue to do so, and that they may possibly have some positive useful function...
(what on earth would that useful function be? learning useful skills? I guess that happens sometimes by accident when kids/teachers are especially motivated or when teachers aren't looking...)
Accepting all that, what do I think of the particular AI-in-schools implementation described in the podcast episode?
It sounds like a way to do justify kids spending less time overall in school. Huge if true.
Effects on learning? Seems fine. The "AI" part doesn't do the teaching, and that's probably for the best given limitations of current systems. We can't guarantee current systems aren't making stuff up. We can't protect current systems robustly from prompt injection, either the student's injection or a third party website's if the system automatically accesses the Internet. It's not teaching — it's just deciding which human-made module to give the kid next based on some information provided to it. I doubt that the "AI" part adds much value but I also doubt it destroys much either. Seems fine inasmuch as the modules are fine — and I think they are, Khan Academy worked great for me when I used it years back.
This approach to schooling might be a problem for ADHD students who currently do well in school, inasmuch as it gives them the option to not be doing the thing right now, and that sucks. That is a substantial number of children, about 11% of the child population according to a May 2024 CDC study. Inasmuch as it's worse for them than traditional school, that's Not Great — although as I understand it the ADHD-in-school experience just sucks all around.
I guess it's pretty great if you prefer Khan Academy to a lecture hall. I can see it. It's got things to recommend it. Khan Academy will (fingers crossed against future AI bullshit) never tell you to sit down and shut up and stop doing that whatever it is that's more interesting than school right now.
Inasmuch as this kind of "AI schooling" reduces kid-to-kid connections? Sucks and/or it's great, depending on the connection. Seems to me that classrooms already optimize against that anyway, though, by their nature. "Sit down, shut up and listen to a lecture." That makes perfect sense if the goal is learning, but it isn't doing much for socializing if that's what you care about.
In principle giving kids more free time should allow for more socialization. In practice probably they'll use it on Internet scrolling and/or social media drama. I'd argue that's because they aren't allowed the independence to Do Things In The World or to hang out in person, either of which would likely give better results.
Though on the other hand, in theory one impact of being in school for a long part of the day is you end up eating lunch at school with your classmates, and well positioned to attend extracurriculars where you might actually get to speak with another human being other than to ask or answer a course material question. So maybe it does reduce socialization. That's probably bad on net.
Overall? It's probably a win for reduced schooling, not obviously terrible for learning, maybe pleasant for some, and plausibly bad for socialization. It's plausible to me that giving kids more independence could offset the socialization issue but how to shift the culture toward more independence for kids is a mystery to me, so I think that limits the upside of "AI for schooling." With current culture: Could be a boring revolution in schooling.