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Comment by The28thDuck | Hacker News Reader

I’ve always thought about what student examinations mean post-AI accessibility. We’ve faced a similar problem once students had open access to the internet, but even then there was some work in figuring out what sites are reputable, search queries, etc. Now that burden has been shortened to figuring out what AI tool and what prompt to use for classic exams like essays or tests. Add in the challenge of remote learning and now you have an environment out of your control, not to mention smartphone access prevalently available.

It’s difficult to be an effective teacher, and that’s without even considering the social and economic pressures they face.

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It's a shame as well because this stuff -is- important. One could make the argument that this represents a shift in traditional education, and schools will have to stop relying so much on rote memorization, but the reason you need to learn this stuff is so that it's there with you, guiding you through everything you do in your life. Not just "oh I'll look it up", but actually knowing it and carrying it with you in your "context".

The standard education system is incredible for raising the baseline level of knowledge of everyone in a society. I can talk about concepts like "atoms" or "bacteria" or "black holes" with anyone, and they'll know what they are - even if their knowledge of those subjects isn't in depth. Things that 100 years ago would've been cutting edge research, are base education today that virtually the entire population has studied.

That comes from schooling, and it's so important to commit to memory. Without that background knowledge, your understanding of everything around you will be limited in ways you won't even be aware of.

> I can talk about concepts like "atoms" or "bacteria" or "black holes" with anyone, and they'll know what they are - even if their knowledge of those subjects isn't in depth.

I'm not convinced this is an unalloyed good. Knowing that a disease is caused by "bacteria" instead of "demons" isn't really helpful if you don't have a deep understanding of exactly what bacteria is. See, for example, all of the people who want antibiotics whenever they're sick for any reason. We've just replaced one set of weird beliefs in the general populace with another and given it a veneer of science.

But more people know what bacteria are at a baseline level and what they do with diseases than before when all we had were demons/bad humors/etc.

There are functionally illiterate people too in modern day and the average reading level is still elementary school level, but that's vastly better than before when the average person couldn't read at all.

> Knowing that a disease is caused by "bacteria" instead of "demons" isn't really helpful if you don't have a deep understanding of exactly what bacteria is.

This is a poor example. Even an incomplete image of the germ theory of disease is a massive improvement over thinking illness is caused by demons. An extremely superficial understanding of bacteria as "microscopic organisms which can make you sick" gives good justification why people should do things like wash their hands, cover their mouth when coughing, and not lick the railing on a subway.

Knowing the difference between bacteria being living organisms and viruses being not-quite-alive does not qualify as a "deep understanding" though.

Further, the presence of people misunderstanding something that most of the population knows pretty well in no way makes teaching that subject to the population bad. Your assertion would require that believing demons cause sickness actually has benefits we've lost.

The memorization vs reasoning limit may soon be passed with some of these AIs. Really need to do the full controlled testing environment set up to have any chance of avoiding it. No calculators and no home work would be the next step. Maybe we will have a generation of mentats?

> Add in the challenge of remote learning

Why? Are K-12 keeping on with remote classes now in the USA?

> not to mention smartphone access prevalently available

Also why? Has there been a change in policy about bag and equipment checks?

>Are K-12 keeping on with remote classes now in the USA?

After COVID many school districts in the US that weren't offering online only school are now. Suddenly they had the capacity to do it as it was forced on them with COVID, so maintain it for students who want it is as easy as anything else.

I would argue that unlike "remote work," where the COVID shift made it clear "hey most of us can just work from home" - the K12 "hack fix" most schools implemented was barely sufficient to get through the year or so that students were forced to stay home. I suspect that most standard public schools would do better to drop this offering altogether and leave it to 3rd party online schools, if such a thing exists and can get enough traction to stay alive.

I think there's a big difference between the ad hoc COVID online schooling and actual "doing this with planning and intent" schooling that I've seen.

I'd agree, but also note that plenty of remote jobs were and still are ad hoc. The difference is adults have more agency to improve their own situation even if their work doesn't make any concessions to the nature of fully remote work; children have very little agency over their schooling.

Public schools are also really limited by the tech they buy, price sensitive, regular staff aren't up to date on tech, and they don't pay their IT teams much.

It makes it hard for them to adjust fast.

The purpose built school from home programs are often far better run / budgeted IT wise. I was at my son's high school and the school from home kids were there for an in person day borrowing the lab for some in person time / activities and etc.

I think most students didn't do well with it, but there are some students that thrived.

If there's enough of such students in a district's boundaries, I think it makes sense to accomidate them within the district, rather than push them out. It will allow easier movement to/from a classroom setting, and feels more likely to provide continuity than a 3rd party offering. Then again, school districts cut things all the time.

Calculators and exams are still used after K-12, ~1/20 K-12 students are still taught remotely online in the US in 2023 (it'd be curious to see if that grows or shrinks with time), not all K-12 have instituted bag and equipment checks, the ones that have haven't all done it to the same level, and it may or may not be enough to cover enough of the cases to mitigate impact enough.

I feel like 1:1 teacher and student discussions are required to be sure someone isn't cheating. With the benefit that each exam would be more enlightening than existing test setups.

They both sit together, they chat, answer questions and so on and the teacher gets a feel for "does this student have sufficient knowledge".

Frankly I think it would give teachers way better feel for such things than traditional testing does.

Granted, it would be time intensive, but I also suspect improved.

I like this idea, however I worry that it would be difficult to do it while being consistent (and unbiased). If the same questions are asked of each student then later students might be unfairly prepped. If different questions are asked then it becomes very difficult to normalize scores across the class. The bias risk is self-explanatory and may be unconscious.

If you could solve this problem well, you could also probably fix the issues with most interview processes.

What if teachers have clear favor/disfavour of students?

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