Comment by briandw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by briandw | Hacker News Reader

I home schooled my kids during the pandemic. It was amazing how quickly we got through the material for the year. We did all of 5th grade math in 3 months of 40 minutes a day. It not just my experience, 1 on 1 tutoring has been shown to be dramatically more effective than classroom instruction.

This article sounds like the usual ideological objections, lots of vague claims that amount to “I don’t like it”.

There is nothing more threatening to a failing institution than a solution that delivers results.

The US education sector is quick to embrace any new fad that sounds good but doesn’t work, building thinking classrooms is the latest. Productive struggle is another.

Yes learning takes time, but it doesn't have to be painfully slow and unproductive.

The education system in US is a disaster and getting worse. The response from schools like the San Francisco school district has been to lower standards and remove higher level material.

I see tremendous potential in Ai tutoring. I use chatgpt to help me learn new material daily. Why should school be any different?

Well of course 1-1 teaching is more productive. That's like saying having a personal mechanic is better than taking your car to the local chain on a Saturday. Yeah, duh.

However, what remains to be seen is if 1-1 with an LLM reaches that productivity.

Humans, and especially kids, are weird. They're picky, they're self-sabotaging, and they're short-sighted.

From what I've seen from kids, they will absolutely destroy their own education in the name of fucking around. Presumably, you didn't let that happen. Will an LLM? We're already reaching the breaking point with teachers - a lot of parents just say "I don't care" when confronted with the fact their kid is illiterate.

One of the purposes of school is to keep students off the streets and out of trouble.

Public schools are also a de facto childcare, welfare, and healthcare delivery system. Education is only one facet of the modern public school system in today's society.

But it doesn’t have to be the only purpose.

Why should kids like Brian's be forced together with those that need to be kept out of trouble?

Because it's important to spend time with people that aren't like you. Otherwise people tend to assume that everyone is like them, or that people that aren't like them are simply not trying hard enough to be like them.

Well, really the purpose is to inculcate the next generation with the common culture, history, rules and norms, as well as the practical knowledge they will need to become self-supporting functioning adults in society.

Every human civilization and tribal community does this.

It's why we in the USA spend so much time in the early grades not just on arithmetic and ABCs, but on stuff like the Pilgrims, the first Thanksgiving, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, etc. It's not really anything anyone needs to know for day to day life in 2025, but it's a set of common stories that we all can relate to, draw analogies to, and yes rally around if called to do so. I'm not sure really how much this is true today, I'm reflecting on my experience in the 1970s.

I don't think there's any conflict here.

The article is saying something is lost when the algorithm becomes the teacher, as when the AI is the instructor.

1-on-1 teaching (with the parent as teacher) is not that; whatever problems it has, it's never a problem of a too-powerful algorithm.

>> There is nothing more threatening to a failing institution than a solution that delivers results

Well said. Did you just make that up?

I wasn't explicitly quoting anything, but I'm sure I've read something similar somewhere.

If you use the AI right for tutoring, then sure. A really great tutor will not tell you the answer.

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