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Comment by matusp | Hacker News Reader

The cracks in the education system were showing even before AI, with unmotivated students and teachers alike just burning their hours. AI just exposed these cracks and showed that the entire system is incredibly inefficient and pointless. I believe that the future of education is in much smaller institutions that can support their communities on a human scale.

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I don't think inefficiency is the right word. In fact, I'd argue the exact opposite: that one of the main problems with education is that every single administrator has been trying to optimize it to death for the wrong metrics, namely "number of students making it through" and "budget".

Smaller institutions are indeed better, but they are also less efficient. It's no wonder that only rich families can afford institutions like that.

I agree with you. Learning is messy, hyper situational, and personalized. "Optimizing" for "efficiency" neglects this and resulted in the cookie cutter "teacher factories" that public education has become. As someone with relatives who were public school teachers- they will tell you that there is no way to scale it back and bring the community aspect in closer... that most communities have too little budget and too many children and it just burns through teachers... Like gun control, this is likely a problem that will continue "without solution" because people are lazy and change is difficult. Im sure future historians will credit some of Americas collapse to this problem, among other "unfixable" societal problems.

As a teacher – excellent description, thank you. Just to add my experience to it – I was in school in seventies and had "40 years since graduating" meeting some years ago with my classmates. Vast majority were doing well and while we talked about old times in school, two things stood out. At first while we were in the same class, our experience was very different. We remembered very different things, different teachers were important to us up to the point where some of them were most loved ones to some, but most hated ones to others etc. But we all agreed that our homes were even more important for our education than school – from our homes (parents and grandparents) came the attitude that education is important and no matter what, it's our responsibility to study.

Thanks. I agree with your last statement. I don't have a college degree but work in a very advanced field- a result of many years of self study and practice. I credit this to my families culture and not something I picked up attending public schools- which I almost flunked out of.

Have been thinking similar... well, that we'll see much smaller educational organizations which are funded/supported in much different ways.

Technology is making humankind lazy. First physically, then mentally.

Learning is hard, it's a struggle. Why learn when you can not learn?

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