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Comment by gcanyon | Hacker News Reader

This honestly seems like a flawed approach. Kids don't show up in the first grade, or the sixth, 9th, or really 12th, as the initiators of their educational journey.

An AI-based education system should have embedded in it "I am here to teach this person Geometry. Here is a list of the topics to cover, with a breakdown of steps for each including an intro section, a study section, a test section, and the meta material to go along with it.

That would work.

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Best comment in this thread. An AI-based education system as you described, would deploy the _technique_ the KA bot is built around, sparingly and at narrow times, to deliver a lesson to great effect.

The poor engagement of the KA bot becomes clear--a teaching technique in not an education system.

I agree. I just can’t understand how people who work in education seem to be incapable of learning anything about education! They couldn’t have predicted that just having the most amazing tutor in the world available all the time just wouldn’t make any difference?? Students don’t go to school because they’re eager to learn. Don’t they know this? I think an effective tutor must be human or at least a human who can use the AI tutor on behalf of the child, which means the parent. Because your job as a tutor is not just spill knowledge, it’s to keep the student engaged ( just awake may be a challenge ) and make sure they are doing what they are supposed to.

Might be harsh, but more I think about education more I think that the main job for many if not most kids or students in general is making them to learn. By various incentives be it punishments or rewards. Only really at highest levels is there any self-direction. And even there is plenty of external factors like not being paid anymore if you do not publish something.

Eh, working on rebuilding a Montessori school for a couple years showed me that kids are very intrinsically motivated to learn, just not always what the person who’s there to teach them wants them to learn that day. But if you enable that self drive, and gently steer by exposing them to new things at the right level, they can learn a tremendous amount.

> how people who work in education seem to be incapable of learning anything about education

The people who work in education don't have this issue; the people who work in tech and assume that gives them expertise in education do.

The educators keep making blunders like in this case. Hundreds of years of teaching and sorry but looks like your field is still trying to figure out the very basics of your discipline.

Educators aren't making these blunders though; again, this is non-educators trying to force tools that educators don't want.

Most teachers I know would be delighted if tech companies and management stopped trying to push tools on them that aren't fit for purpose.

Our kids elementary school (Germany) recently voiced concerns that pupils - especially boys - do not fulfill the self defined learning tasks in the expected time.. There may be no upper boundary to how much out of touch educators can be.

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