I teach 18 year olds who range in reading levels from preschool to college, but the majority of them are in the lower half that range. I am devastated by what AI and social media have done to them. My kids don’t think anymore. They don’t have interests. Literally, when I ask them what they’re interested in, so many of them can’t name anything for me. Even my smartest kids insist that ChatGPT is good “when used correctly.” I ask them, “How does one use it correctly then?” They can’t answer the question. They don’t have original thoughts. They just parrot back what they’ve heard in TikToks. They try to show me “information” ChatGPT gave them. I ask them, “How do you know this is true?” They move their phone closer to me for emphasis, exclaiming, “Look, it says it right here!” They cannot understand what I am asking them. It breaks my heart for them and honestly it makes it hard to continue teaching. If I were to quit, it would be because of how technology has stunted kids and how hard it’s become to reach them because of that.
How much of the issue is the system vs the students?
When I was in school, I remember dealing with hours of homework on top of extracurriculars and eventually working a job.
My choices were do homework or sleep. Either way I lost. So I definitely used chegg so I could get sleep and not fail.
I think our expectations for kids are just… not realistic? And I think that fuels a lot of the resentment for school.
Homework definitely is an issue, and a big one. I don’t find it useful at all, and sometimes it can actually be detrimental, because until it’s checked it can reinforce errors and make them more difficult to correct later… I’m not a teacher, but from a layperson’s perspective I would be totally fine with zero homework. People need some downtime to relax, and kids are people too (or so I’m told), so they should have time to rest, play games or do whatever after school…