The only problem being that the students involved are unlikely to have done any real “grappling” with the topic at all. Let’s call a spade a ‘spade. The act of turning to Chat GPT to write an essay is an obvious sign of laziness: a let-out for the student from doing the crucial work “which makes a difference”.
This should not be allowed to happen. Their parents are voluntarily paying heavy fees (now plus VAT) for their sons and daughters to be educated. It is a no-brainer that this won’t happen if the young people resort to not involving themselves mentally in the process of education. It needs to be firmly pronounced in all reputable private schools that the students DO NOT, as a point of honour, use Chat GPT to simulate their specified educative assignments. If this commonsense mantra is not issued and observed, it signifies:
1) That the student has not internalised her/his personal, commitment to trying whole-heartedly to energise and expand her/his mind,
2) That the individual is subverting her/his parents’ desire to assist their offspring’s education, thus wasting their parent’s financial sacrifice. (The parents are giving up goodies like holidays, new cars, yachts…)
This problem is not confined to schools.
We don’t know the percentage of students in UK universities who are resorting to the same AI agency to compose their assignments. The anecdotal information suggests that the figure may be even higher than the 75% of sixth form students.
What this means is that Chat GPT and other, similar, AI composition- generators are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
And the “part of the problem” they are exacerbating is that secondary schools and the curriculum authorities are not doing nearly enough to:
1) Insist that all their students are fully committed to becoming educated. This means that they should have voluntarily committed themselves to strengthening their curiosity, to be critical and inquisitive about strange information, and fully prepared to put-in the cognitive effort to understand (digest) how this new stuff fits-in-with what they already know.
2) Ensure that all students realise that the curriculum is understandable: that it has been selected by expert scholars who have checked that it is composed of important, significant information and agreed consensus values capable of being fully internalised… and offering a priceless preparation for adult life
This is not the whole of the problem. The curriculum needs to be designed to actively feed each student’s inner quest for understanding… with the kind of mental pleasure which flows in retrospect from seeing clearly that a whole package of information “fits together” harmoniously, and simultaneously connects well with the wider background (thus showing that it is to be trusted). In other words schools must deliver the kind of teaching which leads the student to experience ‘the Eureka-feeling’, the joy arising from mental clicking… something which has become quite rare in recent times. Young people are biologically programmed to want to understand puzzling things which they can see are significant… that is, things which play a big part in their doing and thinking. There is little or no recognition —even of the possibility— of this essential enjoyable “learning light”, in the current passe behaviouristic managerial regime.
Looking back to see how this very unsatisfactory situation has occurred, the source of confusion was undoubtedly a massive faith (rashly) invested in Progressivism in the 1960s. In the early part of the 1960s hope seemed to be in the air: idealism was also in the air: naïve misunderstanding, too, was common.
Unfortunately some acute traumas associated with Progressivism in the later 1960s (mainly the credibility of set-based maths, after it had abysmally failed) led to a deep and wide distrust of reason.
Eventually Progressivism was officially booted-out… as a result of Shirley Williams’ Great Debate. So far, so good: but a vacuum of thinking remained about how learning in schools could be best achieved. Disastrously a new government came into power at just this moment. It was determined to re-introduce order and discipline in schools, some of which were descending into chaos. So the new Thatcher Government parachuted-in some (academically dubious) positivist behaviourist managers whose characteristic belief was that <<There was no such thing as the Human Mind!>>. To put such people in charge of energising and expanding the minds of a whole nation’s young people was a folly of unprecedented proportions. It beggars belief to the nth degree. But it happened.
The Thatcher government had become quite sure that <<teaching children to reason>> was far too ambitious, and that the only viable alternative was to establish a “back to basics” behaviourist curriculum including a heavy emphasis on “skills”.
This meant that teachers were effectively told that the number-one aim was not to get children to understand things, but to memorise them. Back-to-Basics was the order of the day. It meant that a lot of checking had to be done —that children had correctly remembered simplified “facts”, and could correctly perform simple skills. This resulted, unsurprisingly, in children being heavily drilled in simple routines, and expected to memorise numerous sound-bites. The behaviourist managers who imposed this regime onto schools called it ‘instruction’.
It was predictably narrow, boring, valuefree and lacking any feeling for curiosity: also lacking hopeful futures, humane insights, cultural highlights or exciting vistas.
The main assumption which underlay this Back-to-Basic clamp-down was that Progressivism had tried to <<teach children to reason>> and had failed.
Actually what had failed was not a sensible, well-rounded, well-grounded, synoptic introduction to the realities of life, but an approach based mainly on grossly flattering often unruly learners. It offered them fantasy, woolly perspectives and anti-establishment sentiments.
So, we need a school system which is student-friendly, based on feeding students with (essential, needed) learning which throws an honest, positive light onto our cultural history and which generates Eurekalike pleasure for the learner.
The main challenge facing schools today must be to get children to understand things. There are millions of straightforward things they can find-out for themselves outside school. Today’s sophisticated modern world has come about as a result of a tiny cadre of talented innovators who have understood just how strange reality is. We are miles away, though, from getting a wide public understanding of these insights, still less a wide appreciation of what they imply.
Fortunately a revolutionary new way to understand the universe has emerged recently: anti-maths.
It means that in principle getting children to understand, the tricky things which underly today’s world, has become at last a viable goal. A new strange angle on how to understand the universe (and our connection to it) holds an immense hope for the future.
So ordinary (not AI-based) reason has recently begun to acquire an unexpected revival. This means that there is now, once again, a hopeful, believable future for the human race. The hype being put about in Silicon Valley that <<mediocre AI-based “advice” is urgently needed, because it is the best we can do>> is rapidly losing whatever credibility it once enjoyed.
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CHRISTOPHER ORMELL around 1st February 2025