Too many people romanticize the past and the experience of analog school. Getting kids off screens isn’t going to improve their lives– particularly if they only read dull passages in basel textbooks or are endlessly drilled on detached tasks. 9/
At the same time, many AI education approaches exacerbate the tyranny of metrics: doubling down on trying to quantify everything, working only with discrete decomposable units, or discounting the value of human relationships. 10/
“Students across all grade levels are really hungry for meaningful adult relationships. A lot of them love their teachers but can’t get the level of attention they want from them. This is not the teacher’s fault; this is the system that we created.” 8/ hollykorbey.substack.com/p/will-tutor...
AI is often too effective at optimizing metrics. It amps up Goodhart's Law even more, leading to a range of unfortunate consequences. 7/
www.cell.com/patterns/ful...
When the measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure. This is Goodhart’s Law. 6/
sketchplanations.com/goodharts-law
I grew up in the birthplace of high-stakes testing: 1990s Texas under Gov George W. Bush.
I saw the precursor to No Child Left Behind: art, music, & gym classes cancelled so students could spend more time drilling tedious multiple choice worksheets. 4/
For the most popular ELA curriculums in the USA, 3rd-6th graders go the entire year without reading a whole novel.
Reading has been reduced to a discrete set of tasks: decoding words, summarizing, making inferences, identifying main ideas. 2/
curriculuminsightproject.substack.com/p/why-have-b...
Often debates about education are framed as non-tech versus AI approaches, but too often, AI ed tech just magnifies the same failures of traditional school. 1/
My latest post:
www.fast.ai/posts/2026-0...
The number of 9 year olds who read for fun almost daily declined from 53% (in 2012) to 39% in 2022.
Atomized reading “skills” are taught without sparking a love of reading. The part is less than the whole. 3/ @karenvaites.bsky.social
An Australian (now former) teacher: "I’m rarely required to ‘teach’ anymore. Apparently I’m more valuable as an assessor, an examiner, a data collector. I have had to dull my once-engaging lesson sequences... It is mechanical and rigid and driven.” 5/
griffithreview.com/articles/tea...
