To think Religious education in schools should be replaced by AI education

[IsitRainin]

Looking at how quickly AI is advancing, our education system needs to be overhauled.
There's no benefit of subjects like Religious education in today's world and people can learn about it from their family. This should be replaced by AI studies and other STEM subjects which will prepare the Children to be ready and up to date with future advancement and at par with children from China, USA and rest of the world.

Your posts on this thread would suggest otherwise...

Again, you are free to remove your children from these lessons.

Surely any teaching on AI would be part of computer science lessons? I mean as users all you really need to know is how to prompt, which is very basic surely? There's no need to remove any other subjects to be able to do that!

If you want to program even very, very basic AI programmes then it's a much more complicated affair. DS did that for his Comp sci A-level NEA, created a game that used AI in it's simplest form to play against you. There was no actual machine learning involved - that is a whole other huge step up and requires huge amounts of power (from my understanding).

The AI aspect was in the computer using a tree search algorithm - minimax I think he started with - to work out the best next move. It was all pretty complicated to my small brain and you would need a really good understanding of programming to even begin to know where to start. In his actual A-level he only learnt a little bit about the general uses and ethics of AI, not sure that that's much more useful than anything you might learn in Philosophy and Ethics tbh.

I believe that RE shouldn't be a compulsory subject at GCSE but I disagree that it should be replaced by 'AI education' whatever that means.

It being on the curriculum an hour a week or less isn’t a gotcha. Leaving aside the argument that it may actually deserve more time, some awareness is better than none and a good lesson can impart a lot in an hour. In fact, as mentioned upthread I think AI falls squarely into the bracket of being effectively introduced without needing swathes of classroom hours.

Tbh, I personally am not 100% wedded to RS being on the curriculum. The real problem is that ALL humanities are under threat. Good luck accessing classics if you are at a state school and MFL is going the same way. Individually, a subject may not be vital but the problem is that these subjects that foster critical thinking and an ability to engage with and - at higher levels - critically analyse cultures, ideas and traditions beyond those you’re immediately exposed to aren’t being replaced with equivalents. You might not need Latin / German / a working knowledge of Judaism per se, but if you don’t study ANYTHING that is exercising the faculties in the way the humanities do, you and society will be the poorer for it. AI is not a replacement.

At par with children in the USA? 😂
Their education system is in tatters because of maga.

The entire education system, subjects and curriculum needs massive change as it's basically still the same as it was 50 years ago, yet the World has seen enormous change over that time. All we've done is tinker around the edges.

We need to revolutionise the antiquated "silo" thinking of individual subjects and move to a skill based system rather than knowledge based which doesn't suit over half the pupils who have to suffer it. We can't carry on "teaching" skills like problem solving, critical thinking etc as "add ons" to legacy subjects and they need far more emphasis and teaching in their own right. We need more "cross subject" teaching rather than silo teaching, i.e. teach geography and history and religion of other countries alongside their language, not just the language as a stand alone MFL.

And for the people saying AI should be taught as part of computer science - that's a whole different story in itself because computer science (if taught at all) is often taught badly in schools and often just as an "after thought" whereas I believe it should have the same weighting at Maths and English as it's so fundamental to current live, and will only be more important in years to come. In fact, I'd go further and say that there should be more different IT related subjects taught at school - not encompass such a huge topic in a single subject, but break it down into 2/3/4 separate subjects so that it can be taught at a higher more detailed level.

Not doing a great job at that though, is it, given the increase in extremism in most developed countries, not just the UK, the rise of "The Right" throughout Europe. Brexit and Reform in the UK. IF our teaching of "intercultural understanding, peace and harmony" was working, the reverse would be true!!

YABVU. Ai training is not needed, general computing and coding skills would be more useful. AI products are simply a function of that.

As for religious studies, a balanced understanding of the world's religions is of huge valuable. If it was taught universally, we might not have the shit show we have in the Middle East at the moment.

Perhaps the years of hate in Ireland could have been prevented.

You don't understand gcse RE.

I'm inclined to agree with you. Especially for primary school, when it is literally just learn about the different religions.
It's a bit different in secondary, when there's more of a focus on ethics and morality, plus children are meeting a wider, more diverse group of people in secondary and beyond.

Churches are huge landowners, which is where their money comes from rather than the falling congregations. Church schools ARE partly funded by the diocese - the building and upkeep is funded by the diocese and the staff salaries etc are funded by government.

Im not against AI per se (i use it for work sometimes) - my children actually have this and STEM as a subject in their school HOWEVER - i would not like RE cut - i am catholic and i find RE important. I find it ridiculous to say america has a better school system than the UK tho - having friends in America who say is so far behind and they cant wait to leave. China - do you know how many hours a day those poor kids are taught? Tuition after school? some of them are beaten in school? How do i know? I have friends who have moved here from china who say they HATED it for their kids there - that they were raising 'robots' - zero personality. Is that what you want for your child OP? If so... then you know where you can go to - America and China. Not for me tho but good luck.

You’re chatting shit OP 👍

Church schools teach about all the major religions and belief systems though.
They don't just do Christianity.

Leaving it to parents to teach kids about religion is bonkers - they’re likely to learn about one religion (may be tantamount to indoctrination) or none.

Schools should be starting to teach about AI but at that age more from a user perspective than that teenagers are anywhere near needing to get into the details of LLM development. By the time they’re adults things will have moved on.

Stem curricula need to keep improving grasp on science including thr basics through school and HE. Yesterday in a meeting there was a discussion about some people trying to use the scientific software we develop (traditional and AI methods) but some being essentially scientifically illiterate (eg trying to model polymers without understanding what they were, trying to use advanced chemistry software without understanding basic concepts like hybridization).

’AI’ isn’t a replacement for human intelligence and knowledge. It will become more, not less important for humans to be able to do what humans can do - and that includes a good grounding in ethics.

Absolutely OP, ditch the religious education. In fact alot of things you learn at school you never need.

So no Shakespeare. No Jane Eyre or Of Mice and Men. No netball. No football.
No poetry. No dance, drama, music or art.
No study of the rivers in South America or the mountains of Asia.
No language of a country you're never going to visit. No history of the Vikings, Romans or Greek Myths.
None of that is "needed".
It would cut school down massively.
We could even lower the leaving age back down to 14 like it was 100 years ago because surely everything you "need" could be done by then.

Do you think a transactional approach to education is beneficial for us as a society? @PassingStranger

I think @PassingStranger is being tongue in cheek.

ErrolTheDragon

One of the biggest issues with schools 'keeping up to date' is the cost, especially when it comes to anything computer related, whether its IT, CAD, or AI.

I don’t think I said they should ‘keep up to date’. A grounding in the basics, be that sciences, maths or ethics etc is needed. . IT etc doesn’t necessarily have to be the latest thing so long as there are appropriate tools for whatever they’re doing. Increasingly access to AI type of things is web based anyway - I wouldn’t have thought schools would need their own specialised hardware and software for the sorts of things appropriate for schoolkids so much now and into the future.

Many schools have very limited access to computers. some may only have a classroom or two so 80 pcs for the entire school. These are often removed at exam times for those with access.

Then there is the issue with the schools internet security (whole school) and then safe usage policies where children are concerned.

AI is probably going to wreck the planet due to the energy it uses to cool the massive data centres it uses. It may be a bubble that will burst when people realise it's just loads of computers that can read stuff very quickly. No original thought and eventually it will be learning from itself and spiral into a bland unreliable mess.

Children should be taught how to identify reliable sources of information, and when to question what the computer says, and how to use AI appropriately.

They should also learn about religion as it explains what different people believe and what it is to be a decent moral human being and how to treat each other. (And that sometimes religion is abused by regimes as a pretext to squash womens rights.)

I am a total atheist myself.

This isn’t particularly true.

Church schools have to pay money to the diocese. They may then receive some of that back for major works or large repairs. Schools fund all building costs eg electricity, heating, general repairs, equipment, IT from the Local Authority.

AI will use huge resources, but so does Google. Spending a couple of hours researching on Google probably takes as much energy/resource as spending 5 minutes on chatGPT for the same result.

Likewise, if AI takes over lots of jobs, then there'll be huge resource savings in terms of huge numbers of people no longer needing to commute, huge buildings no longer needed, saving resources in building them, lighting, heating and ventilating, them, etc

It's not a one way street. It's swings and roundabouts. More power etc in some areas, but much less in others.

I'm guessing you didn't study RE or pay much attention in class if you think it's not important. Understanding religion, learning tolerance, discussing ethical and moral issues are all hugely important