My dc goes to school and uses ChatGPT for everything and I’m thinking the education system needs a good shake up to prevent becoming almost useless, aibu

[Pineapplespongebob]

They’re in secondary school and their school isn’t the best. Every day they get homework and do it on ChatGPT. They and the rest of their class have taken to using gpt in class on their laptops wherever they can. I am wondering what’s the point of education system as it stands. It’s a shame we can’t look to improve the whole situation, like, learning about a volcano is all well and good but it’s easy enough to look it up now. And if I’m stuck personally on a subject I will too.

eventually AI will get good enough to do things we mock it for now. Shouldn’t we be hearing more about education changing to suit dc in the future? Why can’t we take a step back from academics and give more life skills now. Even things like learning how to cook cheaper healthy meals would probably suit more people in my dc school than the ins and outs of a volcano and possibly reduce the strain on the nhs when a large majority of my dc class seem to survive on fast food rn.

I live abroad and tutor English (to non-English speaking children) and Maths.
ChatGPT has become a major problem recently.
All of the kids I tutor are using it as much as possible to avoid having to make any effort with homework.

Text to write in English? Copy and paste or type the task into ChatGPT and tell it to write like a 14 year old learner of English as a foreign language. One of the boys says to avoid being detected you just ask it to make mistakes. They then copy it into their exercise books, hand it in, job done. A couple of them shove everything through deepl or google translate.

Grammar exercise? Ditto, copy and paste, ChatGPT churns out the answers, copy and hand in.
Maths problems you don't know how to do? There are apps where you can take a photo of the problem and ask it to solve it. It gives the steps with an explanation and then you copy the steps into your exercise book, making a couple of slips so it's not that obvious and then you hand it in.

The same applies to other subjects, they tell me.

They have access to laptops during lessons and a lot of them are using AI at school too.

Of course, the issue is that they still have exams to pass. The school system here involves one exam each semester in the language of the country we are in, English and Maths. They have to pass these and can be held back a year if they don't make the grades.

I'm getting more and more students failing these exams and being threatened with resitting the year and the reason, in most of the cases, is that they are relying on ChatGPT to do homework and then of course, when they come to do the exams they have no clue whatsoever!

The entire system is going to need a rethink because this is not doing anyone any good at all.

Obviously I don't tutor the ones who are doing really well at school because they don't need it so I presume they are actually applying their brains to their work, but there are more and more who are opting for the easy way out by getting AI to do it for them.
The future is going to involve may AI so the school system does need to adapt. There are so many questions to be asked here and so many issues it's difficult to know where to start, even when just sitting and thinking about it or discussing it on a forum like this.

Why don't you do some parenting of your own children?

I don't think they need to rethink that system, just let them fail and resit so they learn the natural consequences of using AI to do their homework.

Surely this is a behaviour issue? They are cheating. I think you should be taking a firmer stance on that. And chatgpt won't sit their exams for them, so they're doing themselves a disservice.

I've said this before but year 9 is wasted. Other than maths, science and English students that start GCSE work in year 9 really are treading water for a year.

When I rule the world and when education is properly funded year 9 would be totally different.

Yes keep the core subjects but allow children to explore other options, first aid, cooking (not food tech but how to cook a certain number of meals from 1 to 4 people). How to put petrol in a car (OK that has problems with the law) how to turn off the water, electricity and gas.

Trips to the theatre and cinema, not just the big productions in London but local shows too. Teach the kids how to book the tickets for a group, hire a minibus / coach etc.

Some basic DIY - how to put a shelf up.

How to clean things properly from windows to pans.

Basic sewing, how to repair things and make a simple garment from a pattern.

You are quite right.

I fear the human race will lose our skills, humanity and the joy of creation.

I agree, but how on earth could that be organised or funded?

What happens when everyone starts to fail?

Would it not be better to adapt teaching and exam systems to match modern technology rather than pretend it's not happening?
Other countries will embrace AI, and learn how to use it. It would be a shame for the UK not to be part of that.

Surely they're not all stupid enough to cheat on their homework? Once a few fail and have to retake the year the rest will take it as a warning.

Embracing AI to the point of allowing it to do your thinking for you will only make a country fall further and further behind as intelligence deteriorates - its the countries not allowing AI in education that will have a smarter, better educated populace.

Retaking the year for cheating on homework is not a thing in the UK, so that would have to be brought in.

I believe that modern young people should be taught the latest technology if they want to succeed in the workplace.
I don't know how to do that, but ignoring or avoiding AI is not the answer.

I was responding to a post where students do retake the year if they fail, though that's something that the uk might really want to consider - those students that behave really badly and don't put any effort in might change their tune if they find out they'll have to stay in school even longer!

Being taught how to use technology is good, being taught to rely on it is not.

Text to write in English? Copy and paste or type the task into ChatGPT and tell it to write like a 14 year old learner of English as a foreign language. One of the boys says to avoid being detected you just ask it to make mistakes. They then copy it into their exercise books, hand it in, job done. A couple of them shove everything through deepl or google translate.

One way to check (used for plagiarism but works for this) print out the work, if it is in an exercise book photo copy it.

Tippex out every third word and tell the student to fill in the blanks. Even though few people can remember word for word they should be able to do this.

Maybe it’s a way of cutting back on the amount spent on education?
Maybe in the future we will need less staff and use AI more, saving a huge amount of money.

This is why schools need to be paper based. Schools which give all children a chrome book and set all homework online are useless. Im happy the school I teach in and DD's school never went down that route.

And what happens when they leave and can't do the most simple file management for a work system? Can't attach a document to an email? I'm a Luddite at heart and go to considerable lengths to stop my students using AI for essays but Teams etc the answer is not to pretend it doesn't exist.

Where are we going to get our highly-qualified professionals from if kids spend their time in school learning to sew and cook (which you can learn perfectly well at home from YouTube videos, recipe books etc)? I left home with virtually no practical skills (because I wasn't interested in them) but with a degree that enabled me to have the career I wanted. I learned to cook just fine, and am also now a pretty skilled knitter. They need critical thinking skills and a range of academic subjects to broaden their minds. There should be more vocational subjects, but not sewing. It's great as a hobby, but who actually has time to sew all their own clothes?!

My daughter is 16 and uses Chat GPT responsibly - she writes answers to essay questions in past history and English papers then asks Chat GTP to mark/grade them for her so she can see where to improve. I think you need to talk to your children about the fact they need to pass handwritten GCSE papers at the end of Year 11…… At some stage, all children need to realise they have to take responsibility for themselves and not always take the easy way out. There was ALWAYS a way of cheating: I remember kids at my uni paying for essays to be written for them.

Fwiw I teach languages in a very good school. I avoid setting writing homework because they were already using Google Translate to do it, long before ChatGPT was a thing. They do writing in class without their laptops. They still need to do exams on paper, so they still need to be able to write. Teachers of subjects where homework is on online platforms (like Sparks for maths and science) are finding kids use AI to do it.

The issue is, chat GPT still isn’t very good. I’m an academic so it’s an issue we’ve been facing with students for 3 years, especially since it’s the humanities so no exams. It’s still obvious when it’s been used, as I say, because it isn’t very good. If a student has copied and pasted a shit essay and it includes fake or sketchy references (yes this happens) then I fail it, simple as that.

Some of my colleagues become AI hunters and report for academic misconduct but I’m not interested in that. I make it distinctly clear to students that I won’t report them, I don’t want to get them into shit but that instead, I will fail them and I do. One student passed over a sloppy essay referring to Miss Lonelyhearts as a female for example, straight up fail. If I know they haven’t read the texts and hand over the equivalent of a sparks notes essay, forget it.

On the flip side, some students do obviously use it to refine their work but I don’t punish this. If I can tell they’ve read the text and put some effort into real research (which is obvious because those pieces will most often either be behind a paywall or physical copies) then I don’t punish them if they’ve got GPT to restructure or refine it.

So yes, it’s a problem but it doesn’t have to be. It can be useful in some ways and terrible in others. I’m surprised schools have this issue, they have a lot of in person exams so there’s no way GPT can filter into that.

That's really interesting. As a secondary school teacher, what I'm seeing is students in KS4 getting ChatGPT to write homework answers and then (if they've got any sense) handwriting the answer (because ChatGPT bolds and caps and uses subheadings so it's very obvious in printed form). And I get the same answers from multiple students.

I talk to them about it and explain why it's wasting their time because they won't have it in exams. I set as little writing work as I can outside of class.

In KS5, students with laptop use were cheating using the AI in Google. So now I have to get them an exam laptop and no-one can use a laptop without it being an official access arrangement. Which is hard to get. Before I arranged this with our exams officer I used to be mean and ask them questions about phrases they'd used that I knew they wouldn't be able to explain.

It's a war and requires guile and cunning.

Oh and AI can't analyse to A level standard and doesn't understand the (fortunately rather opaque) GCSE mark criteria either.

This is true, I have friends who teach FE so have seen the GCSE and A Level marking criteria for English- it’s so vague. It can’t make strong analytical points as yet. I always say this to students too but a main issue with it is it isn’t human. Sounds so obvious and ridiculous but I’d rather read an obviously imperfect human essay than something robotic.

Yep - I've tried using it for various exam things. It's very good at writing an MFL literature essay but it can't mark them for toffee. The first time I tried, it actually used a non-existent markscheme with a completely different number of marks, even though my prompt told it which exam board and course! I pointed this out and it basically said 'Oh yes, sorry about that. I'll use the right one this time' . Then it marked it really badly.

I’m not sure really. Let me ask chat gpt and get back to you.

Mind you, the exam board seem pretty shit and unreliable at marking them too. Maybe they are using AI...