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.
If the educational system is not working, if AI has destroyed our educational system, and I think it’s fair to say it has, if teachers feel there’s nothing they can do to fix it, then throw it away and don’t waste our tears on it. We must find other ways to educate. This is imperative, education is non-negotiable. I am not giving up in defeat, I am saying we must retreat from battles that are simply not viable anymore. Use them as a delaying action if you can, but if kids are learning from LLMs and Video games and Netflix and Youtube and Tiktok now, we need to find ways to get as much good educational content as we can onto those platforms. We need to find ways to manipulate their algorithms. We need alternative platforms that aren’t corporate-controlled cesspools, where we can make the rules. Governments and institutions will be too slow to react. The only advantage we have is that we can act and react fast, even faster than the corporate interests that are burning down the Internet of Alexandria and blowing up the world into the next dark age. We can, and should, and must organize an educational resistance.
Literally nobody wants their kids to grow up like this. Not even the billionaires exploiting and profiting from this garbage. We have the advantage that everybody in the world will soon understand the scale of this problem as they are confronted with it themselves. Will it be too late? Maybe, but we have to assume it will be better if we at least try. Even if we have to rescue people one mind at a time, every effort is worthwhile and every victory is worth celebrating.