Too much of our testing regime still remains fixated on being able to regurgitate information CAMILLA CAVENDISHAdd to myFT © Jonathan McHugh ChatGPT will force school exams out of the dark ages on twitter (opens in a new window) ChatGPT will force school exams out of the dark ages on facebook (opens in a new window) ChatGPT will force school exams out of the dark ages on linkedin (opens in a new window) Save current progress 0% Camilla Cavendish JANUARY 20 2023 218 Print this page Receive free Education updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Education news every morning. “Goodbye, homework,” tweeted Elon Musk after the launch of ChatGPT, a bot that writes plausible answers and even rhyming poetry. This kind of generative artificial intelligence sparks fear, loathing and awe in equal measure. But it is the world of education which is most spooked. Since OpenAI launched the ChatGPT language-generation model before Christmas, New York’s public schools have banned pupils from using it. In Australia, universities are planning a return to supervised pen and paper examinations to evade the chatbot fakes. Teachers are rightly concerned that they won’t be able to help pupils who are falling behind if they can’t spot faked assignments.
But one reason these bots pose such a threat is that so much of our education remains fixated on being able to elegantly regurgitate information. In the past 20 years, search engines have revolutionised our access to knowledge. Neuroscience has transformed our understanding of how different people learn. But the way we teach and test has barely changed. My own kids sit national exams which feel horribly similar to those I took at school. They still require vast feats of memorisation but come with the new horror of “mark schemes” which must also be learnt to score points by parroting the correct “keywords”. To sit biology A-level, or history GCSE, is to see a fascinating subject reduced to a largely deadening plod through names, dates and formulas. Teachers don’t call this system “drill and kill” for nothing. Biology and history are subjects that parents of dyslexic children steer their offspring away from, fearing they will struggle to recall the sheer volume of facts irrespective of how well they grasp the concepts.
It was only when one of my children turned out to be dyslexic that I realised just how narrow our system had become. Rote learning still has its place, in times tables and languages for example. But while I adored learning anthologies of poetry, my ability to recite these verses says nothing about whether I am a critical thinker. If all we are asked to do is string lists of facts together in an essay, we might as well be replaced by chatbots. That’s not the limit of our human abilities, and it’s not what employers want either. In Davos this week, where panels on generative AI were oversubscribed, Chief executives were talking about LQ — learnability quotient — as the new IQ. LQ is essentially a measure of adaptability, of our desire and ability to update our skills throughout life. Employers have been saying for years that they value collaboration and curiosity. It’s a world away from frantically cramming facts that are quickly forgotten as soon as the exam is over.
This has a pretty dampening effect, frankly, on the joy of learning. The speed with which generative AI is developing makes us right to be wary — not least because it can generate disinformation. Unlike a calculator, which always gives the same answer, large language models like ChatGPT are probabilistic technologies which can give different answers to the same question at different times. But this makes it all the more important that we teach kids how to use them. Rather than banning ChatGPT teachers should ask pupils to give it an assignment and critique its response. Fans of generative AI believe it can complement human beings, not substitute for us. To make that true, we must keep up. It is intriguing that Singapore, whose schools have regularly topped the international OECD’s Pisa rankings, has been reforming its education system to “spark [a] passion for continuous learning” and foster “a mindset of life-long learning”.
Its teachers are being asked to put more emphasis on critical thinking and less on rote learning. Universities are broadening their entrance criteria to include aptitude, not just exam scores. Moreover the Singaporean government’s list of desired outcomes at primary and secondary level includes “moral integrity”, “co-operation” and “lively curiosity” — which robots don’t have. Whenever a new technology comes along, there is a danger that we ascribe too much to it. Cheating is as old as the hills. When I was an undergraduate, I remember a friend buying essays from a former student who had been selling these same essays for seven years. No professor had spotted the deception. In some cases the education system has even encouraged plagiarism. For more than a decade, UK universities have required applicants to submit a 4,000 character “personal statement” of their interests and motivations. This led to a frenzy of statement-buying, parental angst and exaggerated claims about having been “fascinated by archaeology since I was five”.
Last week, the personal statement was finally abolished — but on the grounds that it disadvantaged poorer applicants, not because it was a naked encouragement to lie. The statement is to be replaced by a survey which sounds as though it may be open to similar abuses. Personal statements were at least an attempt by universities to glimpse a broader picture beyond the results of GCSEs, the exams taken at 16 (undergraduate applications are made before pupils sit their A-levels). When children stay in education until at least 18, and ageing populations need to reskill throughout life, it makes little sense to skew so much of the school system to passive regurgitation at 16. The Tony Blair Institute advocates replacing GCSEs with lower stakes assessments at 16, and creating a broader baccalaureate at 18. I agree: but I would not scrap paper-based exams, which are surely the best defence against cheating. Exams are still our best way to gauge what children have learnt. But what we test needs to change, drastically. If it prompts a wholesale rethink, that in itself is a powerful legacy for ChatGPT.
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