The Dire State of Education: How AI Demands Change

7 min read2 hours ago

School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like Feldwebel (sergeants). I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam. What I hated most was the competitive system there, and especially sports. Because of this, I wasn’t worth anything, and several times they suggested I leave. This was a Catholic School in Munich. I felt that my thirst for knowledge was being strangled by my teachers; grades were their only measurement. How can a teacher understand youth with such a system? . . . from the age of twelve I began to suspect authority and distrust teachers. I learned mostly at home, first from my uncle and then from a student who came to eat with us once a week. He would give me books on physics and astronomy. The more I read, the more puzzled I was by the order of the universe and the disorder of the human mind, by the scientists who didn’t agree on the how, the when, or the why of creation. Then one day this student brought me Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Reading Kant, I began to suspect everything I was taught. I no longer believed in the known God of the Bible, but rather in the mysterious God expressed in nature.
- Albert Einstein (1930)

Reevaluating and Reforming the Prussian Model: A Necessity in the Age of LLMs

School. By current standards, we are all expected to attend, participate, and finish our studies to start working in jobs within the economy and contribute to society. But what if this system is both broken and outdated? The fact is, it is. “Nearly one in five (19%) reported that their college education experience did not provide them with the skills needed to perform their first post-degree job. Additionally, more than half (53%) of these college graduates have not applied to an entry-level job in their field because they felt unqualified, and nearly half (42%) felt unqualified because they did not have all the skills listed in the job description” (Harvard Business Review). The education system is no longer equipping students with the skills they need to contribute to the economy and the greater good of our society, yet “businesses continue to penalize applicants who follow nontraditional education paths, as nearly two-thirds (61%) of business and HR leaders admit to discarding resumes without four-year degrees, even if the applicant was qualified” (Harvard Business Review).

To understand this, one must look at the roots of the education system. The United States and many other nations use the Prussian Model for their educational institutions. “Born of Prussia’s military failings in the Napoleonic Wars, the German kingdom developed an ‘education’ system designed to indoctrinate children, year by year, from age 6 to 16, into full compliance with the state and its military leaders. The point was, bluntly, to ensure that no German soldier would ever disobey an order again” (Socol). The fact is straightforward and easy to understand: comply, do as you’re told, don’t question authority, and perform repetitive tasks alongside hundreds, if not thousands, of your peers.

In Dumbing Us Down, John Taylor Gatto discusses how schooling today “does more harm than good by promoting conformity and discouraging independent thought” (Brack). In the technology industry, these skills are “especially valuable to programming where creativity, individuality, and critical thinking are essential to successful software projects” (Brack).

Schools have promoted standardized testing, which rewards conformity, discouraging any concept of individual passions or tackling new and exciting problems.

Students are instead forced to participate in tasks that are now performed at higher levels than themselves. Below is a table of scores of the top 25% of undergraduate students within selected classes, compared with an outdated version of ChatGPT (3.5).

Table 1: Comparative Analysis of ChatGPT 3.5 and Student Academic Performance (Parker)

There is little reason to learn how to perform these skills manually at such an extensive level, but rather a need to understand how they can be used. The new ChatGPT-o1 model is “capable of reasoning and problem-solving in almost human ways — but much faster,” and additionally “OpenAI wasn’t exaggerating when they said it’s at a PhD level” (Gibson). The shift in education towards understanding how these tools can be used in the real world to solve real challenges is more important than ever to ensure that we are providing our economy with value and, in turn, benefiting our world.

The point is not to completely stop learning, but to shift from standardized tests to projects that solve new, novel problems which challenge students’ critical thinking skills. In summary, the education system must shift to keep up with LLMs, but institutions are slow to move, emphasizing a real need to start now! Education must rapidly shift towards a project-based approach where students engage with real-world problems, leveraging AI tools as collaborators rather than competitors, which also requires teachers to view the tools as such. Moreover, studies have consistently shown that project-based learning increases work readiness.

Even without Large Language Models (LLMs), one could already tell that a change was needed, especially in STEM classrooms where project-based learning has been shown to be 86% more effective (Balemen). It can be accepted that project-based learning is deemed more effective than traditional learning approaches; however, despite this overwhelming evidence, teachers still choose to emphasize exams in both the final grade percentage, and the course is mostly taught in a way that emphasizes performing well on exams.

The issue with the education system has been present, but large language models will challenge it at a level never seen before. These innovations will ensure change and force people to start thinking in new ways, leaving behind old norms. The education system has failed many, yet it still remains deeply entrenched in many of our institutions, particularly in the workforce, where we still require a bachelor’s degree even though much of what we learn in school is not as valuable in the real world as we might think.

Why is it that in a society where we know project-based learning is better, we still insist on testing students through stressful exams that destroy their mental health and self- confidence, and have many other harmful impacts? We expect students to learn countless subjects they will mostly never use in their lives. The question now becomes: why are we even doing this when a tool can already outperform most humans at the PhD level?

This reveals a mass complicity in a broken system because the system itself teaches you not to question it. By positively reinforcing obedience and discouraging critical thinking from a very young age, much of our society has learned to follow orders without questioning authority or addressing these issues critically.

With AI advancing so rapidly, we are only at the start of a revolution — one that is already outperforming humans at the PhD level in many areas. It is crucial to emphasize that this is just the beginning.

Discourse is not only needed but necessary, as we see that while LLMs excel at exams, they struggle with tasks that require creativity, judgment, and a human element. For example, designing a user flow for an app, a user interface, or any task that is human-centered in nature. In the example of designing a user interface for an app, LLMs can be seen as tools to help free up more time for humans to experiment with the user interface on other humans to iterate faster.

We must strive to have a symbiotic relationship with LLMs to help highlight what humans are good at. Unfortunately, schools do not currently do this, as human-artificial intelligence collaboration is technically seen as academic dishonesty in most current classes. Naturally, LLMs are going to be stronger than humans at exam-taking; this is already the case and it will only become more apparent with time. It is then the obligation of the educational system to start creating assignments that are challenging even with the use of an LLM.

The shift towards creating assignments that are at the frontier of innovation and solve real-world challenges has never been more important, yet it seems like most educational institutions are completely ignorant of the fact that this change must take place in order to create an effective educational system for future generations that is both beneficial for them and our economy.

In conclusion, educational institutions must re-evaluate the Prussian Model of education as it is no longer the most effective means of teaching students compared to project-based learning. LLMs are going to help facilitate this change by forcing institutions and instructors alike to start re-evaluating the ways in which they are teaching, what they are teaching, and how it can be applied to solve real challenges.

Sources:

Here is the list of sources as clickable links:

Possibly my last college essay from Yexiang Xue ‘s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class.

#EducationReform #OutdatedSystem #SkillGap #InnovationInEducation #FutureOfWork #CriticalThinking #IndependentLearning #StandardizedTesting #CreativityMatters #ProjectBasedLearning #EducationMatters #ModernLearning #WorkforceDevelopment #AIInEducation #EdTech #CareerSkills #NonTraditionalLearning #Adaptability #HolisticEducation #TechIndustrySkills #TearThePaperCeiling

The Dire State of Education: How AI Demands Change

Reevaluating and Reforming the Prussian Model: A Necessity in the Age of LLMs

Written by Yaseen Shady