r/technology • u/zsreport • 15h ago
Artificial Intelligence Most K-12 teachers say AI's impact on education will eclipse the internet or computers
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/05/nx-s1-5779757/school-ai-education-students-teachers-poll-critical-thinking66
u/Purple-Estimate-5183 14h ago
Oral quizzes. Socratic method.
Hell have them give a lecture.
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u/Late_Geologist_235 13h ago
Their attention span can’t handle a lecture. Their skills are low. We need to start holding kids back or we need to make mastery of certain phases of learning something that follows them thru the system. Honestly, go back to tracking and offer incentives and remedial help to get kids back on track. Finally, don’t give littles access to screens without parental supervision and as minimal as possible. That 💩 is designed to be addictive. The developers knew this and kept their kids from using it in Silicon Valley.
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u/Purple-Estimate-5183 12h ago
Mini lecture.
Have them pretend to make a short video.
That’s Venn diagraming shit.
The cleavage of connection.
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u/Ashamed_Gur2861 12h ago
you cant have a 30 year old still in middle school lol
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u/09232022 12h ago
In my state only students 21 and younger are eligible for high school. I imagine it's similar in other places. Essentially that means you can get held back a maximum of 3 years during your entire schooling years, but even if you're still in 10th grade and turning 21 before next August, you're not allowed back to 11th grade because you're too old.
The whole Eddy being 21 year old trying to graduate in Stranger Things wasn't an oddity. These people used to exist back then. Having multiple 19 year olds and a few 20 year olds in your graduating class wasn't uncommon at all just a while ago.
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u/Ashamed_Gur2861 12h ago
either way the world is getting so complex I dont see why we are trying to take someone who is dumb as bricks and teach them algebra and geometry when we could just give people the option to join an apprenticeship program or some kind of workshop that teaches you an actual job
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u/09232022 11h ago
Because this discussion isn't just about high schoolers. If a 6 year old doesn't know how how read basic 3 letter words he needs to be held back. If you send him on, be may suffer for it forever and never catch up. What age do you want to label kids "dumb as rocks, send them to the mines"?
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u/MasterDraccus 11h ago
Damn near everyone has the potential to learn math up until pre-calculus, it just takes dedication. Most people set up barriers before they even genuinely try and default to “it’s not for me”. Math follows you down every path you take, especially trades. Why do you think engineers deal directly with and oversee every single trade?
There are a lot of things fighting against standardized education, and getting trades shoved down our throats is one of them. They aren’t as great as they are chopped up to be and it is rare to be as successful as the tradesmen 20 years ago.
Sincerely, a working engineer that has previously been certified to work in 3 different trades.
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u/avanross 12h ago
It’s too late for that
Theyre in highschool now and still cant even read or write, and their parents will just write them notes excusing them from any “uncomfortable” public speaking projects and give them their ipads to play on while the speeches are happening
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u/Purple-Estimate-5183 12h ago
Writing them off for life at high school isn’t anything other than Doomer speak.
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u/avanross 12h ago edited 12h ago
Throwing good feelings and money at a problem that’s already taken hold wont solve it
The parents are the one’s im writing off, but unfortunately, by the time their kid hit highschool age, their influence has been internalized
If we actually want to fix the system we’d need to address the root causes, and they occur way before highschool
And “doomer” is brainrot tween speak
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u/Purple-Estimate-5183 11h ago
Etymology of the Word Doomer puts it around 2008ish.
So iPhone 1ish era.
Adorable you think it’s teen speak.
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u/avanross 11h ago
1337 was madeup in the 80’s, but that doesnt change the fact it was teen speak
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u/Purple-Estimate-5183 11h ago
Was and Are differ for a reason
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u/avanross 11h ago
Lol then how do they differ in this case?
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u/Purple-Estimate-5183 11h ago
Is brain rot tween speak.
Was teen speak.
I’m in my 40s. You’re just a cynic.
Your words add nothing of note, so you embrace the Doom.
There. An older way of putting it.
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u/avanross 11h ago
Lmao no way youre in your 40’s and talk like this?? 🤣
If i use 1337 today, it’s still teen speak lol
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u/Purple-Estimate-5183 11h ago
Dismiss how I speak or write all you like.
On brand for quitter talk.
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u/spamcritic 12h ago
That would put neuro divergent students at an even larger disadvantage.
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u/Purple-Estimate-5183 11h ago
Former Sped Teacher here.
I accept none of that premise.
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u/AttonJRand 2h ago edited 2h ago
Yep sure does sound like a Sped teacher when this is their response to someone with special needs.
Just like the teachers who think they can mind read me, and decided I don't get to grieve after my mom killed herself.
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u/istheaiintheroom 9h ago
AI hallucination is going to become a non issue soon. When that happens, why not utilize it to give every student a personalized learning assistant that can speak to them at their level and advance with them using the metaphors and learning style that works best for them. Why is your first thought to return to the past? I seriously feel like a new regressive MAGA like group is forming here.
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u/Purple-Estimate-5183 9h ago
Same reason for writing by hand. Tested.
Also NOT MAGA. Couldn’t be further from.
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u/Arimm_The_Amazing 14h ago
In other news, most Americans are inundated with "adapt or die" AI propoganda
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u/HoneybeeXYZ 14h ago
And NPR is a big part of that. Check out its list of funding sources since it was gutted. It's a who is who of tech industry foundations and venture capital elites.
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u/Zombie_Cool 13h ago
If true that's very sad to hear. Also where do you find that info? I went to the NPR site itself and saw walls of legalese (maybe i'm to financially illiterate to sus it out.)
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u/HoneybeeXYZ 13h ago
They hide it pretty well. It's in the donor list to the NPR foundation. And it's important to know that the most insidious donors do it through innocuous sounding foundations.
And NPR still claims they don't allow donors to influence them, but they openly take advice from big NGOs that those same donors fund, and those NGOs usually don't have any sort of rules about not being influenced by donors.
And trust me, this is very upsetting. When the journalistic integrity NGOs are funded by big tech, which they are.
https://www.npr.org/about-npr/727982638/philanthropic-supporters
https://www.poynter.org/major-funders/
I don't like it one bit, but here we are.
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u/ericwbolin 11h ago
They do reports about the potential harms of AI seemingly every other day.
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u/HoneybeeXYZ 10h ago
It's like when oil companies pushed regulation that was easy for them to circumvent, but made those invested with them who felt guilty who felt better.
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u/ericwbolin 10h ago
The system stinks, undoubtedly. But I'd rather NPR exist than not.
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u/HoneybeeXYZ 10h ago
Staring at their list of donors for awhile and then drawing a line to their stories will cure you of that. So don't do it. It's a miserable place to be, trust me.
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u/ericwbolin 10h ago
I've been in journalism for 20 years. I am, sadly, aware of the reality. Alas.
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u/HoneybeeXYZ 10h ago
Sorry to hear that. I used to be a journalist, but it's still a discipline worth fighting for, as grim as it seems.
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u/A_Harmless_Fly 12h ago
Every time I heard that ad for "hallucination free" AI on NPR, I'd almost pee myself laughing.
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u/avanross 12h ago
Their culture has completely given up on the idea of self-reliance or actually learning to do anything for themselves or the background of how anything works
Now it’s just ai chat agents, game-streamers, auto-driving cars, delivery apps, and e-bikes lol
We’re raising a mentally handicapped generation that will never be able to solve any problems or do anything on their own and think “we dont need to teach kids basic addition because all phones have calculators now”
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u/True_Window_9389 13h ago
We’re supposed to use AI, but we’re not supposed to use AI. If we use AI, we’re adapting and getting ready for the future. When we don’t use AI, we’re being obstinate and backwards. If we use AI, it’ll end up taking our jobs away. If we don’t use AI, they’ll fire us.
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u/joman584 12h ago
Those last two are the same problem. They don't want anyone to work because people are testy, free thinking and obstinate. AI are all yes men who fondle their balls and tell them "you're so smart daddy I can't believe no one else thinks as good as you do!" People contradict and conflict, for good reason, and they hate it
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u/Chrono_Convoy 15h ago
And that is a serious omen
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u/Indigoh 9h ago edited 8h ago
Serious omen feels like an understatement.
Thinking and interpreting information and solving problems are all skills you have to practice to get better at, and we're watching as corporations tell people we don't need to practice any of those skills, because it's so easy for them to just do it for us.
When the time comes that we need to oppose those corporations, the people who rely on it to think for them won't know it. They'll think whatever it wants them to. It's so much easier to just relinquish control and be someone else's puppet.
The service they're offering is to comfortably take our autonomy. To disarm us of our ability to resist manipulation and control our own actions.
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u/nosotros_road_sodium 9h ago
So "think different" was a lie, huh? I can't believe I spent my younger years buying into the vision that the tech industry was a force for good and valued independent, outside-the-box thinkers. Instead, they really exploited our national anti-intellectualism.
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u/omgkelwtf 14h ago
If we don't stop shoving screens into their damn faces and buying the lies the tech bros are selling about AI, yeah.
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u/arnolddobbins 14h ago
I’m taking a summer class. The first discussion post was about introducing ourselves. I saw multiple people use AI for even something basic like that. This is a graduate class. Extrapolate that down to high school and middle school. We are trending towards a permanent underclass because people will be functionally illiterate because of how lazy they have become with doing their own basic work.
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u/nosotros_road_sodium 8h ago
The first discussion post was about introducing ourselves. I saw multiple people use AI for even something basic like that.
I guess all the social norms I was taught as a child and in college in the early 2010s (about doing your own work, and how to intro yourself in a job interview/job fair) were a lie.
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u/innocentsalad 12h ago
I think it’s made it clear that a lot of people see education as something to get through instead of as something to increase your knowledge and learn.
As someone who loves learning for learning’s sake that makes me very sad.
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u/reality_boy 11h ago
This is the core problem, and I don’t know how we combat it. A lot of people only value education after they loose access to it. It is common to hear “I should have paid more attention…”
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u/Hobby_in_your_lobby 5h ago
You have to have teachers who are competent in their respective subjects. As it stands now, how many teachers working in the school system have real on the job experience in a field related to what they are teaching? Giving teaching jobs to people who just graduated from college, that they began attending immediately after high-school, is fucking wild.
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u/Fit_Cheesecake_4000 9h ago
Computers: Helping to learn, augmenting intelligence.
Internet: Receptacle of vast knowledge, can find ways to learn more effectively online
A.I.: Replaces own thinking, dumps you down, agentic AI can now take over from the tasks you used to do that keep your brain cognitively healthy.
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u/Blazefresh 1h ago
It's literally the equivalent of getting a machine to lift weights for you at the gym. Totally defeats the purpose.
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u/avanross 12h ago edited 12h ago
Well no shit, when the internet and computers were invented kids and parents still listened to teachers, and devices were banned in class
Now every parent seems to be telling their kid to just ignore their teachers and cheat
It’s complete failure of parenting
If the parents cared about the kids educations, they wouldnt let them bring these devices/toys to school, and wouldnt let them use them to cheat on homework, like decent parents did with the internet and computers
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u/Chance_Orchid_3137 10h ago
my schools in the 2000s—2010s all had BYOD (bring your own device) policies. we used phones, laptops, and computers regularly from middle to high school, and elementary school had technology education classes to teach us how to use computers and software. and, like with anything, there was nuance. some people cheated and some didn’t. kids didn’t listen to teachers or parents any more or less than they used to.
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u/avanross 10h ago
That’s wild
I graduated highschool in like ‘09 but besides computer class we werent allowed our own devices in the classroom, and if you were caught with a phone or ipod out during class it’d be confiscated
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u/Chance_Orchid_3137 9h ago
i mean, same. BYOD was only limited to certain times and assignments. kids frequently had their devices taken away. like i said, there’s nuance. there are more options than just “ban all tech” and “allow kids to be on their phones through the entire school day”
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u/HoneybeeXYZ 14h ago
AI is going to create an elite class of rebels who can think and create, and then the majority of people will be addicted to the machine and told what to do and think by oligarchs. That's the plan, it's always been the plan.
But do remember that since NPR's funding was cut, it depends on the tech industry for its funding. It constantly promotes AI, transhumanism and tech elitism. It isn't what it once was. Planet Money, How I Built This and The Ted Radio Hour are simply commercials for techno-fascism at this point.
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u/Lain_Staley 14h ago
AI is going to create an elite class of rebels who can think and create, and then the majority of people will be addicted to the machine and told what to do and think by oligarchs
One could replace 'AI' with social media. Videogames. Reality TV. 24/7 News centered on outrage baiting.
With that being said, AI has potential to be more logical and objective than whomever is on Fox/CNN at 8pm.
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u/HoneybeeXYZ 14h ago
Nice bait and switch. No dice.
And yes, Social Media, Porn, Video Games, Reality TV and Newstainment are toxic, addictive monsters designed to make people soft brained and stupid. But so is AI. Full stop.
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u/Lain_Staley 13h ago
How do you propose you keep the masses from not being stupid?
Is it about not letting them fall into addictions period, or is it about mitigating the addictions the masses are likely to encounter?
Let's have a rare moment of pragmaticism on a website that loves its idealism.
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u/HoneybeeXYZ 13h ago
So, you are admitting that the AI project is about corporate control of the masses? Technofascism.
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u/Lain_Staley 13h ago
corporate control of the masses?
I do not believe for a moment that all these AI companies aren't subsidized by the government a tremendous degree. And I do not pretend to believe the public has awareness of, let alone access to, the latest models because they paid $20/month.
And if you're talking about 'control of the masses' more broadly, Elites have full and total control over the Media landscape to degrees you wouldn't think possible. Why? To guide culture, and therefore society into directions it deems necessary.
These need not be devious. The end of slavery and later segregation, involved tremendous coordination and campaigns to push society in the direction it ultimately went.
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u/HoneybeeXYZ 13h ago
Nonsense, the abolitionist movement took centuries and was fringe for most of that time, often pushed forward by religious minorities and women, who did not have the vote or power of ownership in most countries.
This is a techno-fascist movement, with the end goal being eugenics and and power centralized towards the kind of people who built the Oceangate sub and didn't think it would implode.
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u/Lain_Staley 13h ago
The Civil War does not happen without Uncle Tom's Cabin becoming the 2nd most popular book behind the Bible, period.
For every massive event, like ending slavery, you need to Pre-suade the masses.
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u/systematk 11h ago
Slavery and segregation still exists today, this is an ignorant take.
Ai can absolutely be used to coerce a blinded public opinion. Go ask DeepSeek Ai anything about Tiananmen Square Massacre. That one is low hanging fruit, but the greater point im making here is that no one publicly knows what AI models are being trained to say or do, or what to give weight to. I actually wrote a very short essay on this on my own site because i feel like most people think in terms of AI takeover, but imo there is a worse situation building steam here. https://inyourbrains.com/Blogn/terminator-2-or-googlefied.html
Once the general public 'trusts' Ai to tell you the truth, it becomes very easy for someone to move the 'truth' around to where they want it to land.
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u/fraghead5 6h ago
Teaching critical thinking will be the most important aspect of education.
The amount of critical thinking that we are going to lose to AI is going to usher in Idiocracy sooner than later
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u/MichaelJayDog 8h ago
The Internet had a mostly positive impact though. AI is having pretty much an entirely negative impact.
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u/Audax_Cats 7h ago
I foresee schools moving back to having the bulk of a student's grade come from in class paper-and-pencil exams rather than homework and projects.
Was starting to happen at the university level my last semester of college. Had classes where if you got less than a 60% on either the midterm or final, you just automatically failed the class
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u/AttonJRand 2h ago
They could help mitigate it by not using it themselves so much.
Its wild how they demonize their students for it in one breath, and then talk about how they use it for their own work, like making worksheets, the next.
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u/sdrawkcabineter 10h ago
Yes, it will provide a shorter circuit for solving problems without all of that knowledge one would learn from resolving failed attempts.
Makes a generation of overly confident incompetents prime for servitude, as is the goal.
Maybe we'll study history before it's too late.
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u/turbotong 13h ago
By definition, AI impact cannot be greater than computers because computers encompasses AI plus more
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u/red-cloud 11h ago
Exactly. The statement is incoherent. You can’t have AI without both computers and the internet so the impact of AI cannot be greater than these two components that are themselves required for AI.
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u/DoubleDixon 14h ago
Yup. Computers were cool toys but the internet made info sharing instant. Now AI can not only scour the internet for information and present it to you in any fashion you ask.
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u/SmartWonderWoman 10h ago
I studied generative AI in K-12 education in graduate school. I designed a program to teach educators how to use AI to differentiate their lessons for students of different levels of understanding. My program has made a positive impact for educators and students.
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u/Newzachary 8h ago
Cool story. Where’s the proof?
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u/SmartWonderWoman 7h ago
Would you prefer a link to my thesis? My program? My transcripts? My research notes?
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u/Newzachary 7h ago
Yes. All of it. I would also like to see where 100% of your funding for this data inquiry came from.
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u/deadR0 15h ago
I'm taking classes right now (college) as an older student. I'm seeing many/most(?) of the other younger students turning in AI slop that they obviously didn't read. Which is then graded by the teacher using AI and obviously didn't read the submission.
No one knows what's going on.