Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We tend to ban the latest tools in school so that students won’t “cheat.” Today’s kids laugh at what prior generations banned.

My granddaughter is in high school (I have to take a moment to comprehend how that happened so fast). We had a short discussion last night on tools for learning. I asked if any students used Claude, ChatGPT et al. in school.

“No,” she quickly answered. “Those are not allowed.”

“When your dad was in high school, they would not allow them to use Wikipedia,” I said.

She almost fell on the floor in disbelief. She protested that Wikipedia was a good source of information and required you to find things and quote things and, and, and how could that be banned.?

Wikipedia was banned in high school a generation ago. She couldn’t imagine that.

And then I went back to my generation. Calculators were banned in college exams. My granddaughter had no response for that one. When her father and mother were in middle school, the math books had pages and pages teaching how to use calculators from Texas. The math books still do.

Those who run the schools ban a tool for one generation. Those who run the schools teach how to use that same tool to the next generation. Ban it this week; teach it next week. I guess we call this progress? I don’t know.

Still, sometimes it is funny to relate to the current generation how the old folks did silly things back in the day.