Jeffrey Fisher

Alpha School is complete BS, from their education model to their employment model to their revenue model.

If you ask me, this is the obvious end-result of education as production and customer as product.

https://jeffreyfisher.substack.com/p/alpha-schools-education-coaches-are

Alexander Kustov's complaints about academics resisting AI ("Academics need to wake up about AI") seem to be getting a lot of play, even as they drive a lot of hostility, but while he is right about quite a bit, he is also very wrong about some very important things.

the narrow (and exclusive) definition of academia in terms of knowledge production is a dead end and fatal to the idea of education. when you say “academics,” most people don’t think you mean “but not the teaching part,” and when you say "AI" they don't think you mean "but not for learning to read and write."

so if you’re concerned about precision at all, which a social scientist presumably is, you should step back and think about what you’re saying, and to whom, and refine your language. otherwise you’re just doing the same misleading clickbait-y stories that produce the bs slop research you’re ostensibly complaining about.

https://jeffreyfisher.substack.com/p/homer-was-never-called-a-stochastic

#ai #education #pedagogy #teaching

Now that we're out of the in-fighting over Chomsky's culpability with respect to Epstein (I did not even have a horse in that particular race), it's worth taking a look at what it tells us about how elite people get along even when they disagree in ways that matter.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jeffreyfisher/p/bring-back-commitments-to-communities

And in case you thought there weren't enough hot takes on sam altman's recent freudian slip, here's another one. but how many have you read that talk about Douglas Adams and Deep Thought?

https://jeffreyfisher.substack.com/p/more-human-than-human-sam-altmans?r=2g7xpl

The problem I want to highlight is that one central reason student evals don’t work is that we don’t really have a clear, concrete, specific, universally applicable framework for identifying “quality instruction” in the k-12 or higher ed environments. I would argue that we not only can’t have one, we shouldn’t even want one and shouldn’t be trying to make one. When people teach, they teach like a person. Insofar as they are working with people and not widgets, that is to be desired. Students will eventually work for people they will have to deal with one way or another, whether as bosses or colleagues or co-volunteers or whatever it is. Different people are better and worse at different things, and have different ways of going about things — some ways are arguably better or worse, but teachers in classes are often trying to do different things from each other and different things from what the students have come to expect, whether from their parents or previous schooling or their peers or their own reflection. Those different things might have to do with aptitudes or inclinations, but also have to do with specific pedagogical choices.

https://jeffreyfisher.substack.com/p/student-evaluations-dont-evaluate?r=2g7xpl

https://open.substack.com/pub/jeffreyfisher/p/lets-start-talking-about-general

If the record-high levels of voter participation in the last three elections are any indication, Americans are more engaged — even if they don’t know more — than they ever have been. If the close elections of 2016 and 2024 are any indication, the public is deeply divided. And if Biden’s uniquely decisive win in 2020 is any indication, Trump is just not that popular, despite the intensity of his cult following that can make it feel like the whole country loves him.

They don’t. He can be beat. But he is not just going to lie down, and the institutions are not designed to stop him.

So we are going to have to at least try. Or we will be lying down. #resist #resistance #uspol #politics #protest #trump #generalstrike https://open.substack.com/pub/jeffreyfisher/p/lets-start-talking-about-general?r=2g7xpl&utm_medium=ios

@fheinderyckx@mastodon.social Necessity is the mother of invention. I recall a time when some of us wondered if campus rules around sexual consent might provoke something similar. Alas.

@Manigarm@mastodon.social yes yes yes. Kafka's bureaucrats were generally pretty civil, as I recall. And it's a deeply manipulative mode, isn't it? Calmly stoke your enemy into a rage and then accuse them of incivility, being emotional, etc.