AI and Homework in the Long Shadow of Long Division
I was catching up on my podcast backlog when I came upon an episode of Search Engine entitled “Playboi Farti and his AI Homework Machine” that raised some important questions about education in a world where students have access to artificial intelligence (AI) tools. In it, the podcast’s host, PJ Vogt, interviews a 13-year-old using the pseudonym Playboi Farti (😚🤌), who happily admits to using ChatGPT for his homework assignments. That conversation got me thinking about how AI tools are changing early education and led me to a key question: How can schools move beyond reactive policies and truly give students what they need?
It’s worth giving the entire episode a listen. In fact, there was a segment that sent me down another line of thinking that I’ll revisit in a later post. For now, I’ll focus on two segments from the podcast that illuminate the challenges of adapting pedagogy to changing technology.
The Unlearned Lessons of Long Division
In one early segment of the podcast, PJ Vogt recounts his childhood frustration with learning long division. As a student, he considered it “hard and stupid” since calculators could do the work more efficiently. As an adult, he feels justified in this assessment because he never uses long division in his daily life.
This anecdote highlights a fundamental problem with traditional math education that remains relevant today. When schools emphasize memorizing algorithms over developing conceptual understanding, students may never come to understand the point of learning math in the first place. Vogt’s experience is shared by generations of students (myself included) who encountered early math the same way: rote memorization, repetitive drills, and endless worksheets of identical problems. The result is as unfortunate as it is predictable: many students develop math anxiety, if not outright aversion, and never progress to understanding core mathematical concepts.
If you associate math with mechanical calculation, it makes sense to view a calculator as a math machine. In reality, calculators excel at computation but can’t contextualize a math problem, determine which operations to perform, or make meaning of results. In fact, people who don’t really understand math have an unnerving tendency to get wrong answers even with calculators at their disposal. In contrast, the everyday mathematical skill I use most often isn’t calculation but estimation, a feel for quantities and relations that helps me move through the world without reaching for my phone constantly.
America’s struggle with math education has created a vicious cycle that hinders reform. Both “new math” in the mid-20th century and more recent “common core” math standards faced resistance in part from adults who never developed comfort with basic arithmetic reasoning. Many of the parents who complain that they can’t help their kids with elementary school math homework are revealing gaps in their own understanding that their educational experiences should have addressed.
The underlying cause here is that memorizing tables and practicing algorithms does not by itself develop reasoning skills. Before students had access to calculators, it made more sense to build a math curriculum on the foundation of calculation. But schools adapted too slowly to the decreasing importance of calculation as a skill, and now the public is facing the consequences of that delay.
The lesson here is critical: new technologies can change the meaning and value of certain skills. When this happens, schools shouldn’t cling to outdated methods. Instead, they should focus on the underlying thinking skills that remain durably valuable. This lesson applies directly to the way schools should approach writing in the age of AI.
Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay
The central question of the podcast—what should be done about school essay assignments—bears a striking parallel to the long division issue Vogt mentioned in passing. If educators simply ban AI tools and continue using traditional writing assignments, they’ll likely repeat the mistakes that have undermined early math education.
Treating the five-paragraph essay as inherently valuable is just as misguided as valorizing long division as a crucial mathematical skill. Both may have served purposes in their time, but their educational value is diminishing as new technology becomes widespread. If teachers continue to assign easily generated essays, I expect students will look back on them in later years as “hard and stupid” tasks that taught them little of lasting value.
Anyone who claims to know the best way to integrate AI tools into schools today should be viewed with extreme suspicion. But purely from a practical standpoint, AI detection tools simply don’t work well enough for teachers to enforce outright bans. Educators’ time is better spent rethinking the way writing is taught than policing its production.
In a world where a book report or informational essay can be generated in seconds, teachers need new methods to ensure that students learn how to take in information, think critically, and express themselves effectively. Just as elementary math education is gradually moving beyond calculation drills, writing instruction needs to decrease its reliance on formulaic, trivially automatable exercises. This will require creativity from educators, and flexibility and openness from parents.
One possible approach might be to tease apart the educational goals of traditional writing assignments. In the same way that older math curricula attempted to develop both calculation proficiency and numerical reasoning through arithmetic drills, a five-paragraph essay creates opportunities to develop multiple skills at once: research, reasoning, argumentation, and composition. Now that students can generate these essays automatically, these skills need more direct attention, perhaps in the form of structured class discussions and collaborative writing projects supported with continuous feedback.
I’m confident that creative, dedicated educators can develop effective new writing curricula if they aren’t forced to spend their limited time playing AI detective.
Teaching All Tomorrow’s Playboi Fartis
The concern over AI is just the latest example of an issue that has recurred throughout the history of education. Changes in the world, especially new technologies, have always disrupted established educational practices and forced schools to reconsider what and how they teach. The cultural anxiety and corporate hype surrounding AI make today’s stakes feel particularly high, but whether or not this is the greatest technological disruption in the history of education, it surely won’t be the last.
What’s most important is maintaining focus on the deeper purpose of education. Calculation shouldn’t overshadow mathematical reasoning. The five-paragraph essay can’t take priority over critical thinking and communication skills. Distinguishing between process, purpose, and outcome is essential when reevaluating longstanding practices.
Educational methods are themselves technologies, and like all technologies, they evolve over time. But education’s core mission—to develop intellectual capabilities and skills that help students thrive—remains constant. Holding fast to outdated approaches undermines that mission. Although adapting to technological change is challenging, it’s the only way to ensure that students get an education worth having.
It’s futile and counterproductive to engage in an arms race against the likes of Playboi Farti. Rather than focusing on preventing students from using AI tools, educators should develop teaching methods that can’t be undermined by those tools. Only then will they have any chance of finding ways to incorporate them constructively.