I feel like this thread is sort of missing the obvious answer that sometimes we need mechanisms to compel children to do things they're not intrinsically motivated to do for their own good, like "learn math" and "eat food that is not candy."
RT @nberlat@twitter.com
the scandal re giving good grades to an AI essay is that we think teaching has something to do with grades.
@normative speaking as a former kid who was intrinsically motivated both to learn math and to eat vegetables and generally found the formal education system’s emphasis on jumping through hoops for grades on stuff I already knew tedious and demotivating….I don’t think “the obvious answer” is the right one.
Apparently learning to read qualifiers and conditionals wasn't something you were intrinsically motivated to learn.
Grades are nearly universally a bad proxy for learning.
Kids who are primarily extrinsically motivated realize they can cheat for the same payoff (within *that* game), and trying to fix that by making it harder to cheat rather than making it more fun to learn is a failing game.
Kids who are intrinsically motivated come out even worse off because playing the stupid grades game just detracts from the time that could be spending actually learning
