Should You Trust Your Kids’ Education to AI?

I’ve been seeing a lot about AI in homeschool groups on the socials lately. Many times it’s suggesting AI as a tool for planning or preparing reports for registration. If you’re careful about it, AI can definitely shave a few hours out of those tasks. But the thing that virtually terrifies me is when I see suggestions like, “your kid doesn’t need to learn trigonometry because if they ever even need to use it, they can just ask AI”

The last straw was a recent search term that landed someone on my site: “homeschool AI teacher.” What a heartbreaking moment! Clearly this was a home educating parent that cares about their child enough for them to want them to have an actual teacher. And, they clearly care enough to have a lot of self-doubt about their own ability to be the teacher their child needs. If this was you, I want to tell you that your doubt is unfounded. Your child needs you, not a machine!

Your child needs you, not a machine!

You see, while AI can seem like it’s having an intelligent discussion with you. It’s not. It is simply pattern matching and producing what looks like an intelligent answer by literally plagiarising from millions of sources.

In fact, it can be incredibly easy to get AI to tie itself in a knot. One minute it will tell you that sky is blue, and the next, with some clever prompting, it’ll wholeheartedly agree that the sky is green. The one thing that I have found AI useful for is organising my rambly thoughts at times, but even doing this, I have had the bot say one thing in one breath and the polar opposite in the next.

And when it comes to maths, AI is not always so clever as it seems. Yes, it can give you the answer to a problem… some of the time. At others it can give wildly crazy answers. I once had it give me two very different values to a simple calculation in the course of a single answer. (and I wasn’t even asking about the maths!)

You have understanding, love and empathy. The machine has an algorithm.

But the most concerning thing is the notion that it can be used as a teacher. A truly skilled teacher is able to empathise with her student and help guide them to the “aha” moment by recognising and gently removing mental blocks. As a parent, you understand your child far better than any machine can. You have understanding, love and empathy. The machine has an algorithm.

True, you may be burdened by the “curse of knowledge” or you may be a victim of “maths phobia” yourself but this is no reason to outsource your child’s education to a machine. What you need is a curriculum that speaks your child’s (and your!) language.

Now, it is the 21st century and we’re fully immersed in the online world so a word of caution is due. Maths is a skill based subject. Just as you don’t become a pro athlete or master musician by watching others play, you can’t really learn maths without “getting your hands dirty” and doing the calculations by hand on good old fashioned paper.

as an engineer, … I still did most of my mathematical reasoning with a pencil and paper.

I can tell you that as an engineer, with all the computing power of a university at my disposal, I still did most of my mathematical reasoning with a pencil and paper. Sure, the results were typeset on a computer, but the thinking was scratched out on paper.

Milestone Maths is a traditional pencil and paper maths program that is designed specifically for Australian homeschoolers. We explain things fully but concisely and, from Level C onwards, we encourage the student to do the learning themselves.

But we also get that you might want a little extra support, so we’re in the process of recording short video lessons for every single lesson from Level D and up. With these videos:

• Your child can view them on their own to support independent learning;
• You can watch them to refresh your maths knowledge or see how to approach teaching it; or
• You and your child could watch and learn from them together!

Don’t settle for a machine that can’t tell what colour the sky is. Invest in a curriculum that will give your child the tools they need to figure it out for themselves!

To see if Milestone Maths is the right fit for your family, check out our product pages now.