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A chatbot that won't answer homework
The Socratic method
Socrates, the Greek philosopher, was known for not stating what he thought and drawing answers out of his students by asking them questions. That is where the Socratic method comes from. Estonia applied it to the school's version of ChatGPT.
Tutor, not answer machine
The result is a tool that helps a student scaffold an approach to an assignment and plan what to do, instead of handing over the finished answer. It acts more like a tutor than an answer machine, and it is meant to promote learning rather than undermine it. It matches the philosophy of the school's leaders, which favors a process-based approach to learning over an outcome-based one.
Not replacing teachers
The chatbot does not replace teachers. The school's head languages teacher, Agne Kask, doesn't believe AI will personalize education, because that would leave every student sitting alone in a room of their own, and that doesn't work. Students need to talk to each other more than ever.
How did Socrates teach by asking questions?
Plato's dialogue Meno shows Socrates questioning an enslaved boy about how to double the area of a square. The boy first guesses that doubling the side will do it, then sees from a drawing in the sand that this quadruples the area. Through further questions, he arrives at using the diagonal of the original square as the new side. Socrates used the scene to argue that knowledge can be drawn out of a person rather than poured in.
Why is one-on-one tutoring so effective?
In 1984, educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom reported studies in which students tutored one-on-one scored about two standard deviations higher than students taught in a conventional class. That put the average tutored student above roughly 98 percent of the classroom group. Bloom called the challenge of matching that result in a group setting the 2 sigma problem. Later reviews have found smaller average gains from tutoring, though still positive.
Why does learning with other people work?
Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky argued in the 1930s that children learn best on tasks just beyond what they can do alone, with help from someone more skilled. He called that range the zone of proximal development. Vygotsky held that thinking begins as conversation between people before it turns inward. He died in 1934 at the age of 37.
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