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Time of India
5 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Polished performers wanted: Elite colleges and the scripted art of polite disagreement
How the 'disagreement question' is reshaping US college applications. (AI Image) In the grand circus of elite college admissions, it appears that the ringmasters have discovered a new act. After years of coaxing applicants to wear their racial or socioeconomic identities like glittering badges of struggle, universities are now demanding a fresh proof of virtue: the ability to gracefully disagree . Yes, 'disagreement' has become the buzzword of the season — not the real, sweaty, soul-testing kind, but the polished, rehearsed variety fit for an application essay or a Zoom call. According to a recent New York Times report, elite institutions like Columbia, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and others have begun asking students to recount 'a moment of engaging with an opposing opinion.' The goal, ostensibly, is to reward civility and intellectual flexibility. But here's the catch — and it's a familiar one. Much like the now-defunct diversity essays that students learned to game with borrowed trauma and repackaged ancestry, this new 'disagreement question' has already become another stage for well-scripted performances. Zooming in on simulated civility The fakery doesn't stop at essays. NYT reports that a new digital tool — co-founded by Khan Academy's Sal Khan — is being welcomed by top schools as a portfolio option. Students log into Zoom debates on topics like immigration or the Israel-Palestine conflict, not to be evaluated for the strength of their argument, but to be rated by peers on 'empathy,' 'curiosity' and 'kindness.' by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 5 Books Warren Buffett Wants You To Read in 2025 Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo If that sounds like a Netflix reality show disguised as civic engagement, you're not wrong. Virtue theatre 2.0 Let's not pretend that these exercises foster genuine discourse. What they reward is emotional choreography : Nod, smile, express mild discomfort, concede ground without conviction. It's a civility Olympics judged by unseen deans with rubrics and quotas. Elite colleges have gone from diversity checkboxes to civility checkboxes without ever examining the machinery itself. As long as essays remain open-ended moral auditions, the most polished performers — usually from the most privileged backgrounds — will dominate. And so the illusion continues: That admission to the Ivy League is about values, not veneers. The risk-averse university What's emerging here is not just student fakery. It's a deeper, institutional anxiety — an aversion to discomfort itself. By over-sanitising admissions prompts, elite colleges are shielding themselves from ideological tension long before the students even arrive. Rather than strengthening on-campus discourse, these prompts outsource it to a pre-screening ritual that privileges performance over authenticity. Applicants with the resources to workshop their responses — with tutors, counsellors, and guides — are better equipped to navigate the unwritten rules of 'acceptable disagreement.' Those without? They risk being too real and penalised. This trend doesn't just reward privilege. It also reflects how elite institutions are trying to engineer safety into spaces that should thrive on discomfort — especially when the point is to prepare students to think critically. The real fix colleges won't touch If institutions genuinely cared about fostering meaningful discourse, they wouldn't outsource it to 17-year-olds on application deadlines. They'd build it into the undergraduate experience — through serious investment in disciplines that demand intellectual rigor, curiosity, and ideological discomfort. They'd train faculty not to police disagreement, but to manage it with nuance. But that requires structural change. It's easier to tweak the application form and call it transformation. The next moral checkbox? The tragedy of the disagreement prompt isn't that it exists — it's that it will be optimised, gamed, and commodified like everything else. From 'tell us about your hardship' to 'tell us how politely you fought,' the admissions process continues to reward those who've mastered the language of institutional approval. What's next? Patriotism essays? Environmental guilt confessions? A declaration of digital detox? Until the metrics change, students will continue to simulate virtue. And colleges will continue to pretend they can measure character in 650 words — or one smiley Zoom call at a time. Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
NBC News
5 days ago
- NBC News
Sal Khan says A.I. can help teachers create ‘an exceptional classroom': Full interview
In a Meet the Moment conversation, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan tells Kristen Welker that artificial intelligence can empower teachers, personalize learning and help build more effective classrooms, despite growing concerns over its misuse.
NBC News
06-07-2025
- NBC News
Kids learning quantum physics: Sal Khan on A.I.'s promise and its risks
In a Meet the Moment conversation, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan tells Kristen Welker that artificial intelligence can transform education for the better — even as educators warn it may fuel cheating, misinformation and 6, 2025
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Khan Academy CEO predicts AI in the classroom will be like 5 'amazing graduate students' assisting teachers
Khan Academy founder Sal Khan predicts AI in the classroom will be like "four or five" helpful grad students. Khan said in a BBC interview that AI agents will act as teachers' assistants, not as their substitutes. Social skills will soon become more important than ever, he added, and students will still go to school to learn them. AI agents grading papers, monitoring student performance, learning their interests, and making suggestions to the teacher. That's what the classroom of the future could look like, according to Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan, a learning environment where AI will act as a powerful aide for teachers, not their replacement. "Imagine if your child's school district just discovered a billion dollars and they decided to hire some amazing graduate students to hang out in the classroom," Khan said in an interview with BBC. "And so, every classroom is going to get four or five of these graduate students. These graduate students are going to be on call for the teacher of the classroom — to help grade papers, to help bounce ideas, think of really creative lesson plans." The US is suffering from a teaching shortage, with instructors leaving the classroom in droves over the past few years. A combination of conditions — including heavy workloads and minimal pay — is driving away many veteran teachers, while also de-incentivizing new blood from joining the profession. For those choosing to work in the classroom, Khan said that AI assistants could help alleviate the strain while also improving student engagement. The AI teaching assistants, he said, will be able to monitor the classroom along with the actual teacher. They'll be able to help children when needed and "report back to the teacher." For example, he added, AI could determine a student's personal interests and suggest relevant adjustments to the lesson plan to increase the odds that the student would engage with the material. "'Hey, I noticed Catty is not as engaged as she was yesterday,'" Khan said. "Or, 'Look, Sal is really engaged today, why don't you go praise him on this thing that he did last night you might have not noticed?' or 'Did you know that he's really into baseball? Let's make the next example about that, just for Sal.'" "And then they're able to distill all of that and communicate to the parents, so it's not even once a term, it's almost real-time," he added. The AI agents could then debrief with the teacher at the end of class to make a game plan for tomorrow, including identifying students who may be in need of some additional one-on-one time. "I think that would be everyone's dream: the students would love it, the teachers would love it, and the parents would love it — and that's essentially what's going to happen with AI," Khan said. AI has become an increasing presence in the lives of both students and teachers, and its role in the classroom has been widely debated. Proponents of its use in the classroom, including some educators and business leaders such as Bill Gates, say it could help alleviate understaffed schools and "enhance" education. Critics of AI in classrooms point to concerns of academic dishonesty and skill atrophy. A scenario like Khan is describing, where agents learn deeply about students' personalities and skills, also opens up privacy and security concerns. Though parents may have "legitimate fears" that children could outsource their learning to AI, Khan said that even if the tech rapidly develops into a highly capable presence in the classroom, he doesn't believe it could fully take over for human educators. As AI continues to advance, social skills will become more important than ever, he said — and so will the teachers that help impart them. "It's honestly the main reason why a lot of parents, including myself, feel the need to send their kids to a physical school with other kids, with a social environment, etc.," he said. As the "human being in the room," teachers will take on responsibilities that AI just can't — like holding students accountable and developing "person-to-person" connections, he added. "What happens in school, we often focus a lot on just the standards: Can kids factor a polynomial? Can they grammatically correct a sentence?" he said. "Those skills matter, but to some degree, the more important skills are: Can you deal with conflict? Can you be held accountable? Can you communicate? Can you know how to navigate social pressures?" Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
25-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Khan Academy CEO predicts AI in the classroom will be like 5 'amazing graduate students' assisting teachers
Khan Academy founder Sal Khan predicts AI in the classroom will be like "four or five" helpful grad students. Khan said in a BBC interview that AI agents will act as teachers' assistants, not as their substitutes. Social skills will soon become more important than ever, he added, and students will still go to school to learn them. AI agents grading papers, monitoring student performance, learning their interests, and making suggestions to the teacher. That's what the classroom of the future could look like, according to Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan, a learning environment where AI will act as a powerful aide for teachers, not their replacement. "Imagine if your child's school district just discovered a billion dollars and they decided to hire some amazing graduate students to hang out in the classroom," Khan said in an interview with BBC. "And so, every classroom is going to get four or five of these graduate students. These graduate students are going to be on call for the teacher of the classroom — to help grade papers, to help bounce ideas, think of really creative lesson plans." The US is suffering from a teaching shortage, with instructors leaving the classroom in droves over the past few years. A combination of conditions — including heavy workloads and minimal pay — is driving away many veteran teachers, while also de-incentivizing new blood from joining the profession. For those choosing to work in the classroom, Khan said that AI assistants could help alleviate the strain while also improving student engagement. The AI teaching assistants, he said, will be able to monitor the classroom along with the actual teacher. They'll be able to help children when needed and "report back to the teacher." For example, he added, AI could determine a student's personal interests and suggest relevant adjustments to the lesson plan to increase the odds that the student would engage with the material. "'Hey, I noticed Catty is not as engaged as she was yesterday,'" Khan said. "Or, 'Look, Sal is really engaged today, why don't you go praise him on this thing that he did last night you might have not noticed?' or 'Did you know that he's really into baseball? Let's make the next example about that, just for Sal.'" "And then they're able to distill all of that and communicate to the parents, so it's not even once a term, it's almost real-time," he added. The AI agents could then debrief with the teacher at the end of class to make a game plan for tomorrow, including identifying students who may be in need of some additional one-on-one time. "I think that would be everyone's dream: the students would love it, the teachers would love it, and the parents would love it — and that's essentially what's going to happen with AI," Khan said. AI has become an increasing presence in the lives of both students and teachers, and its role in the classroom has been widely debated. Proponents of its use in the classroom, including some educators and business leaders such as Bill Gates, say it could help alleviate understaffed schools and "enhance" education. Critics of AI in classrooms point to concerns of academic dishonesty and skill atrophy. A scenario like Khan is describing, where agents learn deeply about students' personalities and skills, also opens up privacy and security concerns. Though parents may have "legitimate fears" that children could outsource their learning to AI, Khan said that even if the tech rapidly develops into a highly capable presence in the classroom, he doesn't believe it could fully take over for human educators. As AI continues to advance, social skills will become more important than ever, he said — and so will the teachers that help impart them. "It's honestly the main reason why a lot of parents, including myself, feel the need to send their kids to a physical school with other kids, with a social environment, etc.," he said. As the "human being in the room," teachers will take on responsibilities that AI just can't — like holding students accountable and developing "person-to-person" connections, he added. "What happens in school, we often focus a lot on just the standards: Can kids factor a polynomial? Can they grammatically correct a sentence?" he said. "Those skills matter, but to some degree, the more important skills are: Can you deal with conflict? Can you be held accountable? Can you communicate? Can you know how to navigate social pressures?"
