ChatGPT has been banned by schools in New York and Los Angeles, out of concern that students may use it to cheat on assignments. Despite these concerns, educators needn’t fear Al technology will transform education. Instead, it will help students take ownership of their studies and learn real-life skills. Today’s students need instruction that equips them with the skills of reasoning, analysis and argumentation rather than memorizing basic information. And Al may be a useful tool that promotes these skills.

Our experience with Al is perhaps best understood when compared with previous disturbances in education. When printed books, for example, began to occur in the mid-1400s, university professors were filled with panic. At that time, lectures depended on a specific model: Professors read from their hand-written texts, while students hurriedly copied whatever they heard. If students could simply buy the books, teachers likely thought that they wouldn’t need to come to class. Yet in practice, printing had the opposite effect: The number of universities exploded along with the total number of books. The new technology disturbed the mechanical aspect of education, but in doing so it allowed educators to refocus on higher-level skills.

Similarly, ChatGPT will replace the mechanical production of text, but it won’t decrease the need for higher-level skills. Possessing the skills to ask the right questions or state the right opinions will become crucial as the production of a logical essay becomes a simple task for a machine. Al will serve as a tool for information gathering and mechanical organization, but it won’t remove the fundamental need for critical thinking.Schools must remember that education’s value isn’t a head full of facts but a person with the skill to use these facts with the available tools to enhance their impact on the world. Al is one of these tools and, when used strategically, can improve students’ learning and performance in ways not yet seen. Therefore, it is essential for schools to provide an education that trains students in how to use the available tools for information. Unless they adapt quickly to the changing trends of education, they will be left behind by rapid innovation and change.

The latest bad but unsurprising news on education is that reading and writing scores on the SAT have once again declined. The language competence of our high schoolers fell steeply in the 1970s and has never recovered. This is very worrisome, because the best single measure of the overall quality of our primary and secondary schools is the average verbal (语言的) score of 17-year-olds. This score correlates with the ability to learn new things readily, to communicate with others and to secure a job. It also predicts future income.

The most convincing analyses have shown that the chief causes are vast curricular changes, especially in the critical early grades. In the decades before the Great Verbal Decline, a content-rich elementary school experience evolved into a content-light, skills-based, test-centered approach. Cognitive psychologists agree that early childhood language learning (ages 2 to 10) is critical to later verbal competence, because of the so-called Matthew Effect. According to Matthew Effect, those who are language-poor in early childhood get relatively poorer, and fall further behind, while the verbally rich get richer.

Clearly the key is to make sure that from kindergarten on, every student, from the start, understands the main idea of what is heard or read. If preschoolers and kindergartners are offered substantial and coherent lessons concerning the human and natural worlds, then the results of significantly improved verbal scores will show up five years or so later. By staying on a subject long enough to make all young children familiar with it (say, two weeks or so), the main idea becomes understood by all and word learning speeds up . This is especially important for low-income children, who come to school with smaller vocabularies and rely on school to pass on the knowledge base children from rich families take for granted.

Current reform strategies focus on testing, improving teacher quality, and other changes. Attention to these structural issues has led to improvements in the best public schools. But it is not enough.

Ask any parents of young children whether they’ve ever felt overwhelmed (不堪重负的), and the answer will probably be — yes. Even in the most relaxed households there can be days when things seem to be out of control, leaving parents exhausted and annoyed. Kids often don’t have an off button or a quiet voice.

Common as this feeling is, there’s a personality trait (特点) that can make everyday family life more overwhelming for some parents. Roughly 20%-30% of the population are classed as being a highly sensitive person, according to a 2018 research. People who have it may find it hard to cope with bright lights and loud noise, and feel very stressful. It can also involve a stronger understanding of other people’s feelings — empathy (同情).

According to the psychologists, being highly sensitive is not a disorder but a personality trait — a way of responding to one’s environment. “Generally, highly sensitive people tend to react particularly strongly to sensory stimulation. They have stronger consciousness. They come to realize more details,” says Michael Pluess, a psychologist specializing in the study. “They will pick up on the moods of other people, have higher empathy, process things more deeply and pick up more about the environment. Deeply affected by what they see and feel, highly sensitive people are also easily overstimulated.”

The challenges highly sensitive parents face — including stress and overstimulation in a messy environment — can affect “high quality parenting”. In the early stages of parenthood, such parents report greater stress and find parenting more difficult than other parents do.

Fortunately, though, the trait also comes with certain advantages. Recent evidence suggests that while highly sensitive parents initially experienced high levels of stress, they showed improved parenting styles by the time their babies were nine months old. In the short term, sensitive people are more easily overwhelmed with change, but when it comes to parenting, highly sensitive parents have the potential to be exceptional. They can understand their children and respond to their needs quickly and appropriately.

Since parental overwhelm can affect anyone, whether highly sensitive or not, some of the coping strategies for highly sensitive people could benefit all parents.