An educational hot take

I believe we need to look at the advent of AI (in terms of writing) in much the same way as we look at the calculator. While, in the younger grades, we can still teach arithmetic, we have to acknowledge that students will end up using the calculator for most everything. Some students just aren’t good at math so the calculator levels a certain playing field – but it can’t make a student who doesn’t understand the process become better at math. It is a result oriented accommodation but we have embraced it.

AI writing is much the same and for those students who don’t have the knack for writing, but who have gone through elementary school learning the basics, it is an invaluable aid. In fact, I believe that we should lean into it and accept that direct instruction of writing will only really work for students who think and process in a way that leads towards mastery of writing. Other students need a way to reach the end result and there is no shame in that.

What I’m saying is that, in the same way that I don’t think that math instruction past a certain level is not for everyone, and science beyond a certain level is irrelevant to many students, writing instruction, as much as we want to think that it reinforces certain foundational thinking skills, becomes a wasted effort at a certain point and we should REQUIRE that students use AI, and teach them how, in the same way that some math classes teach how to use a particular calculator. Who looks up logarithm charts and interpolates anymore? Is it a lost skill or an irrelevant one? Do we diagram sentences now? Already, students rely (for better or worse) on spell check, and I have had to discontinue spelling quizzes because the inability to remember spelling is now considered the standard, not the exceptional case.

This does not mean that we are handing off writing to AI completely. In fact, I fear that, were some of my students to type their current essays into an AI writing engine, the resultant revision might not reflect the intent of the student because the original writing is so confusing that the computer will rewrite it but be unable to discern the point of it. The student will still need to review it (but how many students second guess the answer presented by a calculator, and do the work long hand to be sure?) but mostly, students will assume that if it comes from AI it must be totally correct.

We need to shift our curriculum and reimagine what skills we want students to have. For many students, the thinking and memorization required of the study of Talmud is never going to click and I believe that insisting that those students have X number of hours of Talmud instruction causes frustration in the hearts of both student and teacher. The same goes for any discipline. Does the student who has struggled with math and has an interest in law or psychology or business have a real need to know anything about chemistry? Is there anything inherent in the content that will necessarily relevant to all students? And is there anything that the study of chemistry adds to the brain development and intellectual growth of that student that no other subject can provide?