Don’t Ban AI in Schools - Make Learning More Compelling
It would be a mistake to ban AI tools or spend effort trying to detect writing generated by these systems. This is not only an exercise in futility; it misses the point. The world has changed, and our education system needs to change with it.
I got kicked out of high school when I was 18. My parents, both successful and well educated psychoanalysts, weren’t very pleased. I spent most of my time playing video games, smoking weed, and flirting with girls in the performing arts center. I was a bright kid, but I was a bad student.
I had the capacity to engage — I loved theater and film and could spend hours memorizing lines or coding theatrical light commands in the tech booth. I was even the co-head of the co-ed a cappella club! But in traditional ‘school’ subjects, I struggled. The best part of school for me was everything that fell outside of school.
The reason I excelled in the activities most refer to as “extracurriculars” was simple — they were generative. My task in these settings was to create something new, something that reflected who I was and my view of the world. In these realms my voice mattered, and it was assumed that I had something important to say.
In contrast, in many of my academic classes I was treated as a vessel to be filled with the ‘correct’ information. I was rarely asked to share my opinion, and when I did it was often met with resistance. I was seen as a problem to be fixed, not as someone with something valuable to contribute.
Senior year, when a lab report for Human Evolutionary Bio came due, I decided to take a shortcut. I was starring as Corny Collins in the school’s production of Hairspray. With limited time and a flippant attitude for the assignment itself, I took most of what my lab partner had written for his report, changed up the intro and conclusion, and sent it in.
Why students take short cuts:
There’s a good argument to be made that plagiarizing is bad because it cheats the student out of learning. The act of developing, synthesizing, and communicating your ideas into an essay helps you learn how to write, but more importantly it expands your mind and teaches you how to think.
In the mind of a teenager, however, many academic essays feel like a waste of time. These seemingly arbitrary assignments have little bearing on students’ lives or their futures. Hundreds of thousands of students write the same lab reports year after year, and their fate remains the same — a slow recession into the archives of a teacher’s hard drive. So why not take a shortcut?
While there are many problems with our current education system, one of the biggest is that we rob students of their voices. We teach students that the answers are more important than the questions, and that it’s more important to be right than to be curious. We compel them to engage with tasks that align with our core curriculum not because these tasks are the best ways to develop students’ unique voices or even their abilities, but because these tasks make it easier for us to assess their competency. The problem is that assessment is about to get a lot harder, and the shortcuts are about to get a lot easier.
The challenge with AI and education:
Large language models create huge problems for our current system. When tools like ChatGPT can generate essays and complete homework assignments on demand, questions around academic integrity and what classifies as plagiarism become more difficult to answer. There’s already a cottage industry of services that will write your essay for you, and with large language models it’s only going to get easier and cheaper.
That said, it would be a mistake to ban AI tools or spend effort trying to detect writing generated by these systems. This line of thinking evokes the ‘calculators in the classroom’ controversy of generations past. This is not only an exercise in futility; it misses the point. These tools are here to stay and can be a huge asset. But we can’t just take these new AI-powered tools and plop them on top of our current system. Let me explain why.
Over the next few years we will likely see a wave of startups that offer AI-powered tools to both teachers and students that claim to improve the current system. Platforms will be created that help teachers inexpensively generate new content and curriculum material on-demand. Others will help teachers grade assignments and provide personalized feedback to students. Students will get access to new kinds of AI study buddies that help them prepare for tests and quizzes, and yes, even write entire essays for them.
Herein lies the second problem. By embracing these tools with our current system, we risk turning education into an automated process where AI turns in work to be graded and assessed by AI. Humans become irrelevant. So what do we do?
A system where students enjoy the challenge of learning:
We need to focus on the why. What is it about our education system that is causing students to feel like they need to take shortcuts? Why do teachers feel so burnt out that they’re desperate for technology to help them do their job?
What would a system look like in which students don’t feel the need to plagiarize because they’re excited by the challenge of learning? Or where teachers love going to work because they have time to help individual students achieve their goals?
We need to design a new education system from the ground up.
