Walking Through Fire: Finding meaning in education in the age of AI
When I was in college, my Methods instructor was a retired English teacher and administrator from the south suburbs of Chicago. I can’t remember his name, but I do remember one thing he said, repeatedly, about what made teaching English special: after you help students become better readers and writers, after you engage them in discussion and critical thinking that breaks and reforms their brains, after they develop from adolescent to young adult thinkers, he said, “They will walk through fire for you.”
They will walk through fire for you.
For the first decade of my teaching career–the ten years before the Covid-19 pandemic–I knew what he meant. I saw it. I felt it. Not in every student, but in many of the AP Lang. and Advanced Composition students at the affluent suburban high school where I taught, I saw curiosity, a real willingness to push themselves, to ask thoughtful questions, to do the work that was and is necessary for transformational learning. Which, I think, is what my Methods instructor meant: students walk through fire–for themselves, really, not for us–when they achieve that burst of insight, that lightning bolt of learning.
But do they anymore?
Last week, in my junior English class at the urban high school in the mid-size city where I now teach, two of my students were talking about how they avoided taking art classes in school because they didn’t think they should be graded for doing art.
“They try to tell us there is a right way to do art,” one said.
“I took a drawing class,” their interlocutor replied, “then I stopped drawing for two years because I hated it so much.”
“I was put into a ceramics class, but I dropped it because I didn’t want to learn how to make ceramics; I just wanted to draw.”
Perhaps the life of a high schooler is defined by the things they don’t want to do, but I was struck by the dripping negativity that leached from the mouths of these two teens. It was just a bummer to be around. I remembered my own art classes in high school; the hours sitting in the naturally-lit classroom listening to Mr. Beck’s new age CDs, drawing still life pictures of baskets and skulls at my own pace. I remember Mr. Beck giving feedback, tips really, but certainly not telling me I was doing it wrong. Was it really different then, or was my mindset the difference? Maybe I was a firewalker, and they’re just…not?
Early this April, the New York Times published an astonishing story about a young woman from South Korea who willed her way to Cremona, Italy–home of storied violin makers like Antonio Stradivari–where she is now a master violin maker herself:
An was 17 when she hatched her plan to learn the craft: She would move in with an American family in a Chicago suburb so that she could attend a local high school, master English and eventually study at the Chicago School of Violin Making. There were no such schools in Korea at the time. Her parents, distraught about her moving so far away to pursue an uncertain career path, tried to stop her.
“I didn’t eat for days,” An said. Finally, they gave in. “When I said goodbye to my parents at the airport, they were crying,” she said. “I wasn’t. I was too excited.”
Two years after moving to Illinois, she discovered that one of the best known schools for violin makers, the International School of Violin Making, was actually in Cremona [Italy]. So in 2011, at age 20, she moved to a new country again.
There, An, a rising star in the violin-making world with international awards under her belt, runs her own workshop.
The detail that sticks out to me in this story is the parents crying at the airport, but not An herself. She has a mission. She has a dream. She is walking through fire.
Now, of course I know that not every high school student will be that driven. Not everyone knows what they want to dedicate their lives to at a young age. Not everyone will have a career that reflects a passion so deep.
Few–if any–of the students who have walked through fire “for me” did so because they wanted to be poets or journalists, or because they particularly loved English class. I suspect they did so because they saw meaningful growth in themselves. I played some part in that, sure–by helping them to recognize their learning, or by challenging them with a text or task that they didn’t believe they were capable of taking on, but ultimately met with success. When students are able to achieve and observe real learning–at reading and understanding Romeo and Juliet, say; at writing a particularly detailed essay that captures a crucial experience, and reflecting on its meaning; at acing an AP Lang. practice test; at creating a project that other students look at and say, “wow” — when that happens, they feel they have truly learned–and been taught–something. Then, and only then, will they walk through fire for you.
I’m stuck on this idea, nebulous as it is, because I see that transformative learning happening less and less, and I want to reverse that trend. Not just for me, but for my students–for all students. It’s a different time, and I’m in a different place, and I know it’s not just me: according to a recent Pew Research Survey, widely shared on Facebook by distraught educators — that is to say, by educators — 58% of high school teachers report that their students show little to no interest in learning. And of course that doesn’t mean the other 42% are walking through fire; most of them merely show some interest, or occasional interest. The amount of deep interest and curiosity seems to be waning. It’s too frustrating and depressing to relitigate the reasons why. We know why.
And we know what walking through fire takes. It’s the willingness to fail. It’s the acceptance that you might not be good at something right away. It’s the shitty first draft. The hesitant question and the listening to the response–or better yet the digging to answer it oneself. The fire softens the student into a malleable clump of ore that they shape into something more purposeful and incisive.
Last summer, when I started thinking about “human-centered writing,” and the effect A.I. tools could have on teaching and learning in the English classroom, I found myself optimistic. However, the more I have thought and read, and the more I have continued to observe my students, their skills and knowledge and needs, the more pessimistic I have become.
My thinking about this crystallized when listening to the April 5th episode of the Ezra Klein Show, a conversation with Nilay Patel called “Will A.I. Break the Internet? Or Save It?”
In the conversation, Klein made the point that many people use A.I. to get through the idea stage of writing–the brainstorming, the research, the first draft:
One of the messages of the medium of A.I. is be efficient. Don’t waste your time on all this. Just tell the system what to do and do it…But you don’t get great ideas, or at least not as many of them, editing a piece of work as you do reporting it out, doing the research, writing the first draft. That’s where you do the thinking. And I do think A.I. is built to kind of devalue that whole area of thinking.
In other words, tools like A.I. eliminate the need to walk through fire–for anything.
As always, I’m left with big, impossible to answer questions: What makes us human? What is the point of education? If I had an answer, it would be this: It is the walking through fire. Maybe not all all of us get to do it. Maybe not all of us walk through fire in a classroom, guided by a teacher, but I believe that is the goal. That is what we must try for every day.
