I won’t lie to you; I could have written most of this article using ChatGPT and you may have never known. This is unsurprising, of course, as most of the articles surrounding the new popularity of ChatGPT in education have focused on the potential for AI writing models to bring rampant cheating, with widespread use posing a threat to the academic rigor and learning we hope students are gaining in the classroom.
The fear is that students will use AI writing tools as a method to get their work done for them without ever engaging in the introspection and thought exercises needed to develop their own thoughts and arguments. New York City schools have gone as far as to ban ChatGPT from classrooms.
As a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School who has spent the past 10 years helping students learn to craft better admissions essays, and as an avid believer in academic rigor, intellectual curiosity, and the power of strong writing skills to bridge the equity gap in education, my first thoughts were also focused on the disastrous effects of students cheating their way to higher grades and into college admissions that they did not earn. I was concerned about the implications of widening the educational achievement gap. However, I think that this line of thinking assumes two very dangerous things:
- One is that students are not interested in becoming better writers and if given the opportunity would not develop these skills.
- Two that AI writing models that write content for students can only ever be antithetical to their learning and skill development.
Curious about the attitudes of 14–21-year-old students when it came to their own writing development, I conducted a brief online survey of 150 students. On a scale of 1-10, 86% of the students rated their enjoyment of writing very high with 97% of students stating that they wanted to improve their writing. However, roughly 40% of those same students stated that they were extremely burned out when it came to learning how to write. All of these students expressed interest in utilizing digital writing tools to increase their writing skills.
Embracing the power of AI
Despite this, education has thus far been reluctant to fully embrace the power of digital writing tools as a classroom aide, which is curious, especially if we want to make sure that AI writing tools (which aren’t going anywhere) actually benefit students in their quest to become better writers.
It’s even more curious when we consider that AI has the potential to bridge the outcomes gap between well-resourced and under-resourced and underrepresented students—not just in K-12 but also throughout higher education and as they enter the workforce.
The question of how we should be using AI to help build critical reasoning and thinking skills in students is largely going unasked. It’s vital we face up to the fact that AI is here to stay and ask these questions. Building the capability for cognitive skills in students so that they can better articulate their thoughts in a variety of contexts can lay the foundations for a workforce that is better able to communicate and reason effectively.
It is a fundamental skill for students in their academics and also later in the workplace to be able to craft well-reasoned and defensible arguments, organize their thoughts, and communicate effectively. These skills are at the core of every strong essay.
While we care that students are able to have independent thoughts and write in their own voice, arguably the skill we care (or should care) more about developing is their ability to think critically about text or social commentary. Yet, 75% of employers say that the students they employ are missing these critical thinking skills.
How can we leverage AI writing models to detect weaknesses in students’ reasoning and engage students in dialogue to strengthen their own thoughts and examine the holes in their own arguments?
How can AI be utilized as a classroom tool to develop reasoning skills in otherwise disengaged students?
How can we integrate AI into a debate, mock trial, Socratic learning, and classroom group work as a tool rather than a crutch in learning development?
AI writing models as a force for diversity and equity
Ensuring the development of culturally competent AI writing models that do not impose white definitions of “good” writing but instead give space for a variety of multicultural and multilingual voices is also going to be crucial.
However, discussions still need to become more prevalent on the need to recognize the validity of English dialects and varieties that do not fit the traditional American Standard English. The vast majority of AI writing models are trained with data sets that do not represent the breadth and depth of various student voices reflective of their lived experiences. When we get into the territory of AI judging the quality of students’ writing, whether in rubrics or as a grading tool for teachers, we must make sure that we are not unintentionally contributing to the whitewashing of students’ voices. This sends messages that their dialects and cultural expressions are less than their white counterparts.
Getting educators to buy in
Bringing educators into the conversation on AI writing tools is vital so that AI can be seen as a skillful tool in their arsenal, which has the potential to help level the playing field in under-resourced schools, rather than as a potential threat to their job security.
Right now, ChatGPT is free, and while there is no doubt that there will be paywalls behind some of these tools, increased widespread availability of tools that can potentially be leveraged to enhance students’ learning to democratize access to education should be championed by educators.
In response to COVID-19, many school districts are exploring extending the learning time and school day to make up for learning loss during the pandemic. Longer days will result in higher staffing costs and many studies argue that increased time is not the only answer, but targeted tutoring and smaller instructional groups will also be necessary to address literacy learning loss.
For under-resourced schools, incorporating digital learning tools may help bridge the widening education gap exacerbated by the pandemic. Incorporating affordable and accessible AI writing models into classroom curriculum might help remedy the fact that 89% of Black 8th grade students were not proficient in writing according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Teachers need more tools, not fewer, if they are to meaningfully address the state of education for today’s youth and incremental changes to the status quo of education will not be enough, not when the pandemic has threatened to undo decades of progress on the path toward educational equity.
Can AI writing models be used to help cheat and game the system? Of course. But that doesn’t mean it will. The system has already been allowed to fail underrepresented and under-resourced students year after year without meaningful change. Enrollment of Black students has declined 60% at the top 101 public colleges in the U.S. and we know that underrepresented students were the most affected by learning loss following the pandemic.
Our world is becoming more diverse, more cosmopolitan, and more complex, but without change, we will not have the diverse voices we need in the boardrooms and in the labor market because we will have failed to develop their critical thinking and reasoning skills, their ability to create strong arguments, and their ability to communicate, all because we didn’t want them to cheat.
Sydney Montgomery is the CEO of Outline It, executive director of Barrier Breakers, and the founder of S. Montgomery Admissions Consulting.
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