*Read until the end for a little laugh - this is a pun.
Livingstone is articulating my thoughts and many other teachers. Please. Listen to us. We need your support = administrators and parents - in helping students submit work without the use of GAI. I will give you one example of how I managed to do it with the support of my school through an off-label use of an app.
Livingstone, who taught at the college level wrote: Virtually all experienced scholars know that writing, as historian Lynn Hunt has argued, is "not the transcription of thoughts already consciously present in [the writer’s] mind." Rather, writing is a process closely tied to thinking...With the easy temptation of AI, many—possibly most—of my students were no longer willing to push through discomfort.
Discomfort is hard for our students and has been throughout my career. My brother blames participation trophies. Imagine if you didn't even need to participate to get your participation trophy, rather it was generated for you? That's GAI. If students cannot handle the discomfort of writing a sentence, for what future can we possibly be preparing them?
Last week, a student submitted a paragraph that was extremely confusing to read. The student used a ubiquitous Chrome extension to aid in their writing. When I asked the student to not use it next time, the fear and anxiety in their eyes was palpable. (English is the person's first language.). Whenever I bring up issues with students using this program, or AI in general, I get "the look." You know the look. It's the "get on board or get left behind" look. I can make logical arguments, provide data, even have students agree with me, but I will still be seen as the luddite driving the Flintstones' car to Barney's, and not the one with the expensive clothes.*
Are we adopting this extension because educators have proven that composition skills are no longer a valid pursuit of one's energy, just like many do not believe students reading novels are a worthwhile endeavor? I understand using this extension if a student has little hope of achieving academic fluency in English or has learning challenges that will not allow them to access language, but why wouldn't we want a neurotypical student to continue to work at develop their writing skills?
Generative AI is, Livingstone writes in some ways, a democratizing tool. Many of my students were non-native speakers of English. Their writing frequently contained grammatical errors. Generative AI is effective at correcting grammar. However, the technology often changes vocabulary and alters meaning even when the only prompt is 'fix the grammar.'
And THIS is my biggest problem with this extension is that AI their proponents are telling students that not only do their voices not matter, but that their voices are incorrect as they are.
My most successful assignment last year took draconian measures. I'm almost embarrassed to admit them. My tenth graders ended the year writing creative non-fiction pieces. To ensure that they would not use Chat-GPT, they could only work on the pieces during class, and only on a lockdown browser application that is used to give exams during distance learning. They could have nothing on their desks; only their computers. I'm sure you are thinking, this doesn't sounds like a great environment to write creatively, but rather some kind of prison. I did feel a little ill forcing them to compose like this, but the writing was the best I've seen in years. No plagiarism. No tutors. No parent help. Just the beautiful voices and writing of 15 and 16-year olds talking about their lives in their voices.
For the final drafts, they could use Google Docs because the real authentic work was already completed. There was no need to use assistive technology beyond the basics that Google Docs (or Microsoft Word) offers.
The argument to Livingstone and to me will be: the technology will improve to sound more like them. I understand how that can happen, and that would mean making some mistakes or sounding less fluent. Why is that worthwhile? The 4.0 version of these programs will have "sound like a 7th grader from the south - not Texas, not Florida."
My response circles back to the beginning. It's about cognition. Composition contributes to the art of thinking. We do not need more people in this world who cannot think. I beg you! Remember the generation of students that never learned to multiply small numbers and then couldn't function in Algebra or the generation of students who never learned to read well without phonics.
I'd like to end with something personal. I have a school-aged child who is struggling mightily with writing. It's been ongoing, but I even received an email yesterday from their teacher. One would argue that I shouldn't worry. This is not a skill that my child will need thanks to GAI. On the contrary, I want my child to be able to express thoughts in and organized manner in composed language without needing the Jetsons' housekeeper to help them. There are other methods - like talk to text - that they* may need to use, but I will never tell my child that their voice is not worth developing.
Neither should our schools.
This looks a little like me when I get upset with a student - even proportion to size.
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