A colleague said he called a meeting with his daughter’s Advanced Placement English teacher because the teacher responds to student writing using artificial intelligence. He has a problem with that. AI, the AP teacher said, gives instant feedback. When my colleague told me where his daughter attends, a suburban school that beats our school in national rankings, I joked that maybe her English teacher is onto something. He added that his office mate uses AI to construct lessons. He said it makes sense because she has a toddler at home. It saves time. I nodded yes.
But I prefer not to follow suit. Here’s why.
AI has never suffered. Every teacher I’ve valued, they labored and suffered over a lifetime to share knowledge with students. One teacher, my violin teacher, fled the Soviet Union. He showed me the Russian way to hold and draw my violin bow. Another teacher was the only Black man teaching in an all-white suburban elementary school in the 1970s. One day, he took his soprano sax from the velvet black interior of its case and played for my class. I’m still listening to jazz 50 years later.
My students are fascinated when I tell them about students who used AI and their punishment: instant F, a note in the file, a call home. They love hearing stories. I laugh with them and feel indignation with them. They are a diverse group. One can write Persian. One has a grandmother in Beirut. One can hit a golf ball more than 300 yards. AI knows nothing about them.
Another colleague sent me a link to a teen talking about a way to elude AI detectors by going to a site that “humanizes” text. The breezy youngster giving the tutorial wore the same haircut as many of the boys I teach. AI doesn’t think of cheating on its best or worst day because it doesn’t have those. To cheat is human; for tech companies, it’s a goldmine.
Tech companies want AI to fit in like a cute teen without a prefrontal cortex. So what if students don’t learn? Or who cares if AI technology such as Project Nimbus and the Gospel targeting system is used to kill children in war?
AI permeates our world. Try to use Google search without AI flashing across your screen. If you want to make AI really work, ask it a question like “How many dogs live on Mars?” That takes a second. AI says, “No dogs live on Mars” and provides a picture of a golden retriever, panting and sitting like a good girl on a Martian landscape.
When the family dog develops tumors, AI won’t take the dog to be put down, but it can produce speeches an adult might use to comfort a child. However, delivering those speeches is on you — parent and teacher — and it’s painful.
Teaching is an art. And art requires the pain of living, endurance, and love and loss. If teachers want to save time, they need to understand that saving time never makes art. If a teacher gets to use AI, why not students, who can generate AI essays to be commented upon by AI? Why should humans get in the way of a tech company’s bottom line?
AI might suggest to me: “This may be too flip. Try a more serious tone.” To which I would respond: Until you drive home from the veterinarian’s office with an empty back seat, you can’t teach my students a thing about writing, and you know nothing about the act of teaching.
Adam Patric Miller has taught high school for 25 years in three states and currently teaches in St. Louis. He is the author of the book “A Greater Monster.”
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