At the beginning of the school year, each of my 11th grade teachers stated that they would not tolerate students using AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, to complete assignments. They explained that any use of AI would be considered plagiarism and could result in a failing grade.
Despite these warnings, I regularly hear my classmates laugh about how they used ChatGPT for the prior night’s homework. Their gloats are often accompanied by comments along the lines of “Work smarter, not harder” and “Teachers literally make it so easy to use AI.”
My classmates at the public high school I attend in New York City are not unusual: In a recent survey, 89 percent of students who responded said they had used ChatGPT for homework.
It’s easy for teachers to admonish students not to use ChatGPT and then blame them when they do. But educators must realize that the work they are assigning, which largely relies on rote memorization, is a perfect fit for artificial intelligence.
Rather than browbeat students for using AI, maybe educators should outsmart AI by reimagining education so that it requires more creativity and critical thought, the aspects that separate people from robots.
Related: ‘We’re going to have to be a little more nimble’: How school districts are responding to AI
Since third grade, I have been taking standardized tests. Now that I’m older, these include Regents exams, New York State tests and Advanced Placement assessments. My teachers say that our scores on these tests are a reflection of our academic proficiency, as well as a predictor of our future academic and professional success.
Yet, in my experience, all standardized tests do is reduce nearly every class, even the most interesting, to regurgitation.
Take AP Psychology. I signed up for this class because I am fascinated by the subject, especially the philosophical and open-ended aspects that require thoughtful discussion and analysis. But rather than encouraging us to engage with psychology’s intellectual premises, the class requires us to memorize roughly 400 terms.
If I can remember each term and its definition, I will have set myself up for success in the class and on the final AP exam.
Sounds fascinating and enlightening, right? Not to me. Unfortunately, this is the current state of education. Exams and teaching to the test have become so ingrained in education that little to no room is left for creative learning, rich discussion, critical thought or the development of emotional intelligence.
These are the very skills and activities that separate people from robots, yet instead of developing them, students are told to act like robots and simply spit back information on exams.
Ironically, AI is, of course, much better at being a robot than a typical student is; systems like ChatGPT can access and spit back large swaths of information better than any person.
Thus, it is no surprise that GPT-4 clocks high scores on the bar exam, SAT and multiple AP exams, including a 5 (the highest possible score) on AP Psychology.
These results show that the modern student is susceptible to AI takeover. If educators wish to effectively prevent AI from entering classrooms, they must reimagine the way students are taught.
Rethinking education in America should include a move away from teaching to the test and a push toward project-based learning, which encourages students to collaborate, examine and analyze real-world issues and apply scientific research to solve problems.
Related: OPINION: Banning tech that will become a critical part of life is the wrong answer for education
This approach might even drive test scores higher. A 2021 study estimated that students whose curricula included KIA, a project-based learning approach, would be 8 percent more likely to earn a passing score on AP exams.
While project-based learning may help lift standardized test scores, its real power lies in improving problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. These skills are vital for current students who are preparing for a world with AI.
According to one report, AI could eventually replace 300 million full-time jobs worldwide. The jobs that AI is currently unlikely to be able to replace are the ones that require problem-solving and critical thinking, as well as those that require complex communication, decision-making, creativity and emotional intelligence.
Education is a means to getting a job and being successful. Simply put, for my generation and future generations to succeed, we are going to need much more than rote memorization skills. The good news is that the skills we need are the ones that make learning fun, challenging and exciting.
We are at a crossroads. Educators, policymakers and everyone with an interest in the future of work has a decision to make: They can either continue supporting an education system that teaches students to think in ways that AI can clearly do better, or they can decide to reform education to prepare students for the not-to-distant world of the future.
Benjamin Weiss is a junior at Midwood High School in Brooklyn, N.Y.
This story about ChatGPT and high school was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.
In a utopia classroom this article sounds great, but reality states how should teachers accurately define and measure success in project-based learning?
Teachers know that we must define clear goals and criteria. We can even add our own personal experience.
But other experts say that formative and summative assessments are still needed.
How do teachers objectively Assess students content knowledge and skills?
How do teachers Assess a students process and productivity?
I love that you published an op-ed by a high schooler! I’m a firm believer that we shouldn’t ignore what young people have to say, and this young writer has articulated what I’ve been arguing for years. As a parent of a high schooler and a former elementary admin, I LOATHE standardized testing. Much of it is used not for assessing student knowledge, but to assess how well teachers are teaching the material. And based on those scores, funding is determined for future school years. So testing becomes high stakes, especially in school districts where funding is desperately needed to keep decades-old infrastructure from falling apart and throwing the barest minimum of raises at teachers to keep them from leaving the profession.
What this young author has hit on is that we are teaching students how to be drones and depriving them of the ability to think critically and innovate, especially when most adults are not relying on the things they learned in school! In the real world, doctors don’t rely entirely on what they memorized in med school; they are often googling info, reading through current research, and consulting with other doctors when they can’t determine a diagnosis or best course of treatment. Why should we expect our students to memorize everything? Instead, let’s teach them how to properly discern information, to think critically about a situation, and come up with creative alternatives. AI is a tool, much like search engines and computers, and we need to teach students how to use it safely and properly so that they can then put their best efforts into solving the problems that their parents and grandparents have unfortunately left behind for them. By not teaching students how to grow with technology, we hobble them before they even get out of the gate.
Sorry, but many of the skills you’ll need in the workforce depend upon “rote memorization”. When you are formulating new processes, work materials, etc, you are unconsciously drawing upon countless items that you have committed to memory, in order to build those things. When you have a deep discussion about any topic, you are drawing upon knowledge and experiences that you have committed to memory. All mathematics, from basic to advanced, require you to have have the functions of mathematical processes committed to memory, just so you have a starting point.
I compromised to deal with students using AI for homework. My students just don’t get homework these days. Instead, they get to do their assignments in class, the old fashioned way, with pen and paper. They have until the bell to get it done.
Human Rote memorization is not an end all. It’s a valuable elementary level skill to learn intricate subject matter (vocabulary, terms, definitions, jargon, etc), to establish the stepping stones to establish an intelligent platue to then facilitate the deeper subject matter learning, discovery, disscusion that matures and approaches mastery.
Wisdom requires serious positive experience (rote) that takes painful time.
As a total inexperienced educator (arm chair amateur), I advocate a Rich Subject Scope Introduction with Expectation Milestones Descriptions of broken down levels (Entry, Junior, Advanced). Not just simple Rote to Test logic. No, subjects are extremely more complex but the value of a presented comprehensive over view road map so student has understand of their relative progression helps in understanding the value of the human rote requirement for subject mastery.
Questions become, what mastery level is wanted for a specific subject? How fare back in the basics do I need to start at? Do I value a human understanding? At what advanced point would I apply AI for assistance?
If there’s no desire for human inclusion then let AI do it all,,,, to the human cost of ignorance!
Regarding the AI vs. current teaching style: The answer is to make sure that all AI chat responses are logged and searchable. Teachers should be able to plug student-work into the cheater-checker and it tells them what percentage of it was AI output and when.
Its awfully hard to have a productive conversation on any subject unless all parties have the same terminology. you can’t have a conversation or perform any meaningful interaction unless your using predefined words or terms.
Therefore rote is extremely important for development of any ideas or meaningful discussion.
Yeah it sucks, but thats life. do the hard work or fall behind.
Teachers are faced with the students of parents that are either too busy or despondent to teach their children how to 1) behave in class 2) respect everyone and 3) produce work in class that reflects their ability to listen to learn. You do not have to like the people that are hired to help you, just focus on producing something of consequence. It starts with the parents and ends with the children growing up into the young (and hopefully responsible) adults that they will be to continue to make the world dynamically better. Teachers are here to facilitate learning; not force it. The reason why we have the issues we have as educators today is attributed toward us being sandwiched between the disconnected on the grounds above (administration) and the people beyond (parents) the school halls. We are not your scapegoats, we are your help. Parents, please help us to help your children learn. Students, please do your part, take responsibility, don’t make excuses, don’t cheat, and learn to produce work of academic merit.
People need to realize education (especially high school since it is so basic and fundamental) is a basis for foundation, and not an inhibitor to creativity. Think about architects and engineers. No education for these fields has you start project based to design something creative. It all starts with your ‘robot’ memorization to have foundations to build something creative. Same with all sciences, mathematics, and even writing. What education needs, especially in high school, are classes on understanding emotions, creativity, self awareness, and how to communicate to people. What that may look like and be I cannot say as I am not an educator, only that learning from experiences in my life now 20 years removed from high school, I know my level of creativity and maturity would have been much stronger if I learned healthy communication and strong self awareness. Fortunately for me, I had music as a creative outlet and became involved in a great, open culture. Not the same for everyone though. Mental health education needs to be introduced, not education revamp.
I was given an unusual public education in the US, as a student in the experimental gifted education program of the 1980s. It was due to the willingness of teachers to try different methods of teaching that I was able to get such a rich and lifelong love of learning.
What was so different about it? They employed a whole-sense approach to learning. We didn’t just use aural and rote skills; instead, we were able to see, touch, smell, and sometimes taste what it was we were learning. When studying basic ecology, we went camping for a week at an environmental center run by a university. When studying the Revolutionary War, we spent 4 nights at Valley Forge while traveling to points in New York and New Jersey, learning about the battles as we went. We were also taught social skills like empathy- while working, through visiting a nursing home, and learned that everyone has a story to tell of experience and loss and living.
In combination with this whole-sensory learning model, we were assigned projects to show that we had understanding of each subject, and had 4-6 choices in how we presented that understanding.
We also learned using rote memory, for subjects that was important to have committed to the mind, like Math and Spelling.
This was all done, K-6, using a standard annual public budget. If we placed important emphasis on funding education properly, and stopped to realize and consider the outsized positive influence an educated population has on growth and innovation in a nation, then models like the ones I was lucky enough to be taught in, could be a reality in the future. Until that realization hits Congress and they begin to properly fund education again, it’s a bit of a moot point. Nothing is successful without the resources to achieve it.
When teachers are treated as robots and given no room to adapt the curriculum to their students and do what works best for their students, teaching will always be lowest common denominator – teach to the test and show basic skills. When you have parents who have not taught their children basic courtesy and social skills, you want teachers to do it and then complain when they do. You can’t teach someone who is unwilling to learn. When politicians & government are the ones directing education, this is what you will get because that it the easiest way for them to measure progress. Please, treat the teachers as the professionals they are and use what their training you will get better results. Those who can, teach. Those who can’t, pass laws about teaching.