ChatGPT in High School?

Dear Ms. Smartphone: Over the winter break I gave my high school students an assignment that is causing some backlash. I asked them to write an English term paper using Chat GPT. A few parents and the administration have questioned the merits of ChatGPT in high school. This is an advanced class on the American novel, and I think the AI program will help my students see the foibles of machine intelligence. Can you weigh in on this?  Dawn, Cambridge

Dear Dawn, Thanks for the question and sharing a great idea. Perhaps DearSmartphone, the column, should try out the latest artificial intelligence (AI) program you mention, called ChatGPT . It could author this column,  the next one ….and the ones beyond that!  These days both columnists and students face new opportunities and heuristic challenges. 

No one wants a  backlash but presumably that would be even more pronounced if you were teaching English at a younger grade level, say a second or third grade class. Elementary school kids need to learn fundamentals and there is very little that can speed up or replace those steps. By high school, your students should be more proficient in the basics. Educators acknowledge that computers will be thoroughly integrated through their curriculum. (Note here that I have purposely skipped over what happens in middle school). 

Inside the Classroom:

So, with every due respect, I think that you have given your students a useful assignment, assuming that the ChatGPT lesson in high school begins with classroom discussion.  Wily students, or lazy ones, have been using outside sources, originally it was Cliff Notes, and today it’s the likes of Chegg.  It’s not a new thing but there is a special charm to ChatGPT since the sentences  it produces sound so well constructed and well, human. Fortunately for English teachers everywhere, the ChatGPT has yet to be well trained in fiction and will trip up on content inferences.

There are two things to mention to your students that should discourage them from using the program more. The most significant one is that ChatGPT does not list the references it uses to develop its dialogue.  So there is no working bibliography. That should be a red herring in the academic community.

Second, these essays on ChatGPT are about 500 words in total. A good English teacher should demand longer essays. Even an average column by DearSmartphone has more words.

The Math Struggle:

English teachers are fairly new to the ‘student versus AI program controversy’, but math teachers have struggled with it for some time. When pocket sized calculators dropped in price during the 1980s schools both standardized test makers and schools mandated that students use them. Yet there was fear that calculators would hollow out the math curriculum, because kids could do their homework assignments and get correct answers but still not understand how they arrived there. This thorny problem continues to be debated today. For a comprehensive assessment of the issues, pro and con, read here (link).

It’s of note that calculators are more likely to be barred in math exams at research universities than at two -year colleges and regional public universities.  Although calculators can help with higher level thinking, students still need to demonstrate proficiency in the basics and understand the underlying concepts. 

Outside the Classroom:

That really brings us back to why it might be OK to use the ChatGPT for high school but not in grade school. Students need to be proficient in spelling, grammar, and sentence structure before it is appropriate to introduce the ChatGPT program.  Other teachers, those  in the elementary and middle schools, will introduce it way too early, and their students may learn to use it as a crutch as they skip over the basics. That said, educators are now revisiting the loss of phonics in the curriculum since kids who are now in high school do not have the reading proficiency they expect. So depending on the acumen of your students, you still need to be cautious introducing it into your classroom.  The fanfare for ChatGPT says the software will help spur creativity- but it will not teach your students how to write.

Unfortunately that philosophy may not thread its way throughout the educational system and some students will suffer, or at least not progress. For example, tech-phobic teachers will not have heard of ChatGPT and be unaware when their students rely on it. In programs that teach English as a Second Language, naïve instructors may gush over the precision of the 500 word assignments that their students turn in without reflecting on the source that composed it.