A real person wrote (most of) this column

A retired colleague texted the other day to ask if any of my students had used artificial intelligence to write their essays.

Honestly, I don’t know, but it’s certainly possible.

Artificially generated student work is a growing concern among educators, at least based on the number of emails I’ve received, discussions I’ve heard, and articles I’ve read in the past month alone.

The latest focus of the let’s-stay-one-step-ahead-of-student-dishonesty debate is ChatGPT, a program from OpenAI that “generates human-like responses in a conversational context,” a line that was itself generated by the ChatGPT program when I asked it to write an essay about the topic.

Like many a penny ante dictator, the chatbot referred to itself in the third person as it explained that “as it interacts with users, it can improve its understanding of language and become more adept at generating appropriate responses.”

Chatbots themselves are nothing new. Chances are good that you’ve communicated with them through the online customer service departments of large companies like AT&T or Starbucks. Or whenever you’ve asked Siri what song is playing on the radio.

Education has a long history of bucking new trends in technology on the grounds that they are bad for learning. I was a student during the calculator wars of the late ’70s and early ’80s, when administrators and teachers couldn’t decide if the device was the savior or antichrist.

Before that, teachers debated erasable pens, and before even that, fountain pens. In the dim past, the profession no doubt criticized the written word itself because it short-circuited memorization.

Still, ChatGPT and programs like it are enough to give even the most progressive educator pause. As a test, I asked it to write an essay about student mental health, using scholarly sources. In less than a minute, it spit out a 466-word response that referenced the World Health Organization and the American College Health Association.

Sources were both paraphrased and quoted directly. Full citations, in pristine American Psychological Association format, were included at the end of the piece.

More importantly, however, the writing itself was sharp and clean, integrating the outside evidence in a way that I work hard to instill in students throughout the semester.

So, am I worried about ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence programs in the classroom?

Of course, but not overly so.

For one thing, the new technology speaks to the importance of something most language arts teachers I know are doing already: flipping the classroom. This means students write while they are at school, under the guidance of teachers who help them formulate claims and integrate evidence (and who monitor that the work is the students’ own).

Additionally, the issue emphasizes the need for more student choice in selecting topics. Students who are intrinsically invested in a topic are more likely to complete their own research and do their own writing, versus students who are mandated to write about things in which they have little interest.

The current kerfuffle also speaks to the necessity of ongoing conversations with students about what AI can do and what it cannot. When I made a second attempt to have ChatGPT generate a response (write a 500-word essay on the lack of effectiveness of current animal welfare laws in Ohio), the results were less promising. Sentences were awkward and repetitive, and the argument was presented in the stilted five-paragraph-essay style (albeit in six paragraphs).

Still, it probably would earn a passing grade in most classrooms.

Financial Times notes that student access to ChatGPT means colleges and universities — I would add junior high and high schools — need to become more creative in their assessments. Not every course or topic needs a formal essay for a final project.

What won’t work is doubling down on originality-detection software like Turnitin or trying to ban programs like ChatGPT. The first does nothing but enrich the coffers of the same people who develop transgressive programs in the first place; the second is like trying to close the barn door after the horse is already out.

That last sentence ends with a cliche, maybe the best proof that some of us are still doing our writing the old-fashioned way.

To see the full chatbot responses mentioned above, click here. 

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

(I originally wrote this for the Dec. 21 edition of The Alliance Review in Alliance, Ohio.) 

All the sins of literature

There’s child abuse in "Huckleberry Finn."

Regicide in "Macbeth."

Profanity in "The Catcher in the Rye."

Suicide in "Things Fall Apart."

Domestic violence in "The Color Purple."

Rape in "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Gang violence in "A Most Beautiful Thing."

Adultery in "The Awakening."

Grave robbing in "Frankenstein."

Incest in Greek mythology.

Drag racing in "The Outsiders."

Witchcraft in "The Wizard of Oz."

I’ve taught using every one one of these works in the last 20-plus years, and never have I suggested that students partake in any of the above activities. Nor has any student, to my knowledge, ever murdered a king, joined a gang, or taken part in any of the other behaviors just because they’ve read about them.

Addressing tough topics in school isn’t the same as advocating them. Most kids understand this. Some adults, apparently, do not.

Case in point: In Tennessee recently, the McMinn County school board voted 10-0 to remove Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, from an eighth-grade unit on the Holocaust because it has a few cartoon depictions of naked animals and a handful of swear words.

Spiegelman’s book recounts the story of his interviews with his father, who in turn tells his harrowing story of survival in Poland and Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and 1940s. It’s not a pleasant read, and it’s not supposed to be. We are talking about the Holocaust, when more than 6 million Jews were murdered.

The author depicts all the people in the book as animals. The Jews are mice; the Germans, cats. It’s a brilliant metaphor and a powerful testimony, worthy to stand alongside other essential works of Holocaust literature, including Elie Wiesel’s “Night.”

A story by David Corn in Mother Jones explains how the board decided to ban Spiegelman’s book. According to Corn’s recap of the meeting, one member admits he hasn’t read “Maus,” and suggests that the volume is “only the tip of the iceberg” in terms of allegedly inappropriate material.

Another board member suggests works like “Maus” could be part of an attempt to “normalize sexuality, normalize nudity, and normalize vulgar language.” He also hints that such books are a way “to indoctrinate somebody’s kids,” as though teachers in Tennessee are chortling at their desks as they hatch a subversive plot to destroy America’s youth by teaching the truth about the Holocaust.

And children need to learn that truth. The U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey in 2020 revealed that “11% of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust” and some 59% believe something similar to the Holocaust could happen again.

(Conspiracy proponents ready to pounce on mask and vaccine mandates as contemporary examples should sit right back down. No valid comparison can be made between curbing a pandemic and killing millions.)

Focusing on only nekkid mice and a few swear words misses the point of “Maus,” in the same way that focusing on only the bloody daggers in “Macbeth” misses the larger themes of unchecked ambition and crushing guilt in the rest of the play.

Far from normalizing negative behaviors, works that deal with challenging subjects provide teachable moments. After my class read “A Streetcar Named Desire,” I invited the director of the local domestic violence shelter to speak. She demonstrated how Stanley Kowalski, the male protagonist, met most of the characteristics of an abuser. At least one student recognized behaviors in a current relationship that met the criteria for emotional abuse. It was a realization that happened because of the intersection between literature and real life.

I doubt McMinn County teachers are drilling down on the nudity and swearing in “Maus,” and I doubt their students are titillated by cartoon drawings, situated as they are within a non-fiction horror story and guided to an understanding by professional educators.

Take any passage of almost any book, story or play out of context and you could question its suitability. Stitch all those passages together and you could reach the troubling – and erroneous – conclusion that U.S. schools are awash in blood, gore and smut.

The Tennessee board reached a similar mistaken conclusion about “Maus.” Let this be a lesson to all voters to elect sensible people to boards of education, candidates who support high-quality literature and don’t just go looking for dirty pictures and words.

Or, at the very least, board members who will read an entire book before deciding to ban it.