The Importance of Student Writing in an AI World
Great Hearts Academies February 24, 2023 -
The ChatGPT era has provoked angst in the education community, leading some to question whether the student essay should be abandoned in favor of other pedagogies. As educators wrestle with the implications of AI, we would do well to start with the raison d’être of education and the place of writing therein.
The purpose of education is to form the affections of the heart and to train the habits of the mind – that is, to help students know and love all that is true, good, and beautiful. This purpose does not change with advances in artificial intelligence. It was only a matter of time before computers could pass the Turing Test in essay writing. Notwithstanding the advent of bot-generated prose, the act of writing remains an invaluable process for students to master. Students write essays not simply to demonstrate their assimilation of knowledge, but because the process of creating a polished product is itself formative for the intellect. Writing shapes and sharpens thought before it discloses it.
The act of writing partners with the close reading of great books and with Socratic dialog as a foundational element of a classical liberal arts education. As Francis Bacon wrote some four centuries ago, “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” There is a reason this quote is prominently displayed on the walls of the Library of Congress. Even having read great books, students do not really know what they think until they speak and write about them.
Writing is the culmination of a pedagogical process. It begins with the independent reading of a text, progresses through civil conversation with others, and ends with students crafting and writing down well-articulated thoughts. All three of these are pieces of a whole, and no one can be substituted for or subordinated to another. Close reading of the text is a solitary act that allows the student to form initial thoughts that become fodder for discussion. Classroom conversation is a spontaneous and exploratory exchange that allows participants to challenge one another and thereby hone their ideas. Writing, by contrast, takes time and requires revision. This slow iterative process imposes discipline and precision on thought and language. Through the combination of all three, students learn to navigate in the present the great ideas of the past. The entire process plunges students into the “Great Conversation” of ideas.
In addition to helping students form their thoughts and allowing them to further their participation in the Great Conversation, the essay is also a polished product. While the liberal arts have as their proper end the formation of the intellect, they often produce an actual artifact: the mathematician produces a proof, the artist a painting, and the philosopher a written work. In fact, the great books have survived not only because the ideas themselves are enduring, but also because they are artifacts that canonize those ideas in written form. Students deserve the opportunity to present a polished product of their thoughts, as they put their own stake in the ground and claim for themselves a place in the ongoing dialog of ideas.
The specific problem of plagiarism and the more general problem of AI-produced writing are serious ones deserving of our attention, and solutions will require the full force of human reason and creativity, not to mention a strong ethical foundation and an accurate anthropology. It is important that we solve for this disruption without abandoning the student essay. Perhaps in-class handwritten assignments and something like the traditional “blue book” are part of the solution. There are also possible classroom benefits for things like ChatGPT, such as having students write a rebuttal to an AI-produced argument. In all of this, however, let us make sure to equip the next generation, who will have to face this problem head-on, with hearts and minds oriented towards the higher things. This can only be done in conversation with the great ideas of human history. Student-produced writing, specifically the essay, is an indispensable part of that conversation.
This article was written by Jake Tawney, Chief Academic Officer for Great Hearts Academies.
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