Remember those “blue books” that once dominated the 20th century classroom both in high school and college?

There still might be some old used ones from studying for an English degree still packed in an old box somewhere.

Having taught all levels high school English for nearly 30 years, the advent of AI has been a bit of a nightmare. Like finding traces of microplastics in almost all things consumed by the body, AI has infiltrated student work crossing the lines of plagiarism by allowing algorithms to write out of class papers.

However, AI is not going away. And it can have its place in the classroom with fluid controls and regulation.

This past summer NPR had an interview with the writer Dave Eggers. Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is still a favorite of mine.

As I listened to this interview, I thought about all of those AP English Language and Compostition classes I had taught and the ones I am about to teach this year and how much the need for students to find and use VOICE in their expression. Then Eggers says this:

“Well, I’ll go on my AI rant because I do this once a week with students, and I was at a high school class the other day. And when a teacher asks me, like, last words, I’m always like, well, listen, we’re in this era where all of these – my kids are 17 and 20. I’m in high schools all the time. They’re more tempted – and this is the first time in history when a whole generation is being told or tempted to have a machine write for them to express themselves.

“But I say, like, you are one of one, unprecedented in the history of human evolution. There’s only one of you, if your name is Asher (ph), you know? So, Asher, there’s never been a – there’s never been you. There’s never been you in – ever, and there never will be another one of you. So to give your voice to a machine to say, speak for me – I’m going to be silent, and I’m going to tell a machine to express myself or to tell my narrative – is such a crime against yourself. It’s so dystopian beyond anything I could do in a dystopian novel, and I did a lot. I never saw this coming. Would be an entire generation tempted and too many of them acquiescing to the silencing of their own voice in favor of a bland, unthinking machine to voice their souls. I mean, who – what dystopian novelist would ever do – think that this was possible?

“But if you can tell them, even your roughest drafts, even your most disjointed-seeming thoughts are going to be valid, and your voice is essential – the human chorus is incomplete without your voice. And I’m going to listen to whatever you say, even the rough drafts, whatever. I want those. I want to see it all. Then we can make sure that they’re heard and that they feel like there are humans out there that want to hear that voice and not the machine-processed voice. So that’s my advice. Good Lord, we’re at a really scary time, you know? But every adult has to be that person. Every teacher, every parent has to be the one saying, do not do this.“

This teacher has no problem with piles of physical papers to go through if it means that student work is more authentic and supports critical thinking skills.