If Kids are Writing Essays With AI, Ask Why
If kids are writing their essays with AI, we need to start asking why.
Back in 2004, are these the same kids who would have tried to find an essay online? In 1985, are these the kids who would have asked a friend to write the essay for them, or simply copied someone else’s?
If yes, then the problem isn’t AI. The problem is the essay. Whether the issue is the student’s inability to write it or their complete disinterest in it, the outcome is the same: they aren’t going to write the essay.
What has changed is that now they can hand something in. Before AI, it was easier to identify the problem. They handed in nothing, copied something, or produced work that clearly wasn’t theirs. Now AI gives them a way around the assignment that is much harder to spot.
The problem hasn’t changed though. It has just become easier for students to solve. And I don’t think most schools are addressing the real question: How do we get kids to write essays who would not normally write them?
To answer that, we have to start by asking why we are having students write essays at all. If the goal is simply regurgitation of facts, it’s boring. If the goal is to manufacture an opinion on something the student does not care about, that is also boring. If the student legitimately does not have the skills to write the essay, then our job is to provide the support they need, whether they ask for that support or not.
Not every student wants to be a writer. Some students genuinely struggle to put words on paper. If a student cannot or will not write a five-page essay, can they write one strong paragraph and complete the rest of the task another way? Can we give them choices? Why are we still so attached to everybody completing the same assignment in the same way?
We understand the value of differentiated instruction. We understand the value of choice and independence in learning. Providing more lateral movement within an assignment gives students who struggle with one part another way to demonstrate what they know.
What is the point of the assignment? Is it to see whether students can write five pages? Or is it to demonstrate knowledge? If it’s the latter, there are plenty of ways to do that without requiring students to write an essay. If the answer is the former, then we need to question what we’re teaching and why.
Unless you’re a writer, where in ordinary life do you ever write five pages of anything? Essay writing is not generally a day-to-day functional skill. It is an academic skill. Because it is primarily an academic skill, and because the underlying goal of many assignments is supposed to be assessing learning, there is no reason to treat the five-page essay as the default method of assessment in what should be a general education environment like high school.
What if students need essay writing in university or college? Then the responsibility should partly fall on universities and colleges to teach the form required within their programs. The foundational skills of writing sentences, paragraphs, arguments, explanations, and organized ideas belong in grade school. Those are useful everywhere. The larger academic form of the essay can be developed further in post-secondary education when a particular program actually requires it. Grade school education needs to focus on general knowledge and function.
What do students need to know to operate as human beings in the world? Think about the things you do in a normal day outside your profession. Those are the kinds of skills students need to develop in school: budgeting, understanding income tax, scientific inquiry, critical thinking, reading a map, communicating clearly, evaluating information, and solving ordinary problems.
High school is still heavily shaped around preparing students for post-secondary education, even though many students may never attend. Gone are the days when getting a general degree simply because university was considered the automatic next step made sense for everyone.
My own view is that post-secondary education is most clearly necessary when a profession requires specific certification, licensing, or specialized knowledge. There can absolutely be value in interest-based study, business education, the humanities, and other forms of learning, but that is different from treating university or college as the default destination for every student.
We also seem unusually attached to struggle in education. We want students to push through difficulty because we have decided that struggle itself prepares them for life. Sometimes we even make school harder than it needs to be because we believe the struggle has value. But struggle only has meaning when the person struggling believes the outcome is worth reaching.
People are usually as strong as they need to be. Part of choosing to push through difficulty is deciding whether the problem matters enough to justify the effort. For many teenagers staring at a five-page high school essay, that assignment probably ranks fairly low on the list of problems they believe are worth conquering.
When forcing them through the struggle fails, some of them will turn to AI to do it for them. Then our response as teachers and parents is to ban the AI instead of changing the problem, providing better support, or questioning why forcing them through the struggle did not work in the first place. With enough scaffolding, support, and instruction, students can learn to write. I teach kids to write every day. Support is the solution, not force or prohibiting AI.
And if support is difficult because teachers are overwhelmed, classes are too large, and workloads are unreasonable, that is a different problem entirely. The solution is likely an overhaul of the education system in a way that most people would find terrifying.
For now, though, we need to stop blaming AI for exposing problems we have had for years and never really intended to deal with in the first place. AI did not create the problem. Our avoidance of the underlying issue did. We have to come to terms with what kids can and need to do as part of a general education, and then build around that.
Stop trying to manufacture struggle and win a fight that this technologically forward generation is simply not going to engage in when they see no value in it.