Learning is hard. Let’s help kids do hard things

A lot of writing will soon be outsourced to AI, but teens still need to practice it

Photo by Ashlyn Ciara on Unsplash

“Many college students today know what our education system hasn’t yet acknowledged: Artificial intelligence (AI) has rendered traditional writing skills obsolete. It’s a change I see firsthand as a teacher of undergraduate writing classes at UCLA.”

This was the opening of John Villasenor’s post for Brookings entitled AI has rendered traditional writing skills obsolete. Education needs to adapt. His argument is that old fashioned writing may have a lot of benefits, but those will lose out to the lure of what AI can do.

I think he’s right about who will end up winning (AI). But it’s not the writing I am worried about. It’s the skills that are developed while learning to write. These include thinking, which is bloody hard in today’s attention-starved world, and figuring out what you believe, which is also no walk in the park.

The process of learning to write develops a number of skills that are hard to acquire, and that form the bedrock of other types of learning and being. These include:

• Critical thinking - Learning to weigh evidence and organize arguments. Which points support my ideas? Which don’t? Why? Which are better?

• Metacognition (the awareness and understanding of our own thought processes) - This requires reflection on what we know—and don’t know. We have to do the reflecting.

• Focus and resilience - Building the muscles to push through frustration and self-doubt.

• Empathy - Imagining how others might read and respond to something.

• A sense of identity - Forged from considering what one cares about and chooses to include.
  

When kids outsource that work to AI, they aren’t just skipping the writing. They’re missing out on some key cognitive and emotional human development.

I am biased, of course. I am a writer. I love words in a way that most humans do not. I agree with Villasenor when he points out the obvious: most people won’t be writers. “They will write much more sporadically and for more utilitarian purposes. They will write progress reports, meeting summaries, user manuals, business plans, newsletters, letters to city councils, cover letters, and instructions to a neighbor on how to feed the cat when they are away,” he writes.

But my concern is not for my profession, which has faced plenty of existential threats (the internet; the profound lack of trust people have in it). It’s that writing and reading require effort and attention. Those skills are waning and need protecting, as well as developing.

The key will be balance: finding ways to use AI to support and stretch oneself rather than just to do things for you. One student’s school encouraged the kids to upload their grading rubrics into AI, then their papers, and ask for coaching on how to get closer to a better grade. With that feedback they were asked to rewrite their papers (without AI). It became a coaching tool, not a replacement for hard work. Importantly, it was supported by an adult with a vested interest in making sure the tools were used to develop skills and not just content.

There are so many ways AI can help us with writing. It can offer structure to overwhelmed students, or provide examples to struggling writers. It can demystify genres, suggest stronger verbs, or help break through writer’s block. Used wisely, it can support learning. But it cannot replace it.

Being a resilient learner, like being a good human, means knowing how to do hard things and not always looking for the shortcut. So we need to design relentlessly for supporting kids as they do hard things so they get better at them.

I spoke to one academic head at a prestigious New York City private school who told me that after the pandemic kids in 7th grade could not sit and read for five minutes. The school created dedicated time for reading, starting with 15 minutes (which was a stretch). By the end of the year they had gotten to 45 minutes. Kids could focus better. They had built their attention. Definitely not easy but so clearly foundational to making everything else work.

The real danger isn’t that kids will use AI to cheat. It’s that they’ll stop learning how to think, how to struggle, and how to find their voice in the mess of it all. And in doing so, they’ll miss the chance to discover what they actually believe. We can design for stretch and resilience, for rewarding growth and improvement. Will we?