Pro Blog Post #3 - A New Standard(ized Way of Writing)

Artificial intelligence is setting a new standard-- that's what I keep hearing. AI is assessing it, reimagining it, and streamlining it (no matter what it is-- education, healthcare, game design, construction, etc., etc.). AI is perceiving 'it' through an amalgamation of dominant ideologies, resulting in only the expected outcomes and answers, which lack language variety and responsively contextualized feedback. AI crunches the numbers all-in-parallel, compares it to extensive data on how it's already been done, and speaks out the predicted assumption of likely findings using a Large Language Model (LLMs). This is why it's not always accurate information, or even real. But AI is doing that faster than it's ever been done before, to be fair.

These are precisely the downfalls that make it an unreliable pseudo-companion, at most, in the teaching of writing.

AI as a co-creator in the English Language Arts classroom sets a new standard in perpetuating Standardized English and dominant language ideologies. Or, it might be better to say, AI makes the old standard look easy to access again (though I do not think anything has actually fundamentally been altered about the process of making meaning through text). In its writing feedback responses, this cutting-edge technology shreds language variety and lacks criticality, working instead to shave off any sign of difference. It teaches conformity to expectations. In doing so, it perpetuates and reinforces the capitalist, consumerist, and commercialist frameworks that institutions like public schooling are designed to replicate. It is argued that the sole purpose of grade school is to enable the production of workers into a hegemonic society, and AI is the perfect tool for the job! Still, I choose to believe that the 'A' carries a lot of weight in English Language Arts. Just as it does in Artificial Intelligence.

AI is a tool that is fit for very specific purposes. It is my belief that AI should not be used as an educational tool extensively. When implemented, it should be to develop critical literacies surrounding the use of these tools. While I can understand its application in various fields (especially in medical & tech-based work), I have yet to see a valuable direct application of AI as an effective, permanent part of the writing process, nor one that deeply enriches it beyond peer interaction. I could, however, envision its application as a tool for scaffolding and individualizing-- and even then, it is always our goal to move students away from assistance and toward full independence. On top of this, I reckon with its open-ended 'thneed-like' quality, a product being sold as a fix-all with a high environmental and personal cost (much higher for those already disenfranchised), but very little data that ensures the big promises on the label. 

Numerous readings have told us that some educators utilize AI to save them on valuable resources, especially the most valuable for teachers: time. These educators must weigh their critical engagement closely. (Un)Fortunately, I will never be this type of educator. I'm 'bad' at numbers. I have never fit the mold, and my neurodivergent 'type B' thinking does not align with standardized and mechanized organizations of thought, as I think AI tools particularly lend themselves to. I bring this up to seriously reckon with the idea that LLMs speak to and are trained from one combined idealized consumer, and not us, not most of our students. 

Similarly, I have read that some young writers feel a sense of comfort in utilizing the tool of AI as a judgment-free space from popular researchers as well as my peers (NCTE 2024). I was drawn to this discussion of self-efficacy and navigating anxieties related to sociality in the classroom, and it reminds me of the statement that, "in fact, one of the key purposes of learning to write — especially in an era of artificial intelligence— is teaching students how to emotionally grapple with failure and critique" (Comstock, 2023). Grappling with failure is a difficult part of any adolescent's experience. While adding additional scaffolding surely could work to meet the needs of some hesitant learners, it is difficult to call continual usage as a permanent part of the writing process simply a scaffold, but rather an aversion to the possibility of failure.

My main question is whether AI represents the standards we wish to uphold as writers, readers, and creators. Students must understand this tool critically, and they can do this without extending its damaging effects on the very human nature that writing necessitates.