Irish Teacher: AI is going to transform how we teach — and how we learn

Jennifer Horgan: teacher and writer takes a look at what AI might mean for education

I hope AI brings about change in how we assess our students because as it stands my subject, English, is grotesquely assessed. 

If you are a student who excels at silent, timed essay writing, you’re golden, as are the educators who worship the academic essay above all else.

It is my unpopular belief that essay-writing should be a small part of the study of English. 

Yes, a well-written one is a beautiful thing. Some of the essays I receive from students sincerely stop me in my tracks. But to employ it as our only mode of assessment in a subject as magnificent as English is truly terrifying. 

At Leaving Cert, the fact that oral literacy goes unrepresented is highly objectionable. That there’s no room for truly spontaneous creativity or collaboration is indefensible.

AI might change this. An AI opinion column, written and published as if written by a human last week, showcased something interesting. It was perfectly accurate. Because AI is a perfect essay writer.

So we need to broaden our modes of assessment.

BROADENED BEYOND MECHANICS

Does this mean we give up on teaching the basics of grammar and spelling? Of course not. Language is a system and students must know its parts. 

However, general ability in any discipline can no longer be defined by small, human inaccuracies in essay writing.

Leaving Cert English is fixated on both the essay and on accuracy in spelling and grammar. 

According to the marking scheme, a tiny percentage of marks is given for such accuracy but I know from my time speaking to examiners that this is rarely how a student is really marked. 

If you can’t use an apostrophe, if your syntax is less than perfect, you are not getting a high grade. No chance. 

It doesn’t matter how enlightening or inspired your ideas are, you will be judged harshly.

You are less than a bot and that’s not good enough.

I can hear them already, the pedants, the intellectual snobs, screaming about how the subject would be dumbed-down. No, the subject would be broadened beyond mechanics.

In a world of AI, it might even be the case that human error is a sign of a text’s authenticity. 

I got blasted online two weeks ago for using the wrong homophone. It meant, according to one incensed commentator, that I was of inferior intellect, should never write a column again, or be allowed within an arse’s roar of a classroom.

Little does he know that I tell my students that I’m not the best speller all the time. 

But I love my subject and revel in the sounds of words every day. 

I get lost in poetry and move deliriously through the fictitious worlds of characters. I am fuelled by make-believe and motivated by the power of the human mind to disagree, reflect and imagine.

HIERARCHICAL APPROACHES

His (the homophone spotter) is a masculine, hierarchical approach to learning. 

It seeks to make the teacher feel clever and the learner feel stupid. It creates an ivory tower atmosphere in education. 

And most importantly, it misses opportunities to celebrate and encourage different ways of seeing and expressing.

I heard the great poet Paul Muldoon say recently that the only thing he knows is that he doesn’t know anything. Now he sounds like a truly intelligent person.

My hope is that in this new dawn of AI, educators will recognise that small errors do not mean that someone is less intelligent or less capable in general or even in that discipline. 

Such a student should still get access to the highest grade available.

We need humans to grow in emotional intelligence now more than ever. We need students to think critically, spontaneously and creatively in a way that the silently written timed essay won’t allow.

The existence of AI lends itself to continuous assessment and a dismissal of the essay as sole arbitrator. 

Continuous assessment will need to happen in class, in a slow, collaborative, offline, spontaneous environment. 

That will require teachers to get on board. It will also require our unions to stop blocking the path away from 100% exam subjects at Leaving Cert. 

It will require the department to give teachers adequate time and training.

We must still teach accuracy and grammar, spelling and punctuation. But we need to open our minds to the possibility of every subject beyond a fixed point of mechanical accuracy, as small and insignificant now as my incorrectly used homophone.

• P.S. This article was written by a human. Any errors in accuracy should be celebrated as proof of such.