Im a teacher AI is beating us in the fight for kids minds

For almost two decades, my best friend and I have taught together in the same social studies department in the dusty urban landscape of California’s Central Valley.He teaches US History to juniors; I teach government and economics to seniors.Twenty years of summer conversations have centered on how we can get better as teachers, diving into granular elements to improve the quality of our classes.We have refined exams, tweaked schedules and assignments, and altered our classrooms in countless ways in hopes of offering a better academic product to our students.For many years we would read a book together that had relevance for both of us, such as Jon Meacham’s magisterial “American Lion” on Andrew Jackson or a history of the Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis.

We would joyfully discuss the books, pulling out different threads to bolster each of our courses in different ways.Not this summer.This year we’re grappling with a Herculean task: how to counter the reality that our students, armed with artificial intelligence technologies that were the stuff of sci-fi just a few years ago, can cheat on virtually any assignment we give them.You name it, they can use AI to cheat on it.Math equations.

Writing assignments.Document analysis.

Research.Practice tests.

Reading tasks.And it’s doing measurable damage, according to a new MIT study that found diminished memory and learning activity in the brains of students who use AI — a result completely and utterly consistent with what so many of us are seeing in the classroom.Before ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity, students had to take time to complete assignments.After all, that is the point of academic work: Committing time to focused mental labor — reading books, practicing math, writing essays — trains students’ minds to process and comprehend new ideas.Whatever students were asked to do, they were expected to take time and use their own brains.Until recently, this wasn’t considered unreasonable or outrageous.M...