A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

This take from a Hermione-type High School senior shed next to zero new light on the subject. Yes, we know AI is redefining school and jobs and daily life. The perspective of an obnoxious A+ type student isn't helping, especially because you kind of can read between the lines that she isn't friends with these kids using AI, which would give her a deeper perspective of why and how they are using AI.

Is this what The Atlantic has come down to, publishing a complain-y piece by the class president?

EDIT: For anyone struggling with my criticism of the article, I very much agree that there is a problem of AI in education. Her suggestion which is "maybe more oral exams and less essays?" I'm sure has never been considered by teachers around the world rolls eyes.

As for how to tackle this, I think the only solution is accept the fact that AI is going nowhere and integrate it into the class. Show kids in the class how to use AI properly, compare what different AI models say, and compare what they say to what scholars and authors have written, to what kids in the past have written in their essays.

You don't have to fight AI to instill critical thinking in kids. You can embrace it to teach them its limitations.

Well said. There are kids who're struggling no matter how hard they try, because the teacher's explanation was miserable, or because they have to actually work part-time for a living. These kids need AI. Without AI they could risk being on the street when they turn 18.

Later in life, when their life is more stable, these same kids will be the first to actually use AI to learn the then necessary concepts properly.

plenty of straight-A students are in those same classes with miserable explanations or have jobs. plenty of kids who flunk out of expensive private schools and don't work. always have been since long before AI. nobody "needs" these tools. they're conveniences. it sounds more like your issue is with the timing and structure of impersonalized childhood education.

If you are in effect asserting that the quality of the instruction offered in class is considered pretty good, that is a failed assertion right from the get go. AI helps the student to make up for common failures in the quality of education.