Many people say it’s easy to recognise AI writing (em dashes, it’s not X, it’s Y, too many similes or analogies, etc). As well as crafting good stories, authors have to ensure their work does not read like AI. After all, editors and AI haters are ON THE LOOK OUT!!!
But there’s a problem, because in many British primary schools, teachers are turning to AI – and particularly Chat GPT – to write model texts for their students during English lessons. So how will future writers know how not to write like AI?
The Primary Problem
I hate to admit it, but as a teacher, I’ve turned to Chapt GPT as well.
Here’s an example. With precious little time to prepare for it during my working day, I was supposed to model for a class of ten year olds a biography that included relative clauses and past perfect and present perfect tenses. Asking a teacher to do that on the spot, while thirty impatient children look on, is quite a high expectation. So I asked Chat GPT to help.
You can read the prompt I used in the image above.
To be fair, Chat GPT made a decent hash of it, but went way overboard on the tenses. The past perfect and present perfect tenses were embedded in every sentence, making the tone flat, passive and robotic. I personalised Chat GPT’s output and made it more human, reducing some of the ‘hads and ‘hases.’ But I bet a lot of teachers don’t have time to do that, and more or less go with the initial response.
So if children are being taught that Chat GPT-produced model texts are the best way to write, won’t they start to write like AI as well?
I fear that, remarkably quickly, AI writing will become the norm. The expected way to write, because teachers (like me) are too time-poor to properly, and personally, model the text for the students.
Oozing Reports
AI writing is prevalent in other areas of school life: from quick, easy bite-sized facts for children to digest to end-of-year report writing, which often oozes with Chat GPT superlatives.
Then again, many schools have used derivative point-and-click sentence building software to write reports for years. In the old handwriting report days in the 90s, I would write out three model reports with different sets of adjectives in them. Then I would painstakingly copy them out, leaving room at the top and bottom of each report for personal comments. Perhaps there’s not a lot of difference
Preparing Children for an AI World
Much of the primary English curriculum is focused on grammar, to a highly sophisticated level. AI can replicate the grammar, but the Winston Churchill biography it produced for my lesson had no voice, no personality.
Perhaps now, the writing curriculum needs to pivot and put more emphasis on authorial voice and reader experience. Hopefully, this would ensure that students and future can write with some sense of personality.
Further Reading
Ancient Egypt V iPads: A Class Trip to the Sakkara Step Pyramid
Flying Away for a Work-Life Balance
Change of Lifestyle
Change of Lifestyle is a novella about how two very different people deal with teaching in a tough, inner city school in London. It covers systematic failures, teacher burnout and – of course – the pervasive fear of OFSTED.
Change of Lifestyle is available as an ebook on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.
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