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English class, after all, is not simply about reading and writing. English is where students are meant to learn fundamental skills that help them think, speak and exist in the world with purpose. When students stop writing, they stop engaging in the thinking processes that support everything else: reading comprehension, critical literacy, critical thinking and confidence.聽

I have seen it first hand: students stand at the front of the room, holding their phone, reading a ChatGPT response word for word. The evidence is clear as day: they mispronounce or skip over words that they should know if they had written them; they use slightly altered quotations (due to ChatGPT鈥檚 copyright rules); and they do not modify the responses they receive in the slightest 鈥� submitting and reading work that is very far from what they have handed in previously. These students are not presenting ideas, they are relaying data and seemingly losing the ability to communicate efficiently.聽

The risk here is clear: Students are increasingly disengaged from critical literacy. When conferences are set up to discuss their brainstorming, rough drafts, and papers, many students are unable to defend and have a discussion about their ideas freely.聽

This is not a new phenomenon, as students in the past also struggled with doing so. However, what is more concerning today is the scale and reason for this issue. Unlike in the past, where struggles in these areas came from lack of preparation or confidence, students now are unprepared because they completely bypass the thinking process. The ease of access to AI tools like ChatGPT make it incredibly easy for even strong students to succumb to its ability to do the work for them.聽

If what we wanted was students who could simply produce work, then this wouldn鈥檛 be a problem; we could simply train them to use AI rather than train them to read critically. But that鈥檚 not what education is. One鈥檚 formative adolescent years are where we鈥檙e meant to take what exists in the world and develop our own thoughts, ideas, and convictions about them. But students are no longer developing their own thoughts and thinking critically. Instead, they are now copying and pasting text so that they do not have to do the work.聽

This is a dangerous precedent to set and can have grave implications when they are thrust into the real world to engage with the process and work. They will not have the confidence to do so, because they have not done it.聽

The world is evolving. Educators and students need to evolve with it. But we should never let mere convenience undermine the importance of the process. Artificial intelligence is not just a shortcut, it鈥檚 changing how students engage with knowledge. If we ignore this shift, we are not just undermining the classroom.聽We are also quickly dismantling foundations of critical thinking in our society.