ChatGPT is a wake-up call to revamp how we teach writing

ChatGPT’s ability to immediately generate text in response to any prompt is disrupting education. Many are concerned about what the use of this artificial intelligence tool means for the future of writing instruction and education. Public school systems in New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Fairfax County, Va., have banned its use due to legitimate concerns that ChatGPT will lead to a rise in cheating and the decline of critical thinking.

We, as university-based educators and researchers of writing, technology, child development, and media, see these concerns as symptomatic of a bigger issue. If the educational system focused more on critical thinking and creativity, and less on filling in the blanks, the prowess of ChatGPT would not be so daunting. ChatGPT gives us the opportunity to transform writing instruction to focus on higher-level thinking skills. We should embrace the technology, not ban it.

In order to encourage higher-level thinking in the early grades, students should learn basic writing skills, how to organize their ideas, and how to write for different purposes. Students also need to learn strategies for planning, drafting, and revising, how to take and give feedback, and to write effectively for a specific purpose and audience. Students should be given opportunities to write about personal topics in compelling ways.

ChatGPT can’t be used if students cannot write prompts. Without a foundation in writing, they cannot judge whether ChatGPT has delivered on their goals and whether their prompt needs to be reframed. But, as they get older, students can begin to play with ChatGPT and use their critical thinking skills to see if its answers are appropriate.

By middle school, students could learn to use ChatGPT to help them optimize their writing process. ChatGPT might generate first drafts for students to revise and improve. This will be especially helpful for students with writing anxiety or limited reading and writing skills. Consider an essay in which students need to make an argument about whether electric cars are truly better for the environment. Students prompt ChatGPT to generate a list of pros and cons, which could be reviewed and debated in class, stimulating rich discussion. Then, students could select the ideas they find most compelling to include in their essays.

By the time students reach high school and college, ChatGPT can help a writer revise and receive feedback on their writing. Currently, students have access to several automated writing evaluation systems that judge and provide feedback on writing, such as Grammarly or MI Write. Why not use ChatGPT the same way? Students could prompt ChatGPT to improve their essay’s organization, add transition words, or offer suggestions for strengthening their conclusion.

Throughout students’ education — beginning in the earliest years — we can use ChatGPT’s limitations to teach important media literacy skills about verifying information, how bias plays a role in the information we read, and, importantly, that AI is fallible, prone to mistakes and bias. Relatedly, students must learn about the ethics of utilizing AI-generated text, understand how to appropriately credit ChatGPT as a source or coauthor, and learn to navigate the boundary between using a tool and plagiarism.

Positioning ChatGPT within writing instruction might open writing and communication as fields to struggling writers. ChatGPT could be a lifeline to the millions of students in the U.S. who cannot write proficiently. In the same way that we would not deprive a life vest to someone drowning, we should not deprive students of tools that can help them improve their written communication skills, such as ChatGPT.

Children need to learn to write. ChatGPT is a wake-up call to revamp how we teach writing — especially in the older grades once basic skills are acquired. Writing instruction should empower students to think critically, be creative, and have a personal connection to the writing process and what they’re learning. If we do this, ChatGPT is no threat.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Joshua Wilson are faculty members in the University of Delaware’s College of Education and Human Development. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek (a psychology professor at Temple University) and Amanda Delgado (a doctoral student in education at Delaware) also contributed to this op-ed.