I am a middle school science teacher, at least for a little while longer. I’m heading back to 4th grade next year. That's my favorite age to teach.
AI is a problem in my classes, but 6th-8th isn't getting hit nearly as hard as high school (yet), and certainly nothing like higher ed.
My wife teaches high school history, and she has to guard against cheating all the time on work done outside the classroom. If it’s an essay, short response, discussion post, or anything that asks students to explain an idea, AI can basically do the work for them.
But college is getting hammered by this even more. A lot of students don’t want in-person classes anymore. They want online classes because they know they can use AI to get through the work. That’s especially true in math, where AI can walk them through problems, give answers, and make it look like they understand something they may not get at all. And too many instructors are participants in the process. They assign online work, take-home essays, or other at-home work, then seem outraged (or worse, don't really care) when students use every tool available to avoid doing the actual thinking.
My cousin is a college English professor, and he is even more worried. He doesn’t just think AI is making cheating easier. He worries that his whole profession may not exist in a few years, at least not in the way it does now. When assignments can be outsourced instantly, it degrades the whole point of teaching (and stops real learning in its tracks). And kids are becoming experts at disguising the deception. Instantly accessible advice on Reddit can walk them through the process. The high grade is becoming all that matters, no matter how it's achieved. Real learning isn't important to a lot of them anymore, even from the perspective of some really bright students.
In middle school science, it’s a little different, but I still see it. Students who can barely explain something in class will suddenly turn in a polished paragraph with wording that sounds nothing like them. They’ll copy questions into AI, get their answers, change a few words, and submit it as their own. It's way too easy to pull off and becoming more and more accepted by peers and overlooked (or ignored) by parents.
I’m certainly not against AI as a tool, but I’ve already seen how quickly it goes from “help me understand this” to “do this for me.” And the more society is willing to move work online and out of the classroom, the worse that will get. We're headed down a dark path and it's not going to be easy to change course.
