Are we in a world where one person’s “innovation” is another person’s “fabrication”?
As AI becomes more common in the world of education and learning, various questions arise about proper use by both teachers and students. Tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini have become extremely popular for researching, planning, and even doing busywork. While these AI apps can be extremely helpful, decreasing the amount of time spent on a project, their use can create a sort of double standard for different groups of people. To some, it appears that a difference exists in the definitions of what is a valid use of AI by teachers and by their students. The perception that teachers are able to use AI more freely than their students raises concerns about fairness and equality. Although many teachers and administrators use AI to plan lessons, write commentaries and assignments, and grade assessments, many students feel ashamed and fear punishment for using those same platforms for learning and writing. Why does it seem like there is an AI double standard in our community?
Notably, equity in AI use is a principle espoused in The Benjamin School Student Parent Handbook: “With the recent introduction of AI as a readily available resource to our students, both students and faculty must be very clear in their communications regarding acceptable and unacceptable use of AI resources to write or enhance a student’s own work. Students who do not adhere to the established parameters of an assignment and are found to have used and passed off AI resources as their own may be charged with violating the Honor Code.”
Teachers have been praised and encouraged to use AI for their day-to-day tasks in order to become more efficient. “I think that teachers can use AI. I would definitely say it has appropriate and inappropriate uses. I think that we should give teachers a degree of privilege to be more efficient, to cover more ground, and to take care of small paperworking issues,” stated Upper School Academic Dean Mr. Andrew Curtis.
The reality is that we exist in a society where educational tools such as reading guides, quizzes, lesson plans, and more are rapidly transitioning from being teacher-generated to AI-created. The popular opinion is that this is innovative and modern, helping teachers with timing and allowing them to put more focus on other enriching activities and assignments.
“[I use AI] all the time, all day, every day. It’s now become such common use [that] I don’t think about how often I use AI. It’s just one of those extra tools. I use it to help me brainstorm, to check for authenticity of students’ work, and to help me come up with generative quizzes. It has all become so second nature. It’s not replacing my thought process, it just helps me learn how I can improve my own writing and tonality,” explained Director of Educational Technology, Dr. Amanda Pierman.
Upper School History and Social Sciences Teacher, Ms. Shweta Naik, discusses the push to use AI, “The biggest pressure to use AI is the limited amount of time. I want to have really cool activities and lessons, but to build everything from scratch takes a significantly larger portion of time.”
If the use of AI has become normalized for teachers, why does it remain so stigmatized for most students?
In the educational lives of students, AI use has become a major taboo, with many students using these platforms labeled as cheaters and getting into serious trouble. In practice, most of these students are doing the same as teachers: using AI for homework help, writing, and idea generation, and are sometimes punished harshly, usually being suspended or getting zeroes for their choices.
Honor Council Advisor, Mrs. Suzanne McCambridge, shares how AI misuse from students is dealt with, “From an Honor Council perspective, we want students to use it [AI] as a beneficial tool for learning and for productivity. Students have to know, in advance, the teacher’s expectations. We follow precedent. Our consequences are often based on cases prior to the one that comes up. Often, there is a grade reduction; there could possibly be detentions, and we usually ask them to write a letter of apology. Those are typical consequences for AI usage.”
While all of these punishments and accusations may create a negative connotation about AI, many students are using these platforms to work smarter, not to cheat.
In a survey of 15 A Period Study Hall students, 86% of students reported using AI and found it helpful for schoolwork, while 14% did not use it or found it unhelpful.
One student who participated in the poll stated, “I use AI to help me study for assessments, but I don’t ask it to do my work for me.”
These very different ways AI is received based on the user’s role — teacher or student– suggest an unfairness and a double standard. If teachers are buying into the use of AI as a tool to help with efficiency and learning, how is it fair that students, too, cannot take advantage of these benefits?
As AI has become almost forbidden for students, the concept also limits students from learning how to use it in a positive and helpful way. If students are not allowed to utilize AI freely, this could create more dishonesty and a lack of responsibility with the tool. This double standard also creates distrust and resentment between the two groups as students question teachers for using the same tool they denounce in class.
While this double standard can be seen as unfair, it can also be viewed as necessary to ensure honesty and authentic work. Students may have a greater ability to misuse AI as an idea generation tool rather than a learning assistance tool, which could be an issue for their academics and growth as people.
One use of AI that would be considered inappropriate for students would be using the application to create a topic sentence for an English or history essay. This would be an issue because topic sentences are supposed to be authentic, original, and creative. But, is there really a difference between students doing this and teachers using AI to craft a comment on a progress report or formulate an interesting hook for a college recommendation? This concern of a double standard is valid, as many teachers use AI to do exactly this.
Is it not beneficial to teach students how to ethically and appropriately use AI, rather than banning it? The education system must grow and change with this new technology, not fight and avoid it. Today’s seniors may become the school’s next teachers and college counselors.
“In my time at Benjamin, having graduated in 2017, AI wasn’t really a thing on campus. When it came to getting help on assignments, there was thesaurus.com for vocabulary, Wikipedia for history, and for math, there was Wolfram Alpha to solve problems. Some students would even Google research paper or essay prompts and find full documents loaded with prompts and words,” explained US History Teacher Mr. Zachary Rubiano. “Now, with a variety of AI databases like ChatGPT, we see vast quantities of student work being done for you at the press of a button. This new introduction of AI has changed things, and how students use their brains to analyze, even going so far as to use ChatGPT to create questions to ask ChatGPT. This change with AI has altered a lot, as back in my time here, you had to at least know the questions you wanted to Google and research, now students can simply ask ChatGPT for them, erasing even some of the part of critical thinking that goes into looking for answers.”
The double standard between how teachers and students are allowed to use AI in the classroom has become unignorable. Many teachers use AI to help them do their jobs, while shaming students who do practically the same thing. While AI can be difficult to manage and contain, it is worthwhile to teach students how to use it effectively and fairly, ensuring they get clear guidelines and allowance to learn more about these tools. If this occurs, both teachers and students could gain something from the use of AI tools in their everyday lives. As AI becomes a much more prominent and improved means of productivity, it should be allowed for all types of people, not just those leading the class.
