Dear colleague,
When I started the research for The Will to Learn 10+ years ago, I didn't know how important it would be. I mean, I knew — student motivation multiplies a given lesson's impact like nothing else — but I didn't know how critical an issue student motivation would become in the 2020s.
First, the pandemic happened. Carrots and sticks blipped out of existence, only to come back in a jittery, jagged way. College admissions tests became optional. The grading landscape changed. A social-emotional learning (SEL) tsunami tore down standards and expectations with zealous optimism. And as I traveled around the country during 2021 and afterward, the spiritual and emotional challenge of student apathy was writ large on teachers' faces.
And then, as if we needed more, ChatGPT's November 2022 public release unleashed a phenomenon that quickly resembled a technological arms race. Company after company released new models; NVIDIA, the AI chipmaker, transformed from a large company ($270 billion market cap) to one of the most valuable companies in world history ($3.3 trillion at its November 2024 peak). Seemingly overnight, companies built on search (Google), hardware (Apple, Microsoft), and social media (Meta, Twitter/X) became AI companies, pouring nation-state amounts of money into one-upping one anothers' AI models.
In the midst of this, regular educators like you and I started wondering about our futures. Techno-utopians envisioned a future where schools would radically transform. Doomsayers argued that teaching was done for. And in the midst of the rhetoric, students began discovering and using the technologies in all kinds of ways. Most problematically (and obviously), students mired in apathy and disengagement found AI a ready workaround to the labors of all kinds of schoolwork.
Which brings us to today. Based on the most recent survey I could find regarding AI usage rates by students and the alarming adoption speeds this technology has seen in the web-connected population, nearly all secondary students with access to the Internet have used AI for school-related tasks as of today.
(This article is part of a mini-series I'm doing on thoughts I've had regarding AI this year. The mini-series culminates in a pay-what-you-want seminar I'm hosting this Friday. Details and registration are here. Your support of my work means the world, especially in light of how AI is affecting content creators like me.)
Kind of dire, Dave — any good news, dude?
So, that's a lot, right?
It is a lot.
We get to say, amidst this change we didn't choose, that the rate of change is a LOT and we weren't given an opt-in. We get to say we're not happy about it. We get to say we're not comfortable with where it's heading.
And with that said, we get to look on the bright side, too.
Because there is good news, like:
- Teaching is about promoting the long-term flourishing of young people by teaching them to master disciplines. Can AI help with that growth toward mastery? Let's put that aside for now. Instead, let's just rest in the reality that growing toward mastery of math and science and art and English and so on is GOOD.
- Young people are hungry for teachers like you and I who care about the work of learning and the transformative magic it works in the human soul. We get to be folks who represent something that's been around since before November 2022 when ChatGPT came out, who are speaking to truths more universal and secure than those confidently espoused by techno-optimists and charlatans and know-it-alls.
- The work of learning is good. It transforms the human soul. It has before and it can again. The graduates of 2025 may enter a world made uncertain by events of the past half decade or so, but it's not an entirely uncertain world. Some things remain sure. One of those things is that learning is good because learning is good.
Much love, colleague,
DSJR
Ryan Hubbard says
Hey Dave. You say above that “student motivation multiplies a given lesson’s impact like nothing else’. I completely agree and know that your philosophies are always supported by thorough research. Do you have any sources of research that point to that specific idea? As our students continue to show little growth on state tests, our DO admin is doubling down on priority standards and increasing lesson rigor. Those moves are important, but even the perfect, focused, rigorous lesson will fall flat with a group of under motivated 8th graders. I would love to have some specific research that I can share with district leaders to help plead the motivation case.