A Tool, Not a Shortcut by Maggie

A Tool, Not a Shortcut by Maggie - September 2025 Scholarship Essay

Over the next decade, I hope to see less relliance on artificial intelligence in education.

AI at first was a marvelling concept to fathom; from seeing its efficient, yet thorough answers, unlimited range of capabilities, and generative abilities–it was something you would only see in the movies. I believed it gave convenience and stability; a bot that could answer all your problems in life, what could be so wrong with that? However, its intelligence was so convenient that I began to realize my peers no longer needed to rely on articles, research, or even teachers anymore. Peers that I had respected turned in assignments that were completely generated, and teachers that I sought knowledge from would teach me through AI generated lessons. It seemed like it was an endless loop of generative regurgitation through an education system that was supposed to stimulate our capabilities, not undermine them. AI, once astonishing, began to feel like an overarching sentient that stripped us of our creativity and intellect.

Witnessing classmates turn in generated essays, or hearing them advise me to “Just use ChatGPT,” was nothing but disheartening. Disheartening, because I knew a part of me wanted to, knowing the fact that a chatbot could quickly give me the answers to an entire assignment, so I could enjoy a plethora of free time, was extremely tempting. Why should I pour effort into an assignment that others were spending less than 10 minutes on? Why should I even care about AI use when my own educators were using it to create these worksheets? These questions I asked myself, I realized, were reflective of what the education system had become–and it needed reform.

While AI can be a great tool to check, proofread, or generate a step-by-step way to solve a problem, it shouldn’t be the first option students go to; it should be a teacher. Educators should create more in-person, hand-written assignments, where all students require their own critical thinking skills in the classroom. It would benefit students’ cognitive abilities and create a more authentic learning process. By enabling students to ask their teacher for guidance instead of a chatbot, teacher-student relationships are improved and result in an overall more productive school environment. And by leaving no room for perfect generative answers to guide students, it leads them to embrace making mistakes and learning from them. This redesign of classrooms can significantly reduce entirely AI-prompted assignments.

The future where AI becomes a standard in our schools can be done right, as long as educators make a collaborative effort to draw clear line between using AI as a tool and a way of cheating. To truly learn is to make mistakes and grow from them; we are not human without flaws, and students in the future must realize that.