ChatGPT and Teaching English

A bit over a week ago a colleague sent me an essay from The Atlantic that claimed we had reached the end of teaching high school English with the availability of ChatGPT. Coincidentally, I was teaching Ted Chiang’s brilliant story, “Truth of Fact, Truth of Feeling” which is about the adoption of technologies (one imaginary and one real) and what they do to us. I had queued up his story “Understand” (about hyper intelligence) to do next. So, on Thursday, December 15, my class and I opened ChatGPT and watched in real-time as it: retold Goodnight Mood in the style of Stephen King; retold the story of Arachne and Minerva as a country and western song; and as it wrote a brief essay comparing Malcolm X to world mythology.

Several of my colleagues were distraught over the article and a couple were aghast that I would show my class this since it certainly could address most of (if not all of) the writing prompts I have given for years. But, all apologies to the writer from The Atlantic, I don’t think we have reached the end of high school English. Ron Charles of The Washington Post also wrote about ChatGPT in his Book Club notes and lots of people are apocalyptically declaiming the end of op-eds and all sorts of things.

This past summer I read C. Thi Nguyen’s astonishing article “How Twitter Gamifies Communication” (and I am now about half-way through his book, Games: Agency as Art). I have long been interested in “gamifying” education for two reasons: 1) education and games share the idea of mastery through scaffolding; and 2) games are fun and education should be, at its best, about PLAY. Not “play” as frivolity–I am talking about the total absorption, loss of time, intensity of experience kind of play. But I am now thinking that I need to adjust my love of gamification–while retaining the best parts.

I say this because Ngyuen’s argument, which I am simplifying here, is that Twitter, with its “rankings” or “grading” through “likes” and “retweets;” through its “scoring” system changes the fundamental goals of communication into something different. Nguyen argues that the genius of games is to have us accept the rules of the game and that we adopt the values that the designer creates and then play within the game. By making communication a game, Twitter changes what we value.

But education has LONG been gamified. Schools, school systems, and too many teachers, impart the value proposition that you should chase the points or you should chase the grade. In fact, education is elaborately designed as a game but it is NOT necessarily knowledge or understanding or wisdom that is valued–it is the accumulation of points. (Now, most teachers will claim that is NOT what they are doing but then a look at a syllabus or course policy sheet or at their assessments will reveal that the points are the value. And parents and kids and administrators are all happy to agree.)

What if we adopted in our classes much more of an “apprenticeship model” and convinced people to chase knowledge or understanding–not the grade–to chase mastery and not points? We would be adopting what I have elsewhere called the Sherpa model ( the other two great roles for teachers being the Magician and the Stripper).

I am going to spend some time trying to work out how this looks in my classroom–and I am fortunate in that I have been doing so for the past few years anyway so I have something to start with. I don’t think we have reached the end of High School English; but maybe we have reached the end of teaching it in the way that, frankly, needed to end. I am optimistic–but I am also much closer to the end of my career than the beginning and so I could clearly be wrong about ChatGPT and whatever comes next.

Baccalaureate 2014: The Art of Remembering

I know a high school graduate who got cut from the baseball team twice—despite practicing inordinately hard for a whole year, giving up his part-time job to run and throw on a daily basis. This graduate also, during his high school years, got dumped by his first girlfriend, got D’s in classes, flunked an occasional test, got in trouble with his parents for not working hard, was not allowed to get his driver’s license because his grades were bad and he had at least a couple of teachers that he thought were incompetent—maybe they were.

So, I imagine that you think you would not have to ask this student what his high school and high school years were like. Well, I am glad you asked me anyway. Because even though all that first part is true about my own experiences, so is this—I got to play on a terrific soccer team, I met friends who I still have, I had many teachers that I admired and one or two whose influence on me I still feel. I also was witness to people with a work ethic I admired extravagantly, a school whose mission was inclusive and generous, and a way of living—not a lifestyle—that I could admire and emulate, however imperfectly.

A lifestyle reflects your choice in clothes, car, hair, entertainment options, and the like. A way of life reflects you core principles—your commitment to you family and friends. Your awareness of those less fortunate and your willingness to side with them. Your pride in being a person of your word in a world that thinks little of breaking contracts. I hope that at DeMatha your have learned the value of a way of life and not a lifestyle.

My particular thanks to the parents and all those who have made your education possible. They have invested in you and your future in ways that show the profound depth of their love for you. When you love someone you are concerned about their long-term well-being, not necessarily their immediate desires. This is why parents have their children inoculated against diseases. Even though the shot hurts momentarily, the long term effects can be life-saving. It is distinctly human to plan for the future; we make pulleys and promises based on our knowledge and belief in cause and effect. Your parents have sacrificed to try to give you an opportunity that will last you the rest of your life. Education is forever, an inoculation against ignorance, bigotry, small-mindedness and short-sightedness; and a religious education is forever and beyond—that’s real concern about someone’s long term well-being. You can never pay your parents back—except by doing for your own children and the children of others what has been done for you.

As you tell the story of your high school career you can focus on whatever parts of it you want to and you can make that experience whatever you want. I encourage you to make it one that reflects the best in you, one that shows you not as a victim of circumstances to whom things happened but as an agent of your own education, as the author of your own life. It’s not that I don’t remember the bad grades or getting cut or any of the other things. But I remember my responsibility and the love of my parents who sacrificed for and invested in me.

To the class of 2014: I will always be grateful for the part you have played in helping form me and in helping form DeMatha. I will be so proud to call you fellow alums this Friday.

10 Minute Mini-Lesson: Logic and Lyrics, Rhyme and Rhetoric

Here is an assignment I did with my students today that came to me based on a song I heard while I was at the gym. It was great fun and just what we needed as a brief break. I teach all boys, juniors, and this might not be appropriate for all levels (but the idea of taking something and carving it up for students to put back together would still be valid). I am always interested in logic, inferences, rhetorical skills and reasoning–and this has it all. NEVER let anyone talk you out of having FUN in class (a common temptation because then you aren’t “serious” enough).

I gave the students the following set up: What follows are the lyrics to a song. You need to make 4 lines of either 6 or seven syllables. Each line will begin, “I make a…” and then you will pick one from column A and one from column B. You’ll need to account for rhyme (where should the rhyme go?) and though there are several ways to put this together, there is really only one “best” way.

Column A                                                                          Column B

1. Rich Woman                                                               A. Blush

2. Young Girl                                                                   B. Steal

3. Old Woman                                                                 C. Squeal

4. Good Woman                                                             D. Beg

 

The clue that I gave them was that three from column A “violate” our expectation of them and one does what is “expected.” You could, of course tell them it is two lines of hexameter (or a 12 syllable and a 13 syllable line that rhyme). But you still have to get things in the correct order. The most common “mistake” my students made was assigning the Rich Woman to Steal. That makes sense of course but does not leave a particularly good answer for the Good Woman. If you gave the Good Woman “blush” then the Old Woman would be left with either “Beg” or “Squeal”–neither of which is as satisfactory as the best way.  Here is the way that George Thorogood (“Bad to the Bone”) frames it and I’ll say a few words about thinking through the “best” organization”

I make a Rich Woman Beg,

I make a Good Woman Steal,

I make an Old Woman Blush

I make a Young Girl Squeal.

Why is this better than, say switching lines 2 and 4 or 1 and 3. You would preserve the rhyme and cadence in either case. But look carefully, this way allows the parallel construction of the old/young to be paired and both the other ways separate them. (This also goes back to flawed way of doing it from above where if the Rich Woman Steals then the Old Woman/Young Woman pairing is not as strong.) In addition, this way builds from the first three lines of the women acting counter to their nature or experience and closing with the one that A) is not a woman but a girl and B) acts as we might expect.

I was so impressed with my students as they wrestled around through some mistakes–all got the rhyme though some began with a couplet–but that wouldn’t really make the best way to sing it, now would it. In any event, we had a great time–and perhaps the unintended benefit was that the rest of the class (Chapter 23 of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man) was awesome.

W.B. Yeats’ “The Folly of Being Comforted”: A Poem for St. Patrick’s Day

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats is perhaps the greatest English language poet of the 20th century—if he is not in a class by himself, then the class he is in doesn’t take long to call roll.

I present here two versions of Yeats’ “The Folly of Being Comforted.” Yeats was an inveterate reviser of his works and this one benefited substantially from his relentless tinkering. We’ll be spending time with the one on the right but I thought you might get a kick out of seeing the earlier version. Yeats is a terrific example of the kind of artist who drills so deeply into the personal that he discovers the universal. His life-long love of the great Irish beauty and revolutionary Maud Gonne is well known. Too often, though, biographers, critics and readers spend endless amount of time trying to tie every one of Yeats’ poems to some biographical element of his life. But autobiography isn’t poetry and “The Folly of Being Comforted” is poetry. You’ll find in the right margin that I have applied rhyme scheme—designated by capital letters—and a syllable count for each line in parentheses. We can quibble about the syllable count in line 4 of both versions depending on how we pronounce “easier” with two syllables /ez-yer/ or three syllables /e-z-er/. An iambic foot has two syllables and the way you end up with some 11 syllable lines is usually through the use of substitute, 3-syllable feet.

This is a sonnet—but not a traditional one—and Yeats, like a gymnast using the entire mat space in a floor routine, shows amazing creativity inside the rigorous confines of the sonnet form: 14 lines, rhymed, iambic pentameter. Often sonnets will have an octave (8-line segment) and a sestet (6-line segment) or three quatrains (4-line units) and a couplet (2-line wrap-up). Yeats rejects both of those patterns and rearranged the poem on the page in the second version so that line 6 is broken in two—to emphasize the pause and change in speakers; and he separated the last two lines to reinforce the pause and again allow the change in voice to settle in.
Take a read through the 1933 version of the poem (which is below the first version of 1902; you will need to click on the link which I had to do this way to retain the formatting–critical to reading and appreciating this poem):

“The Folly of Being Comforted” (1902)

ONE that is ever kind said yesterday: A (10)
“Your well beloved’s hair has threads of grey, A (10)
And little shadows come about her eyes; B (10)
Time can but make it easier to be wise, B (11)
Though now it’s hard, till trouble is at an end; C (11)
And so be patient, be wise and patient, friend.” C (11)
But heart, there is no comfort, not a grain; D (10)
Time can but make her beauty over again, D (11)
Because of that great nobleness of hers; E (10)
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs E (10)
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways, F (11)
When all the wild Summer was in her gaze. F (10)
O heart! O heart! if she’d but turn her head, G (10)
You’d know the folly of being comforted. G (11)

 

The Folly of Being Comforted

 

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
`Your well-belovéd's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience.'
                             Heart cries, `No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.

O heart! O heart! If she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.

 

Yeats gets three voices into this brief poem—the long-time friend (the one who is “ever kind” gets lines 2 through the first 7-syllables of line 6 or 48 of the 145 syllables [33%]), the narrator (line 1, syllables 8 and 9 of line 6, and lines 13 and 14 or 31 total syllables [21%]), and the narrator’s heart (last syllable of line 6 through line 12 who gets 64 syllables [44%]). The friend comforts the narrator with a version of the “time heals all wounds” argument. As a syllogism it might read: You fall in love with what is beautiful; your beloved gets older, her hair gets gray, the laugh lines appear; she won’t be as beautiful and so you won’t be so sad.

But look at line 6, a 7-syllable conclusion to the friend’s encouragement and a 3-syllable shift to a new speaker—the narrator’s heart, thereby giving us the 10-syllable line and the proper rhyme of /No/ with /so/. The heart of the narrator “cries” and cries out—“No.” That anguish is extraordinary—the friend’s wisdom is rejected because Time makes her beautiful over and over again with every season of her life. We realize that the narrator never loved her just for her physical beauty but instead he loved her for that “great nobleness” of character and the passion—“the fire that stirs about her”—that she brings to life. Her beauty grows ever greater because it is a mature beauty that has eclipsed the beauty of her youth—“she had not these ways” when she was in the spring of life and the summer and fall of life stretched out before her. Love is not something that can be “reasoned” away or that yields to time—and that is a powerful idea.

There is lots of wonderful sound to the poem but I’d like to point out a tension that Yeats creates that serves the poem well. The use of couplet rhyme usually means that every line has an end-stop. Consider the following:

“Order is Heav’n’s first law; and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest.
Or
“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.”
Or
“A little learning is a dang’rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring.”
Or
“True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest,
What oft was Thought, but ne’er so well Exprest.”

All of those couplets are from Alexander Pope. But Yeats creates tension by pitting the couplet rhyme with its end-stops against the use of enjambment—the lack of punctuation that causes one to read through the rhyme to the next line. Lines 4 to 5, 9 to 10, and 11 to 12 all mute the impact of the rhyme giving a conversational tone to a highly constructed form. The break in 6 suspends the rhyme of “so” and “No” to again mute it. So read and listen to the poem one more time, note the change in layout from 1902 to 1933 that helps Yeats reinforce his sense of pace; and let’s think about the movement of time, the true nature of beauty, and the permanence of love.

The Folly of Being Comforted

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
`Your well-belovéd's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience.'
                             Heart cries, `No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.

O heart! O heart! If she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.

A Teacher’s Diary: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man Chapter 14, The Chthonian

I am keeping a “teacher’s diary” of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Each video is under 5 minutes and serves as a review of the chapter as well as introducing a few of the numberless ways of thinking about this masterwork. All 25 chapters get a video as do the Prologue, the Epilogue, a couple of critical approaches, and there is a pre-reading video.

https://present.me/view/143904-invisible-man-14-the-chthonian

A Teacher’s Diary: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man 17 Clifton, Ras and the Fight Under the Streetlamp

I am keeping a “teacher’s diary” of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Each video is under 5 minutes and serves as a review of the chapter as well as introducing a few of the numberless ways of thinking about this masterwork. All 25 chapters get a video as do the Prologue, the Epilogue, a couple of critical approaches, and there is a pre-reading video.

https://present.me/view/147736-im-17-clifton-ras-broken-streetlig

A Teacher’s Diary: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man Chapter 16, The Arena Speech

I am keeping a “teacher’s diary” of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Each video is under 5 minutes and serves as a review of the chapter as well as introducing a few of the numberless ways of thinking about this masterwork. All 25 chapters get a video as do the Prologue, the Epilogue, a couple of critical approaches, and there is a pre-reading video.

https://present.me/view/147709-invisible-man-16-the-arena-speech

A Teacher’s Diary: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man Chapter 15, The Bank

I am keeping a “teacher’s diary” of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Each video is under 5 minutes and serves as a review of the chapter as well as introducing a few of the numberless ways of thinking about this masterwork. All 25 chapters get a video as do the Prologue, the Epilogue, a couple of critical approaches, and there is a pre-reading video.

https://present.me/view/147693-invisible-man-chapter-15-the-bank

A Teacher’s Diary: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man “The McGean Model”

I am keeping a “teacher’s diary” of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Each video is under 5 minutes and serves as a review of the chapter as well as introducing a few of the numberless ways of thinking about this masterwork. All 25 chapters get a video as do the Prologue, the Epilogue, a couple of critical approaches, and there is a pre-reading video.

https://present.me/view/140045-invisible-man-the-mcgean-model

A Teacher’s Diary: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man 10 “Liberty Paint Factory”

I am keeping a “teacher’s diary” of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Each video is under 5 minutes and serves as a review of the chapter as well as introducing a few of the numberless ways of thinking about this masterwork. All 25 chapters get a video as do the Prologue, the Epilogue, a couple of critical approaches, and there is a pre-reading video.

https://present.me/view/140048-invisible-man-10-liberty-paint