“‘Give a Crap and do Something.’ I guarantee 90% of students don’t do that,” Jierui Lin, a highly accomplished senior, stated in regards to a poster in Ms. Noti-Nugent’s room. Jierui raises a good point: do students still care about their quality of work?
With the rise of artificial intelligence that is able to produce answers to homework or complete essays that a student is assigned, many have begun to wonder what effect AI has had on the quality of student work. There is also the death of the American Dream being achievable looming over students. But has this dread stopped students from trying to achieve as much as possible?
According to Mr. Baldo, one of the counselors at our school, this is not the case.
“We have a lot of students, way more than we used to have. Around 40 to 45 initially signed up last year. It differs greatly from year to year. This started around 2020 and has grown since then,” Mr. Baldo said regarding the amount of students enrolling in college courses.
Mr. Baldo also pointed out that there are more students graduating now with honors than there were in the past, and that number is growing. Other than these two things, Mr. Baldo claims that the grades and interest in advanced courses has generally stayed the same–excluding during the COVID-19 pandemic where there was a spike in grades, likely because of the ease of the work.
Mr. Bisaccia, a teacher of many different subjects, such as psychology and economics, expressed similar observations. He believes that there has not been a decline in the quality of work pushed out by students in his recent classes; he has actually seen the opposite. He thinks that students are beginning to make smarter decisions by signing up for dual credit courses.
On the other hand, he has seen an increase in the usage of artificial intelligence within the recent years. This sentiment is shared by the previously mentioned Jierui Lin, who takes note on why students reach for artificial intelligence and why they are able to get the same grades as students who do all their work by hand.
“Currently, the system in place makes it so that grades are super inflated and quality work vs non quality work still receives the same grade, especially if someone just AI generates it,” Jierui Lin said. He also expressed that students do not have “the correct motivation” to complete work or to train their brains–which is what Jierui Lin claims the purpose of school is–because artificial intelligence can get them a passing grade easily.
Because Jierui Lin is a student, the question was posed as to whether or not he cared about his grades or quality of work. Jierui Lin expressed his passion towards the quality of his work rather than the grade that is earned from it, as the quality of work is a “manifestation” of how much work he puts in.
Another student–Mrika Syziu, a junior transfer student from Staten Island in New York City–voiced the opposite of what Jierui Lin believes. She only cares about the grades and quality of work of classes that interest her, but if she does not have an interest in the subject or does not enjoy the teacher’s style, she finds it hard to get motivated to do well in the class. She describes this feeling to rebel as a side effect of her ADHD, which makes motivation a large problem because of how dopamine is released differently in the brain if a person has ADHD. “But it’s like a mental condition, it’s not me bro,” is how Mrika Syziu put it.
Mrika Syziu also posed another reason as to why she does not care about her grades or quality of work in most classes, that being that the world is falling apart before the eyes of students.
“I could go to college and, wham, AI steals my job. Additionally, even if we manage to resolve our geopolitical differences as a species, the whole world would fall apart anyway because we forgot about climate change. I feel no motivation to work towards a future that’s just empty promises,” Mrika Syziu admitted.
While Mrika’s view is pessimistic, I, as a student myself, cannot help but agree with her and believe that many other students would as well. My theory explaining the decline of student’s work is that the world is crumbling before us. Places to live, basic clothing, and food are all getting more expensive while their quality tends to trend downwards and we–teenagers and children–are pressured to get good grades, get a job, and have a good social life all at the same time. And once we become an adult we are pressured into getting a place to live right away, get a well paying job using your education, have kids, and to pay taxes and other expenses that are only rising in price without complaining.
I, a junior, have personally seen a decrease in motivation to do work. Why that motivation is lacking, I do not know. But this is mostly seen in writing papers or doing projects in my experience. My psychology class last year had some presentations that were obviously not the best–or even close to the best–work that that student could do. And both this year and last year I have noticed that the people in my English classes are reluctant to begin their research papers despite only having a limited amount of time to complete them in class. These were the experiences that brought me to think about this topic.
However, they could both easily debunk my theory that the quality of work is declining for a significant portion of students because in my psychology class it was mixed and mostly made of seniors who just wanted to get extra credits before they graduated. And for my advanced English classes it could be because of the formatting, the lack of inspiration from the books, or they simply have other things to worry about.
With all this said, I personally believe that the main issue is lack of motivation within many students to do their best. But that does not mean that they do not care about how they perform, and the estimated statistics from Mr. Baldo shows that students are actually becoming more interested in becoming productive. And Mr. Bisaccia even said that there has not been a decline in the quality of work from students compared to previous years.
Maybe students would be more motivated if they had a future to look forward to, instead of the rapid decline of social services that help people get through life and the rise in the cost of everything. For now, though, they can find their hope by looking at other countries and figuring out what makes it easy to live there, and educate themselves on politics so they will be able to vote to help our generation out of this economic collapse.
Mr. Baldo and Mr. Bisaccia both said that there had been an increase in student productivity, but Jierui and Mrika both brought up good points that showed that that is not the entire story. Jierui was particularly concerned about AI and the inflation of grades–which may be skewing some statistics given by Mr. Baldo,who also recognized concerns over grades being inflated. Mrika was concerned with where the world would be at once she finished her education.
I agree with both Mrika and Jierui strongly. With the introduction of AI and the lowering of quality of life, students are bound to lose motivation for work, even if they don’t show it through grades.
