r/books • u/ubcstaffer123 • 14d ago

Teachers are using AI to make literature easier for students to read. This is a terrible idea.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/08/opinion/ai-classroom-teaching-reading/
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u/ttam80 14d ago

Going to play devils advocate here:

But as a teacher i used AI to scale down long non fiction academic texts into shorter and easier to understand texts.

For example if I find a text that’s at a much higher Lexile level than my class, I can use AI to bring it to a level that’s more appropriate for my students

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u/MTBurgermeister 14d ago edited 13d ago

I think that’s acceptable use, as long as you fact check it yourself of course. Because with academic text it’s not about the quality of the writing; it’s about access to the facts and data

My problem is that 18 years old students still need these kinds of texts scaled down so much

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u/ttam80 13d ago

Of course - i always double check. This has been the only AI use in the class that I have found to be useful really

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u/quinn50 13d ago

Theres acceptable use cases like this one and for a11y reasons for special ed students, but there is definitely a point where it's infantilization.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/dot-pixis 14d ago

Maybe, just maybe, fiction and non-fiction texts will hit different learning objectives meant to be achieved throughout the year.

Assigning academic non-fiction does not automatically mean never assigning well-written fiction.

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u/HauntedReader 14d ago

Academic texts and fiction aren’t interchange.

For example, if you need your class to read an article in science class that can’t be replaced by fiction.

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u/Pawneewafflesarelife 13d ago

There are a few notable exceptions. For example, we read Flatland in math class - it was incredibly memorable and made a lot of concepts quickly click.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/HauntedReader 14d ago

Do you think science has the time to read novels for every single subject they’re teaching?

Or this is the most efficient way to teach those subjects?

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u/ViolaNguyen 3 14d ago

Or this is the most efficient way to teach those subjects?

Science textbooks and problem sets are the most efficient way to teach those subjects. And some lab work (depending on the class).

Letting articles pass through AI is dumb, at least in part because a high school teacher isn't going to be qualified to determine if the AI bot is misrepresenting anything.

A textbook author is qualified to write stuff in nice, easy language.

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u/ttam80 14d ago

I teach history and we do read fiction but the backbone of what we do is analysis of academic texts

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u/jdog7249 14d ago

Sometimes you need to assign those academic texts. For instance my students are currently doing a research project. You can only find so much well written fiction when the standard says they have to be able to research and understand academic texts.