By Peter C Baker
Publication Date: 2026-03-03 05:00:00
Two years ago, at the age of 39, I started training to be a school teacher. I wanted to teach English – to help young people become stronger readers, writers and thinkers, with a deeper connection to literature. After working as a freelance writer and novelist for 15 years, I was confident that I had something to offer. But the further I progressed in my training, the more insecure I became. One particular question annoyed me because I didn’t have an answer. What to do about artificial intelligence?
The immediate dilemma: What does it mean for English teaching that all students now have access to free online chatbots that can produce fluid, fairly complex prose on demand? This question stands at the top of a teetering heap of timeless pedagogical problems: What are we actually trying to do in school? How should we go about this? How do we know if we succeeded? I was a newbie and was negotiating all this for the first time. Adding AI into the mix felt like drinking coffee in the…