‘Use it wisely’: Classical Christian schools wrestle with AI integration

Classical Christian schools, which base their learning on traditions built over the last 2,000 years, are facing a new dilemma: how to deal with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

David Goodwin, president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, is trying to help his 550 member institutions answer that question.

“My concern is that we’re not thinking, we’re just reacting,” he told The Lion. Goodwin is also writing a paper on the subject to frame the issue and solicit input from members. 

Classical Christian education trains students to learn, synthesize and evaluate subjects using material such as classical literature and related works, while also seeking to shape character and a Christian worldview. The approach has proven quite successful since its renewal in the United States around 1980. 

One motivation underlying its resurgence was a belief that traditional Christian schools were sheltering students from the world, Goodwin says. 

“The objective of classical Christian education was to not take anything off the table,” he says. “In other words, don’t shelter kids, but train them how to see all things in relationship to Christ and his kingdom. 

“So when it comes to AI, if we were to say, ‘That’s the one thing we don’t want you messing with,’ then are we in the camp of ‘we’re going to shelter you because it’s a scary thing?’ Well, even if it is a scary thing, it fits into the purpose of our operation, which is to train students to take all thoughts captive to Christ, and so we want to model that.” 

Many schools got caught flat-footed two or three years ago, Goodwin says, when students began using AI to write major papers such as their senior theses. Since most didn’t have a specific AI policy, the students weren’t technically breaking the rules, even if they weren’t meeting the intentions of the assignment. 

“Now most schools have a rule that you can’t use AI to write any part of your paper,” Goodwin says. The technology even “tells on itself” because AI can determine the probability that a paper was machine-written. 

There are legitimate uses for artificial intelligence, according to Goodwin, but it depends on the goal of the assignment. If the lesson is on how to format a works cited page, then make the students do the work. But if they’ve already mastered that skill, then using AI can speed up the process. 

“I think it’s got to be very dependent on what you’re asking the student to do,” he says. “I think what’s happening out there is right now people are scared to death of AI because [it’s] so much more powerful than anything we could imagine.” 

Goodwin, who spent 15 years working for tech giant Hewlett-Packard before finding his way into education, views AI as a tool not unlike a spellchecker or grammar software. 

“I’m old enough to remember people criticizing word processors in 1980 when I was writing papers for college because they spellcheck you, and there’s people [today] who criticize the use of Grammarly. AI in some respects is just a very elaborate form of one of those types of technologies.” 

Classical Christian schools already restrict the use of technology, generally avoiding videos and screens in the elementary years and introducing laptops in junior high and high school for students to research and write papers. 

“It’s basically the idea that screen time is bad for kids and so to keep it limited,” Goodwin says, “but we’re not going to make them use a manual typewriter, so you’ve got to keep it reasonable.” 

Classical schools want to raise up students who are full of virtue and wisdom and can reason from a Christian point of view. This approach, which is sometimes called “Telos” or purpose-driven, guides schools to do more than simply make sure their students are proficient in reading and math. 

Because of the emphasis on finding truth and beauty, a plethora of subjects are studied so that students can learn the difference between what is good and what is not. This could provide a framework for classical schools to approach AI. 

Kolby Atchison, in his article “Classical Education and the Rise of AI,” argues that the values gained through classical education will be what sets humans apart from artificial intelligence, “not to outsmart AI, but to work alongside it and steward it wisely. 

“My prediction is that AI will become more and more part of regular life, just as past technological innovations such as the calculator and microwave, already have,” he writes. “The way forward is not the way of the Luddite – refusing to use technology at all – but rather training students to use it wisely, and being especially careful to not let it replace the assignments, activities, and experiences students must encounter themselves in order to grow as men and women of virtue.” 

Goodwin agrees that banning AI altogether would be a “disservice” because “it’s going to be used in college by other people.” He believes in preparing students now to use it well so they aren’t left out, behind or completely overwhelmed. 

“It’s the old adage that the first kid to get into sexual trouble in college is often the one who was sheltered his whole life,” Goodwin says. “You want to prepare your students to know how to use an AI rightly, not to write their papers with it but rather to use it to help with research. We should be reasonable in our approach with AIs.” 

Goodwin acknowledges there are others in his movement who feel differently. Some want to limit the education solely to the classical works that have made it famous. Yet technology continues to evolve. 

“The other day I was working with one of our younger employees here on some training material and I pulled off the shelf an index of the great books of the Western world. It’s a 64-volume set,” he says. “I started flipping through it and he stopped me and says, ‘I’ve got that on my computer.’  

“I didn’t know such a thing existed, that it had been digitized. He was using the exact same resource, but it saved time because he could just click the links instead of searching for the page numbers.” 

Classical doesn’t have to simply mean old, Goodwin says. 

“Classical educators might agree that we like old things, but if there are better ways of using technology to use the old sources and to learn from them, by all means we should do that.”