Jul 25, 2025 Society
Efficiency. Performance. Perfection. These sound like specs for a high-performance car, not the aspirations of a young writer. Yet in Auckland’s classrooms, they’re increasingly held up as the standard. Now, we have generative AI — a formulaic machine that spits out tidy, plausible-sounding answers and prose. In Auckland’s classrooms, some educators are embracing it, and encouraging young students to keep pace. But in our rush for progress, we’re overlooking a quiet cost: the fading of their unique voices — and ours.
From the outside, AI seems to hold the promise of instant clarity, easing the struggles that come with autonomy. Many university faculties are now beginning to normalise its usage, blind to what’s at stake. But here’s the uncomfortable truth behind AI’s stagecraft: the more we outsource thinking, the less we can think for ourselves. I’ve lived it. As a tutor for immigrants and international students, I have helped them to shape their words for the past four years. And now, as a writer, I notice my own voice and craft skills slipping after relying on ChatGPT and other similar large language models. AI hasn’t made me better; it’s dulled me. And I’m not alone. We’re creating a generation who can’t write without bots, their voices flattening into the same robotic hum.
Writing isn’t just words and grammar — it’s original thought. Learning to spell builds intuition; learning structure builds clarity; crafting an essay hones precision. AI depends on replicable rules, creativity thrives on bending rules. James Joyce ditched punctuation to disrupt traditional literary conventions a century ago; Suzanne Collins cracked present-tense young adult novels open 17 years back. No bot prompted these innovations — the two writers wrestled language into breakthroughs. What new ideas will we see in literature a century from now? If kids are allowed to lean on AI for projects, we’re not just skimping on their individual skills, we’re risking the bold ideas that spark tomorrow’s stories.
I’ve tutored New Zealand kids one on one in this city and taught students from overseas to write for New Zealand university assignments and exams. A Taiwanese immigrant myself, I have heard from students from places like Taiwan and China that their rigid school systems prize memorisation over thought, compliance over curiosity, often silencing young people’s questions. What sets New Zealand kids apart is their wild, imaginative spark — an unruly creativity I hope will never fade. But now, I watch as New Zealand sleepwalks into the same trap, dimming young voices under the guise of progress. AI is the silent accomplice here, and we’re all playing along.
For years, my students have begged me to teach them spelling, punctuation, structure — the messy, human stuff they often tripped over. Last month, however, a colleague shared her 12-year-old’s question from his Auckland classroom: “Why learn spelling when Google Docs fixes it?” It’s a fair question, and she knew he had a point — until you see autocorrect ‘fixing’ proper nouns while ignoring subtle homophones. The thing is, those systems are not infallible; mastering the foundations yourself allows you to have control over the tools, not the other way round. And most importantly, innovation requires first understanding the rules before trying to break them.
Too often, formulaic machine-driven suggestions sand away the rough edges that give writing its humanity — voice, dialect, flavour and intentional breaks from ‘rules’. The grading system has always prized polished prose alongside rigorous arguments and creative expression — clean grammar, flawless spelling, tidy structure. But where these standards once drove students to reach for excellence, they now drive them to AI. The system’s original intent in cultivating strong writers has faltered. Now, we’re raising kids who don’t bend language — they just nod to the bots.
This isn’t just schools. As a student at the University of Auckland, I see my peers hit a wall and say, “Ask Chat.” Generative AI is their go-to, not a back-up. Universities push back in many ways — plagiarism detectors, student declarations, presentations — with their most visible strategy being redesigning assignments, making them more difficult than before. It backfires — students rely more on AI to cope, leaving those who resist it struggling to keep pace.
An A+ student once told me that she felt herself growing “dumb” because of her reliance on AI tools. “Even before I write anything,” she said, “I would ask ChatGPT to structure my assignment essay for me. After that, after writing my own piece, I’d ask it to fix it for me.” Having been a top student in high school, she now feels that the marks she receives, as one of the top students in her university classes, are no longer truly hers.
In a 2024 survey of Australian students aged 15 to 24, 60% of respondents admitted to using AI to supplement their schoolwork. “One of the most significant concerns is academic integrity,” says Jason Heale, communications manager at the Maxim Institute think tank. “The rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT has sparked fears about cheating.” He’s right — fairness and academic integrity matter. Michael Johnston of the New Zealand Initiative warns also that “creativity and critical thinking depend on holding knowledge yourself” and AI risks bypassing this. But beyond the important concerns of fairness and integrity lies something even deeper: character.
Writing isn’t just about accurate spelling or sentence structure — it’s about voice, problem-solving, persistence and expression. Researching your own arguments, wrestling with how to express them — that’s where growth happens. If young students are relying on AI to write things as basic as ‘The cat sat on the mat’, how will they find their own voice when it comes to weightier matters? When they’ve never had to struggle for a simple sentence, where will their voice come from?
In a world where generative AI and other checking tools are widely used, marking students on the solid content and original expression of their work, rather than just its tidy accuracy, is more important than ever. Imagine Auckland schools celebrating raw, messy essays alongside polished ones — grading writing for heart, not just shine. Picture classrooms where AI might spark ideas, or find certain uses — AI’s a tool, not the enemy — but where students wrestle their own words on to the page. Many years ago, I saw a child’s typo-filled story light up a room because it was uniquely hers — warm, quirky and filled with love. The next Katherine Mansfield won’t emerge from a prompt. She’ll be the kid who ignores the red squiggles — and writes something gloriously, messily hers.
