“What does gyatt mean?”
That was the search term I noticed on my student’s computer during 4th period one Friday recently.
I had been monitoring my 9th grade students’ browsing activity (I can do this from my own computer) while they were supposed to be typing up the final draft of their essays, and when I saw that this kid — let’s call him Antonio — had navigated away from his Google Doc to a Google search screen, I clicked in for a closer look.
“What does gyatt mean?”
Now, I should point out that in addition to basically spying on my students, I have the ability to simply close browsers and windows. I do this if they’re playing games or watching YouTube. It’s a simple but slightly passive-aggressive way to foil students in their own distractions. Last year I had far too much fun watching a student get more and more angry as I allowed him to log on to a game and watch the 30 second commercial before I closed his browser just as the game was about to begin. Over and over again. I know: you have questions.
I should also point out that if you checked the search history on my phone, there is a pretty good chance that you’d find a similar question posed 12-18 months ago, although as the father of two Gen Z young adults and a Gen Alpha teenager, I am conversant--if not completely fluent--in the current vernacular of our youth.
But this wasn’t a clueless dad looking this up; it was a teenager. A native speaker, if you will, who was supposed to be writing about Odysseus, not going on his own brain rot odyssey.
Instantly, I was up out of my chair, walking over to Antonio’s desk, a smile playing on my face. I looked over to Michael, the student sitting next to Antonio, and gave him a “This guy!” shake of the head as I prepared to expose Antonio’s foolishness and inappropriate use of school technology.
“What?” asked Michael.
“Ask Antonio what he was looking up just now.”
Antonio looked confused, then aghast. “No, no, no!” he protested. “It’s not that.”
“Oh, sure!” I mockingly responded. “‘What is gyatt?’”
The whole class was laughing now, although that may have been because of the way I said “gyatt.”
“I swear, it’s not what you think!” persisted Antonio. He swung his computer screen round to face me and then pointed at the whiteboard just a few feet away, where I write my classes’ vocabulary lists for each week, AP Literature words on the left and 9th grade words on the right. Antonio was frantically pointing at one of the AP Literature words.
Gait.
“I wanted to know what it meant.”
I took a closer look at Antonio’s Google search. Sure enough, he had initially typed in, “What does gait mean?” and Google had changed the search term because it assumed it meant something else.
This was not a correction of a misspelling. This was not a helpful nudge in a different direction. Gait is not an uncommon or archaic word. This was the blatant derailing of a student at the precise moment when he was independently showing the one trait I long for my students to cultivate: curiosity.
And Google — AI, the algorithm, the automated query revision, or whatever you want to call it — stifled that curiosity by assuming Antonio meant something else. All he wanted to do was find out what a word meant and instead he was redirected down a totally different route. Who knows where it might have taken him?
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| AP Lit words, including "gait," not "gyatt." |
Now, I know that Antonio’s Google suggestions are most likely curated based on his previous searches — draw your own conclusions there! — but nonetheless I found this redirection deeply troubling.
As an educator, I have been dealing with the consequences of AI, specifically, the problems that occur when students, whose brains and skills are still developing, delegate or outsource thinking, writing — any difficult task — to programs like ChatGPT. It is not an exaggeration to say that it has utterly upended education in a way that I am convinced will have dire repercussions in the future.
But I’d never really considered the subtle and insidious ways our students are being directed in their learning and even prevented from learning. Of course, I know that what appears in my YouTube page reflects my interests and viewing history. I know that my Google search results, targeted ads, and other suggestions are based on my online profile. I know that what I see is heavily curated and designed to reinforce my habits and biases. But I’m almost 50. I know how to think critically and to evaluate sources of information. I don’t spend that much time online. Nevertheless, it is a constant battle, one that is often all too easy to stop fighting. How on earth is a 14 year-old supposed to navigate this onslaught?
While I initially found this whole episode rather humorous, the more I’ve thought about it, the more indignant it’s made me. My students face a lot of challenges. They deal with so many potential barriers when it comes to their learning, brain development, and health. Some of these struggles can be mitigated by guidance and good decision making. Others are completely out of their control. Some challenges are a necessary part of growing, learning, and living in a fallen world. They all get in the way of learning and make my work as a teacher harder, but that’s the job.
But there are some barriers — like what Antonio experienced when he had a flash of curiosity and decided to investigate — that don’t need to be there. This one feels different. It feels somehow...underhand.
I don’t know how we got here, what quid pro quo we unwittingly signed off on, or what we knowingly or unknowingly decided to accept in exchange for convenience. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Or maybe it does now. Maybe we’ve crossed that Rubicon already. Regardless, the last thing these kids need is for the very technology that’s supposed to be helping them to be actually holding them back and teaching them that curiosity is pointless. It’s infuriating.
So here we are. A world of technology, information at our fingertips, and machine learning designed to make our lives easier. And I don’t want it anywhere near my classroom or my students.
