The teaching of writing is an ethical endeavor on many fronts. This chapter focuses on aspects of teaching ethical practices that have evolved over the last three decades as teachers of writing have adapted instruction to account for new tools that impact how a writer composes and the nature of the final product created. Many of these aspects are again at a turning point with the explosion in AI technologies in recent years, and it is essential that writing teachers see this moment with “historical consciousness” (Bruce, 2003, p. 13) and help writers to understand the ethical implications of being a writer in the age of AI. Teachers must recognize the history of writing development, view writing as a form of inquiry, and understand the complexities of authorship and attribution from a sociocultural and digital perspective so that they can help young writers develop ethical stances in this new era of writing.
TopReframing The Question: What Is Writing?
In exploring the ethics of digital literacy, Turner (2019b) posed several questions:
Underlying questions about how technologies have changed the ways individuals read, write, and interact are questions about the ethics of participation in a digital world. As users consume and create seemingly infinite content, what are the moral guidelines that must be considered? How do we teach students to be responsible, ethical citizens in a digital world? (p. 2)
This connection between digital literacy and ethics invited conversations that crossed researcher and teacher practice, inquiries that suggested five dimensions of teaching the ethics of digital literacy: ethical contexts, ethical communities, ethical selves, ethical stances, and ethical practices. The work presented came together under the assumption that digital literacy included “knowledge and skills that allow for critical consumption, creation, interaction, and communication using digital technologies” (p.1). This definition required an understanding of writing that moved beyond “thought on paper” (The Neglected R, 2003, p. 13).
In fact, the definition of writing has evolved over time, and pushback about the value and authenticity of various forms of writing has existed alongside this evolution. Those who are worried that the writing produced by AI is not writing at all may merely be the next generation of traditionalists who fear the unknown. As Ong (2002) stated:
Most persons are surprised, and many distressed, to learn that essentially the same objections commonly urged today against computers were urged by Plato in the Phaedrus (274–7) and in the Seventh Letter against writing. Writing, Plato has Socrates say in the Phaedrus, is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind. It is a thing, a manufactured product. (p. 78)
From the time of Socrates and Plato, both of whom suggested that writing was an inferior form of communication to orality (Ong, 2002), humans have questioned advancements in technology that change the ways in which people interact, communicate, and think. The introduction of print through the printing press, screen-based writing through computers, networked writing through social media, and computer-generated writing through AI are all examples of moments when literacy practices changed, new norms needed to be developed, and humanity evolved.
As Ong (2002) stated, “Writing and print and the computer are all ways of technologizing the word” (p. 79). These technologies usher in new Discourses, or ways of being (Gee, 1996), that require an understanding of ethics within contexts of participation so that “technology, properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it” (Ong, 2002, p. 81). In order to understand the ethics associated with writing in a digital age, defining writing is a primary task. Is writing equivalent to the types of script developed around 3500 BC (Ong, 2002)? Is it the pictures or other “recording devices” (Ong, 2002, p. 81) used by humans across cultures for much longer? Is writing the product created to express meaning, the cognitive process that happens inside the mind (Flower & Hayes, 1981), or some other socially constructed interaction (Gee, 1996)?
Ong (2002) argued that “writing (and especially alphabetic writing) is a technology, calling for the use of tools and other equipment: styli or brushes or pens, carefully prepared surfaces such as paper, animal skins, strips of wood, as well as inks or paints, and much more” (p. 80). And while “Plato was thinking of writing as an external, alien technology” (p. 81), viewing writing, and all the tools associated with it, as something that evolves, is perhaps a more ethical stance for writers and teachers of writing to take. In fact, it might be an essential one.