Transcript of Angela Duckworth’s Commencement Speech to 2025 Penn GSE Graduates

The following is the full transcript of American academic and psychologist Angela Duckworth’s commencement speech to 2025 Penn Graduate School of Education graduates (May 28, 2025).

Listen to the audio version here:

The Influence of Mr. Carr

ANGELA DUCKWORTH: Thank you, Katharine, and good morning. Graduates, many of you moved many miles to come study at Penn, but I grew up in a town not far from here. My high school was the sort you sometimes see in movies, enormous cinder block suburban public school surrounded by green grass soccer fields. I was always a diligent student, but if I’m honest, not an especially passionate one. To me, the apogee of academic success was a straight A report card. I couldn’t imagine reading a non-fiction book for fun or staying up late to grapple with a difficult concept that wasn’t on a test.

Then something unexpected happened. Through the quirks of scheduling, I was assigned the same English teacher twice, once in my sophomore year, again in my senior year. I got a double dose of Mr. Carr. And with apologies to the many great educators that are among us today, I have to tell you, Mr. Carr was the very best teacher in the world.

Many years later, when Mr. Carr retired, several of his students wrote him letters to express our gratitude. Here they are. And here’s how I began mine:

“Dear Mr. Carr, it was in your class that I fell in love with words. I grew up to be a social scientist, not a writer, but when I write, I remember what you taught me. And more than that, I remember the passion you had for writing, for thinking, for teaching, and life. I remember the day I realized I could hear the writer’s voice on the other side of the page.

And I remember the day I realized that with tremendous dedication and practice and luck, I might write in a way that other people could hear me, my voice, what I had to say.”

Before we sent Mr. Carr our letters, we passed them around to each other, and the similarities were striking. All of us said that Mr. Carr had changed our lives, that his curiosity was contagious, and that he saw in us not just who we were, but who we might become. We wrote that in his classroom we felt loved, and because he loved us that much, we rose to meet his very high expectations.

When I graduated from college, I disappointed my whole family by not going to medical school. Instead, I followed in Mr. Carr’s footsteps. Like you, I chose education. One of my first jobs was as a high school teacher, and whenever I faced a difficult dilemma, it helped to ask, what would Mr. Carr do? Today, I can’t help but wonder, what would Mr. Carr say to you on this, the day of your graduation? In particular, what would he say about the most revolutionary change in education, generative AI?

A Different Perspective on AI

Now, one of my favorite things about Mr. Carr is how he liked to catch us off guard. He once asked us to get out of our seats and stand on our desks. We remained standing for the entire period so that, as he put it, we could experience the familiar from a different perspective. So, in his honor, I’d like to think about AI from an angle that I don’t think gets enough attention, and to wrestle a bit with its complexities.

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To begin, I have a simple yes-no question for the graduates. If the answer is yes, raise your hand. Here we go. Graduates, have you ever worried that students who use AI to do their thinking for them will fail to develop into capable thinkers themselves? Raise your hand if you have. Okay, and look around. It’s a lot of us. Thank you.

You’ll notice that I raised my hand. As a psychologist who studies student motivation and achievement, I worry. I worry that students are using AI as a crutch. I worry because the human brain is like a muscle. Use it or lose it. Train it to gain it. I worry because, in my research, learners don’t always choose the effortful but effective option. We’re not alone in these concerns. Four times as many K-12 educators believe the use of AI will be net harmful, as believe it will be net beneficial. Two out of three university instructors believe AI will have a negative impact on academic integrity. Dumb and dishonest. Is that the fate of learners in the age of AI?

AI as a Coach, Not Just a Crutch

Well, before we arrive at that very depressing conclusion, let me share a story. One evening, not long ago, I got stuck on a statistics question that I just couldn’t figure out. Now, I’m sure some of you, and definitely some of you, could have helped me, but you weren’t there in my living room at 9:30 in the evening. I looked over at my adorable real estate developer husband, but it was pretty clear that he was not going to illuminate me on the finer points of the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure for multiple hypothesis testing.

So I turned to ChatGPT. In just two sentences, it clarified the concepts. Next, it offered a handful of practical tips for implementing the procedure, and pointed out common misuses. Then, I concluded with a concise summary. Still confused, I asked some follow-up questions. The responses came back detailed, patient, and immediate. Finally, I requested a demonstration, and that’s when I really got it. At long last, I understood the what, the why, and the how of a pretty sophisticated statistical procedure. My dialogue with ChatGPT lasted about 10 minutes, but it wasn’t just a quick fix. AI helped me reach a level of understanding that far exceeded what I could achieve on my own. Maybe one of you has had a similar experience.

So I have a second question, and I want you to be honest. I’m wondering if using AI has ever helped you in the way that ChatGPT helped me. Raise your hand if in one way or another AI has ever made you just a little bit smarter, and look around. Thank you.

New research shows that AI isn’t always a crutch. It can also be a coach. I have a wonderful PhD student named Ben Lira, and he recently tested whether using AI to help you write diminishes or develops your own writing skill. In Ben’s experiment, one group practiced writing cover letters with AI assistance, while another group practiced writing on their own. The results really surprised us. Participants using AI spent less time practicing, and yet they improved their writing skill more.

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What was going on? To find out, Ben went on to conduct more experiments, and what he discovered is that AI is an outstanding writing coach, providing high-quality, personalized demonstrations that show you what excellence looks like. In other words, AI, in my view, has a hidden pedagogical superpower. It can teach by example.

Because I was helping Ben with that study, I got to watch ChatGPT take bad writing and make it better. Over and over, I watched it shorten sentences that were too long, weed out needless repetition, and even reorder ideas so they flowed more logically. And you know what? In the process, I became a better writer myself.

A Confession About This Speech

Okay, now’s probably the right time to tell you that, yeah, I had many long conversations with not one but several AI chatbots about the very address I’m delivering to you this morning. Many of you are now smiling politely, but secretly gasping in horror at the very idea that your commencement speaker would use AI to help her write her remarks. But it’s true. I did.

And because I was the one asking the questions and accepting or rejecting the suggestions, I’m not at all embarrassed that I did so. In fact, by exercising agency and using AI without deception with the goal of improving myself, I’m proud. Graduates, you face a challenge no generation before you has had to confront. How to help learners use tools like GPT to catalyze, not cannibalize, deeper thinking. I don’t want you to be techno-skeptics, but I don’t want you to be techno-idolists either. I want you to be techno-curious and AI literate and to bring your students along with you.

Which leads me to the most important idea that I want to leave you with today. In the age of AI, there is a paradox. With the accumulated knowledge of the world now at their fingertips, students need their teachers more, not less. Why? Because students need teachers to get them to do hard things now that are good for them later. Because AI can be a crutch if students use it mindlessly, carelessly, and without the objective to develop their own capabilities. And because teachers are role models for what genuine intellectual engagement looks like, both online and in real life.

To paraphrase Aristotle, “the roots of education are often bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” And Aristotle understood this truth profoundly because he flourished under his teacher, Plato. And Plato had blossomed under his teacher, Socrates.

Why Students Still Need Their Teachers

A few weeks ago, as we were wrapping up the semester, I told my students a secret. Every bit of knowledge I’d shared with them was freely available on the internet. Every reading easily located as a PDF in Google Scholar. Every homework assignment embedded in someone’s blog post or podcast. Because of technology, including AI, quite literally anything you could want to learn was just a click away. I watched as their eyes widened, but I continued. You needed me anyway, I told them. You needed me to assign you this reading by Tuesday and that essay by Thursday. You needed me to gather you in this classroom and to establish a sanctuary. Without phones, without laptops, no distractions from us truly seeing each other. You needed me to hold you to the highest standards and to say to you with absolute conviction, I know you can achieve them.

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Final Lessons from Mr. Carr

I want to conclude with two last Mr. Carr stories. One day, Mr. Carr waltzed into the classroom, practically beaming. He perched on the edge of his desk and one by one, he locked eyes with us. Then he paused for dramatic effect. Finally, he took a deep breath and he said, “knowledge at the library is free, but you have to bring your own container.” When I wrote Mr. Carr my gratitude letter, I reminded him of that day. And with the audacity he taught us, I made one friendly amendment. It helps to have a teacher who genuinely loves you.

Here’s the last word on Mr. Carr. A few days ago, I reached out to his son, Zach, who grew up to be a teacher himself. I emailed Zach this commencement address and Zach passed it on to his father. Then just yesterday, an email appeared from none other than Mr. Carr himself. You cannot know how giddy it made me just to see his name in my inbox. What would he say? Would he be pleased? I held my breath and here’s what he wrote to me and to you.

“Angela, thank you so much for forwarding your pen address. Your observations about AI are especially encouraging. I wrote to Zach recently about his decision to become a teacher, about how pleased and proud I am and that there is no higher calling. I stand by that. I’m humbled by your kind words and hope in the secret fastness of my heart that I am worthy of them. Thank you. Thank all of you. Teaching takes courage and it helps to have a friend or two. If I may be permitted the arrogance of paraphrasing myself, fellowship is all around us. We just need to know that we are all in this together. We just have to reach out for it. May this summer and the years ahead be a blessing. Thank you.”

Closing Words

Thank you graduates for all you have accomplished and all you will accomplish in the service of your beloved students. Your students who in turn will never ever stop loving you. Thank you very much.