Editing articles in GUI front end

I do most of my editing of articles either in off site CSV files which I upload to the mySQL server, or directly in mySQL itself.

However, one of my regular co-writers wants to start editing his own articles, and for that I need for him to edit directly on the website using the Edit function there, rather than potentially go into mySQL and stuff things up in there, if he doesn't know what he's doing.

When articles are edited on the website, and saved back to mySQL, all the left arrows and right arrows are converted using the HTML code such as &lt; and &gt; (for < and >. Also & 039; and a few other codes.

I prefer to use the <, > characters as they are. How can I get these saved from the website GUI, rather than have them converted to &lt; and &gt; when they land in mySQL?

I'm sure there's an explanation.

Thanks.