Well there you’re more comparing handwriting to typing. Appreciation for handwriting has largely been supplanted by font and typeface, and you could probably do some interesting research on how that’s evolved, how in the days of the internet we can use different typefaces to simulate inflection or even accent in text.
The problem isn’t “you used to write your essays, you used to type them on a typewriter, you used to type them on a computer, now I make them with an AI.” AI is more like paying someone else to write your essay and turning in work YOU didn’t do.
The real lesson to be had in scholarly writing is research, verification of sources, drawing valid conclusions based on evidence. These are skills you need to READ scholarly research as well, because there’s an entire industry of bullshit fake science out there. That’s a hard skill to actually teach though, that teachers really don’t have the time to do. So they teach grammar school to college sophomores.
Yes, it used to be that the putting of words on paper/screen was the “work” of an essay.
What I am saying is that the actual work of writing is the thought behind it. The effort of research, of developing an opinion, of forming the foundation of a complex argument. The High School English teacher’s obsessions with word count and strict adherence to grammatical rules are not “work”. They are mindless drivel. We churned out generations of morons with excellent grammar but no ability to actually think.
That will no longer suffice. Any half-assed AI can spit out a thousand words on any topic you care to name, all with perfect spelling and grammar that would have made a 1990’s AP English teacher cream themselves. And without any idea of what it was actually writing.
Don’t teach kids to do the work of machines. Teach them to be poets. Teach them how to research. Teach them how to think, not how to imitate the mindless behavior of an essay-writing AI.
Well there you’re more comparing handwriting to typing. Appreciation for handwriting has largely been supplanted by font and typeface, and you could probably do some interesting research on how that’s evolved, how in the days of the internet we can use different typefaces to simulate inflection or even accent in text.
The problem isn’t “you used to write your essays, you used to type them on a typewriter, you used to type them on a computer, now I make them with an AI.” AI is more like paying someone else to write your essay and turning in work YOU didn’t do.
The real lesson to be had in scholarly writing is research, verification of sources, drawing valid conclusions based on evidence. These are skills you need to READ scholarly research as well, because there’s an entire industry of bullshit fake science out there. That’s a hard skill to actually teach though, that teachers really don’t have the time to do. So they teach grammar school to college sophomores.
Yes, it used to be that the putting of words on paper/screen was the “work” of an essay.
What I am saying is that the actual work of writing is the thought behind it. The effort of research, of developing an opinion, of forming the foundation of a complex argument. The High School English teacher’s obsessions with word count and strict adherence to grammatical rules are not “work”. They are mindless drivel. We churned out generations of morons with excellent grammar but no ability to actually think.
That will no longer suffice. Any half-assed AI can spit out a thousand words on any topic you care to name, all with perfect spelling and grammar that would have made a 1990’s AP English teacher cream themselves. And without any idea of what it was actually writing.
Don’t teach kids to do the work of machines. Teach them to be poets. Teach them how to research. Teach them how to think, not how to imitate the mindless behavior of an essay-writing AI.