You're making a very big assumption here, which is that the point of learning something is to be able to answer specific questions of the kind that ChatGPT can

You're making a very big assumption here, which is that the point of learning something is to be able to answer specific questions of the kind that ChatGPT can answer. This is wrong. Students below the graduate level do not, in general, produce valuable work in the course of their studies. I promise you, your teachers do not need your help to write a high school freshman-level essay on Romeo and Juliet, any more than they need your help to factor a polynomial or discuss the causes of World War 1. The point of learning is to improve your brain. Asking why a student can't use ChatGPT to write an essay is like asking a jogger why they don't use a car. It's missing the point entirely. People have been having this same discussion about math for many years. A copy of Mathematica can answer just about every question on every math test you will ever take. So what? We didn't stop having to learn math in order to understand anything that's based on it. Mindlessly quoting answers from ChatGPT will not teach you new ways of thinking. As for the knowledge itself, the key thing to understand is that knowledge inside your brain is more useful in more circumstances than knowledge outside your brain. ChatGPT won't notice connections between unrelated subjects for you. It won't notify you in advance when a question ought to be asked.