Having a student sit there and type out, word for word, a decent essay on the subject is probably fairly effective education for a LOT of subjects. In the same

Having a student sit there and type out, word for word, a decent essay on the subject is probably fairly effective education for a LOT of subjects. In the same vein that letting students write calculator programs to do the quadratic formula for them during a test is actually a pretty good way to get them to learn the quadratic formula. It's not an exact equivalent to the intent of an essay today - from an education perspective - but it's not a complete miss either.