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> I really don’t think there’s a coherent pro-genAI case to be made in the education context. I think it’s simple: the reign of the essay is over. Educators mu

> I really don’t think there’s a coherent pro-genAI case to be made in the education context. I think it’s simple: the reign of the essay is over. Educators must find a new way to judge a student’s understanding. Presentations, artwork, in class writing, media, discussions and debates, skits, even good old fashioned quizzes all still work fine for getting students to demonstrate understanding. As the son of two teachers I remember my parents spending hours in the evenings grading essays. While writing is a critical skill, and essays contain a good bit of information, I’m not sure education wasn’t overindexing on them already. They’re easy to assign and grade, but there’s so much toil on both ends unrelated to the core subject matter.

thadt 1y ago
I posit that of the various uses of student writing, the most important isn't communication or even assessment, but synthesis. Writing forces you to grapple with a subject in a way that clarifies your thinking. It's easy to think you understand something until you have to explain or apply it. Skipping that entirely, or using a LLM to do most of it for you, skips something rather important.
- schmichael 1y ago
  > Writing forces you I agree entirely with you except for the word "forces." Writing can cause synthesis. It should. It should be graded to encourage that... ...but all of that is a whole lot of work for everyone involved: student and teacher alike. And that kind of synthesis is in no way unique to essays! All of the other mediums I mention can make synthesis more readily apparent then paragraphs of (often very low quality) prose. A clever meme lampooning the "mere merchant" status of the Medici family could demonstrate a level of understanding that would take paragraphs of prose to convey.
ryandrake 1y ago
I'd also say that the era of graded homework in general is over, and using "proof of toil" assignments as a meaningful measurement of a student's progress/mastery.

thadt 1y ago

I posit that of the various uses of student writing, the most important isn't communication or even assessment, but synthesis. Writing forces you to grapple with a subject in a way that clarifies your thinking. It's easy to think you understand something until you have to explain or apply it. Skipping that entirely, or using a LLM to do most of it for you, skips something rather important.

schmichael 1y ago
> Writing forces you I agree entirely with you except for the word "forces." Writing can cause synthesis. It should. It should be graded to encourage that... ...but all of that is a whole lot of work for everyone involved: student and teacher alike. And that kind of synthesis is in no way unique to essays! All of the other mediums I mention can make synthesis more readily apparent then paragraphs of (often very low quality) prose. A clever meme lampooning the "mere merchant" status of the Medici family could demonstrate a level of understanding that would take paragraphs of prose to convey.

ryandrake 1y ago

I'd also say that the era of graded homework in general is over, and using "proof of toil" assignments as a meaningful measurement of a student's progress/mastery.