I could have explained myself better. We should be using the tools available to us now to help people write more effectively rather than treating all possible uses of these tools as inauthentic and invalid based on antiquated notions of "originality".
Instead of investigating how automation could make a better, more effective writer academia collectively decided that any form of software assistance is not merely looked down upon, but constitutes an actual intellectual crime.
While at the same time the costs and stakes a student faces in college have risen near infinitely, creating an incentive to cheat that borders on necessity.
School is more of a prison than ever, the punishment for failure is lifelong poverty, and professors and faculty still pretend that students are there to receive a liberal arts education to better themselves as persons.
The fact that writing too well is now a liability for students that could destroy their entire economic future is, I think, more than adequate to demonstrate that the situation has reached a point of absurdity and should not be allowed to continue like this.
I’m with you all the way on schools being fucked up.
Speaking as someone who was taught and evaluated on their ability to write in cursive, type, and eventually, use dictation software and to do math by hand, using standard and scientific then graphing calculators and eventually computer software for all sorts of calculations: these techniques build upon each other and without a foundation of understanding why and how to construct a decent sentence or evaluate an expression I wouldn’t have been able to make effective use of each successive tool and process.
Which is not to say that the focus of school should be to force memorization of multiplication tables or teach brevity with a writers cramp as a gauntlet for future earnings.
If the schools wanted to effectively teach such a progression they’d just evaluate in person and stop assigning homework. Then it’d be easy to make sure no one’s cheating (or as hard as it was when you needed to physically sneak looks at surf written on your hand).
I could have explained myself better. We should be using the tools available to us now to help people write more effectively rather than treating all possible uses of these tools as inauthentic and invalid based on antiquated notions of "originality".
Instead of investigating how automation could make a better, more effective writer academia collectively decided that any form of software assistance is not merely looked down upon, but constitutes an actual intellectual crime.
While at the same time the costs and stakes a student faces in college have risen near infinitely, creating an incentive to cheat that borders on necessity.
School is more of a prison than ever, the punishment for failure is lifelong poverty, and professors and faculty still pretend that students are there to receive a liberal arts education to better themselves as persons.
The fact that writing too well is now a liability for students that could destroy their entire economic future is, I think, more than adequate to demonstrate that the situation has reached a point of absurdity and should not be allowed to continue like this.
I’m with you all the way on schools being fucked up.
Speaking as someone who was taught and evaluated on their ability to write in cursive, type, and eventually, use dictation software and to do math by hand, using standard and scientific then graphing calculators and eventually computer software for all sorts of calculations: these techniques build upon each other and without a foundation of understanding why and how to construct a decent sentence or evaluate an expression I wouldn’t have been able to make effective use of each successive tool and process.
Which is not to say that the focus of school should be to force memorization of multiplication tables or teach brevity with a writers cramp as a gauntlet for future earnings.
If the schools wanted to effectively teach such a progression they’d just evaluate in person and stop assigning homework. Then it’d be easy to make sure no one’s cheating (or as hard as it was when you needed to physically sneak looks at surf written on your hand).