The loss that he describes is deeper and more existential than anything academic integrity can protect: a specific, if perhaps decaying, way of being among students and their teachers. “AI has already changed the classroom into something I no longer recognize,” he told me. In this view, AI isn’t a harbinger of the future but the last straw in a profession that was almost lost already, to funding collapse, gun violence, state overreach, economic decay, credentialism, and all the rest. New technology arrives on that grim shore, making schoolwork feel worthless, carried out to turn the crank of a machine rather than for teaching or learning.

  • eatmyass
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    1 year ago

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    • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]
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      2 years ago

      College writing instructor. Most of my time is spent trying to get students to un-learn bad habits from high school.

      • UlyssesT
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        15 days ago

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        • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]
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          2 years ago

          Oh I don't blame high school teachers for their situation. Even if we didn't have the testing regime they're required to teach towards, good writing inherently requires students to interrogate authority (even the authority of the instructor), which isn't something that most parents want their kids doing in a real way. After all, a good writer recognizes both why rules exist and under what conditions they should be broken. That kind of contingency is generally skeptical of authority, etc.

          Of course the academy, with the hollowing of tenure, is doing its best to remove the possibility to do that even in college, so things will probably become pretty fuckt in the next few decades...

      • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]
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        edit-2
        2 years ago

        I remember my freshman university writing class and getting totally OWNED by the first assignment, I was so mad bc I had always gotten top scores in writing in high school, I was actually offended

        Luckily I was able to pull my head out of my ass and learn to write from my instructor but not out of some desire to improve but bc I was a nerd that wanted A’s

        I am lucky I went to a school that had uni writing as a requirement bc if I had gone somewhere else I probably would have never learned to write properly

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
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      edit-2
      2 years ago

      It's a blight elsewhere too.

      I remember getting a stern talking to when I first read de Montaigne and tried to copy his structure in an essay instead of the standard one. Copying the guy who invented the essay is considered to be unacceptable innovation!

      • neo [he/him]
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        2 years ago

        his essay on friendship is quite beautiful, too.

        • Mardoniush [she/her]
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          2 years ago

          One of my favourites. Renaissance humanism is surprisingly beautiful at times. Back when Liberalism was young and angry and full of ideas and pushing history forward.

    • UlyssesT
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      15 days ago

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        • UlyssesT
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          15 days ago

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      • wwiehtnioj [none/use name]
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        2 years ago

        On one hand dogmatically adhering to this structure is the only way my add brain can even get started on writing something. On the other hand I learnt this way and you've seen my posts I, can't write for shit.

    • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]
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      2 years ago

      was told sentences can never be paragraphs, a paragraph must have at least three sentences.

      Yup, this messed with me when I was growing up because I was trying to write stories even when I was a kid and I'd try to follow this formula only to have disastrous results. Sometimes the idea you're trying to convey can be summed up in one sentence, and sometimes it's just snappier to just make it the one line. Third sentence.

    • flan [they/them]
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      edit-2
      2 years ago

      The crazy thing about comp sci is that writing is not only needed but is extremely important if you want to communicate and sell your ideas to more than like 3 other people. It’s just taken for granted because people in stem are goddamn morons.

    • W_Hexa_W
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      1 year ago

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    • micnd90 [he/him,any]
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      edit-2
      2 years ago

      but the way most Americans learn to write in high school is just these extremely formulaic intro 2 body paragraphs and a conclusion scrawls

      The exports of Libya are numerous in amount. One thing they export is corn... or, as the Indians call it, maize. Another famous Indian was Crazy Horse. In conclusion, Libya is a land of contrasts.