This piece felt like a James Tate poem, taking turns that I, for one, could not foresee. There's delight in that, in being surprised, of not seeing a thing coming, and then seeing it as almost inevitable. The rightness of the turn suddenly clear in the rearview mirror.
That near unanimous acceptance of AI from administrators and other teachers makes it a near-impossible time to be in a classroom. And yet. Perhaps what we can offer our students right now, something tech-less or tech-free, is exactly the thing they need.
I keep coming back to something John Warner wrote: “Writing should be about mining your unique intelligence for something worth saying to the world” that will be read “by an audience of other unique intelligences.” How can we convince young people that their unique intelligence is interesting and valuable? It seems to me that the only way to do so is to insist on it and honor it and help them experience the singular pleasure of being a mind growing in the midst of other growing minds. For in that work, we remind ourselves of what it means to be human, something we forget every day.
Thanks for this, Jeff. For what it’s worth, I am trying to think of what it might look like to organize a coalition of teachers in solidarity against AI and towards a pedagogy that decenters AI and centers instead something like that Warner quote. If you’re interested you should reach out. Would love to pick your brain. Appreciate you!
"And all over the country, those with power—whether school administrators or university presidents or tech billionaires—are making it harder for people with less power to insist on anything, to practice the art of calling a thing a name, to be anything other than someone force-fed some alienation-generating app sold to us under the guise of ease (and often with the stakes of our employment tied to such a thing). We didn’t need this; we really didn’t. We were fine writing our own stories. Making our own music. Borrowing and revising and figuring it out. Reading and rewriting and thinking aloud. The point of style is just to have it, not to have it a certain way. And we had it." 💛
It's not just the fact that AI ISN'T intelligence at all, that it's soul-less, but there's an inherent laziness in employing it "creatively"; product without process, short-cutting. That we are being encouraged to short-cut is disheartening...
This piece felt like a James Tate poem, taking turns that I, for one, could not foresee. There's delight in that, in being surprised, of not seeing a thing coming, and then seeing it as almost inevitable. The rightness of the turn suddenly clear in the rearview mirror.
That near unanimous acceptance of AI from administrators and other teachers makes it a near-impossible time to be in a classroom. And yet. Perhaps what we can offer our students right now, something tech-less or tech-free, is exactly the thing they need.
I keep coming back to something John Warner wrote: “Writing should be about mining your unique intelligence for something worth saying to the world” that will be read “by an audience of other unique intelligences.” How can we convince young people that their unique intelligence is interesting and valuable? It seems to me that the only way to do so is to insist on it and honor it and help them experience the singular pleasure of being a mind growing in the midst of other growing minds. For in that work, we remind ourselves of what it means to be human, something we forget every day.
Thanks for this, Jeff. For what it’s worth, I am trying to think of what it might look like to organize a coalition of teachers in solidarity against AI and towards a pedagogy that decenters AI and centers instead something like that Warner quote. If you’re interested you should reach out. Would love to pick your brain. Appreciate you!
"And all over the country, those with power—whether school administrators or university presidents or tech billionaires—are making it harder for people with less power to insist on anything, to practice the art of calling a thing a name, to be anything other than someone force-fed some alienation-generating app sold to us under the guise of ease (and often with the stakes of our employment tied to such a thing). We didn’t need this; we really didn’t. We were fine writing our own stories. Making our own music. Borrowing and revising and figuring it out. Reading and rewriting and thinking aloud. The point of style is just to have it, not to have it a certain way. And we had it." 💛
🧡
I love your idea of a tech-free classroom. Keep going.
Thank you, Cass
This was excellent and, surprisingly, has made me feel more hopeful. Thank you.
Thank you for reading!
It's not just the fact that AI ISN'T intelligence at all, that it's soul-less, but there's an inherent laziness in employing it "creatively"; product without process, short-cutting. That we are being encouraged to short-cut is disheartening...
Truly disheartening!