AI threatens to throw the baby of the Western literary canon out with the bathwater of AI generated critiques of that canon, which is no longer actually read. From Mark Bauerlein at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:
In the old days, English class meant two things: one, reading Shakespeare, Tennyson et al., and two, learning to write. The classics plus grammar and punctuation—they made English a serious subject respected for its content and skills. Of course, it’s not like that any longer.
The traditional literary canon is ever less central to the field, which now spends lots of time on “media literacy,” critical thinking, “informational texts,” and other topics unrelated to literary history. Those changes have come about from above, we should note, from experts in curriculum and assessment.
As for writing, the changes have been even more dramatic and taken place in just the past few years. Artificial intelligence (AI) has upset everything. It has swept into education so suddenly and profoundly that teachers are scrambling daily to cope with its effects. This time, it’s not the experts who are leading the way—it’s the kids. They aren’t writing anymore; AI does it for them. Some keywords, a few clicks, an adjustment or two, and “Voila!” the paper’s done. What late-teen can resist?
If they’re going to “meet students where they are,” as the ed school saying goes, teachers cannot assign any out-of-class writing tasks and expect students to do the work themselves. The lure is too strong, the process too easy. It’s safer than plagiarism, too, because AI creates a unique script for every student who requests one, not a borrowed script that can be unearthed through a Google search by the teacher using any unusual sentences that pop up in a paper as clues. Also, AI produces such authentic student prose that teachers haven’t the time or energy to scan each submission for subtle signs of AI usage.
The whole practice of English must change—it already is doing so.
