As you structure your book, deductive logic is leading you astray — especially if you are an academic. State big conclusions first, if you want readers to keep reading. The logical, and wrong, way to structure a nonfiction book Here is the logical way to structure a book: Very nice. Very easy to follow. Very…
ChatGPT is a crisis in the making for professors who teach writing. Their administrations are attempting to cope. Their pathetic efforts will fail. Here’s what Georgetown is telling professors — and why it won’t work Here’s the text of a message from Georgetown University to professors there (posted by a professional friend of mine who…
ChatGPT undermines the traditional way we teach writing in high school or college. We can try (and fail) to preserve the old ways of teaching. Or we can develop new ways that assume future writers will have access to AI tools and help them to use those tools. Current ways we teach writing already stink…
Artificial intelligence writing software is now good enough to write decent student essays. If a student turns in such an essay, is that cheating? And what are we going to do about it? Aki Peritz wrote about the problem in Slate and Jeff Schatten pondered it in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Both pieces include…
Anyone who has had any interaction with education these days — as a student, a teacher, or a parent — is likely to have the feeling that something fundamental is awry. John Warner’s has some good ideas on what’s wrong and how to fix it. His book Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay…
For a lot of conservatives, “critical race theory” is a dangerous concept that will pollute the vulnerable minds of children in schools. And because actual sightings of critical race theory in schools are so rare, groups like the Texas Public Policy Foundation are warning us of its other insidious names, like “diversity” and “identity.” What…
I’ve been out of school for nearly 40 years. I’ve been contemplating the value of college through the lens of my adult children’s experience. Some of the skills I learned have been useful. The content, though, has been mostly useless. This song has been going through my head: When I think back on all the…
The pandemic and our elections have revealed America’s weak spot: ignorance. Too many in the populace can’t reason, can’t think straight, can’t differentiate opinion from reality, can’t identify bias, and have no context for what they consume. “This is a consequence of the poor education system in our country.” That is the applause line. But…
Now there is software to keep students who are taking exams remotely from checking online resources. This is stupid. In the 2020s, students’ ability to recall facts without access to resources is irrelevant. It in no way reflects what they will need to know or do in any future situation. Computer science students should take…