A Modest Proposal for the Advancement of 21st Century Learning

For reducing the antiquated burdens of reading, writing, and critical thinking among youth, and for advancing the noble cause of outsourcing human intellect to our silicon superiors.

"Saint Jerome in His Study" by Antonello da Messina (c. 1475). Before Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V: When research still required thought

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a student in possession of a mobile device must be in want of doing less. And why should we stand in the way of such laudable ambition? Indeed, I humbly propose that we finally unshackle ourselves from the antiquated chains of pencils, papers, and “thinking,” and embrace the glorious future that lies before us: a future in which students no longer write essays, take notes, or even attend to the banal tedium of learning — for these noble tasks shall be fully assumed by artificial intelligence.

Why should a young scholar be burdened by the heavy labor of essay composition, when ChatGPT can compose a five-paragraph literary analysis on The Scarlet Letter with more grace and grammatical correctness than the average 11th grader (and, I dare say, most of their teachers)? It would be cruel — nay, inhumane — to expect students to wrestle with thesis statements and supporting evidence when silicon minds stand ready to deliver eloquence on demand.

Homework, that long-standing tyranny of the evening hours, may now be gently laid to rest. Consider the tragedy of a young lad forced to solve thirty algebraic equations by hand when his family’s AI assistant can provide correct answers, fully worked out, in less than a second. What monster would deny him the sweet relief of immediate accuracy?

And let us not neglect the act of note-taking — a barbaric ritual in which students must transcribe the words of their educators with their own hands or, worse still, their brains. In the age of AI, this is unnecessary. Let students record the lectures (if they must attend them at all), feed the audio to an AI service, and receive back a color-coded, keyword-indexed summary of all key points. “Learning,” I have been told, is about processing information. But why not let the AI do the processing too? After all, it is much faster and far less prone to daydreams, hunger pangs, or adolescent angst.

Sarah, a freshman at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, said she first used ChatGPT to cheat during the spring semester of her final year of high school…After getting acquainted with the chatbot, Sarah used it for all her classes: Indigenous studies, law, English, and a “hippie farming class” called Green Industries. “My grades were amazing,” she said. “It changed my life.” Sarah continued to use AI when she started college this past fall. Why wouldn’t she? Rarely did she sit in class and not see other students’ laptops open to ChatGPT. Toward the end of the semester, she began to think she might be dependent on the website. She already considered herself addicted to TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit. — from Everyone Is Cheating Their [sic] Way Through College, New York Magazine.

Critics — ever eager to clutch their pearls and weep for the decline of civilization — will mutter something about “academic integrity.” I assure them, there is no more integrity in wasting a teenager’s time than there is in insisting one churn their own butter in an era of refrigeration. Let us not confuse moral virtue with inefficiency.

Nor should educators fear the coming age. Professors and teachers, once tragically afflicted with the need to read the barely decipherable prose of a thousand students, can now pass this labor on to AI. Algorithms are, thankfully, immune to despair, sarcasm, and misplaced apostrophes. The AI shall grade with consistency, even-handedness, and without complaint. Indeed, it may even offer feedback more constructive than “Needs more analysis” or “See me.”

And what of learning itself? I am assured by several fashionable studies — or perhaps tweets — that learning is most effective when it is fast, convenient, and, most importantly, searchable. What need have we for memorization or contemplation when an AI can instantly produce the relevant quote, theorem, or historical precedent? It is an ineffable joy to see a child, when asked about the causes of the French Revolution, quickly type “What caused French Rev?” and receive back a perfectly organized bullet list.

Furthermore, this efficient use of AI allows students to devote their time to what truly matters: scrolling through social media, engaging in dopamine-regulated thumb calisthenics, and learning about the latest gadgets and models that promise to further reduce human effort to the barest flicker of cognition.

I do not deny that there are risks. Some Luddites may claim that students will “learn less” or “become dependent.” But I submit that dependence on AI is no vice; it is evolution. Why should the human brain be forced to recall facts when the cloud does it faster? Why think at all, when one can outsource thinking to a system trained on the thoughts of others?

Indeed, the ultimate goal of education is not knowledge, but convenience. It is not to form minds, but to free them — free them from effort, struggle, and above all, reflection. AI is the perfect educator: omniscient, tireless, and never behind on grading.

Therefore, let us rise to the challenge of our age and joyfully embrace a world where learning is done not by students but to them, by programs more efficient than any teacher, and more obedient than any child. Let the children be free — to scroll, to swipe, to snack — while their essays write themselves, their notes take themselves, and their grades appear by algorithmic fiat.

We shall call it “progress.”

I confess that I see no objections to this scheme, except from the few remaining classical educators who still believe that the soul is somehow shaped by study. Let them keep their dusty Plato and their lectures on "virtue." We, meanwhile, shall press the button and receive the answer.

I do therefore humbly offer this proposal to the public, confident that it will meet with universal approbation, and shall be implemented with all due haste in every classroom from kindergarten to the doctoral seminar.

I declare that I have no personal interest in this proposal, having no children of school age myself, and being already on friendly terms with several AI models who assure me they can ghostwrite my memoirs when the time comes.

Michael S. Rose, a leader in the classical education movement, is author of The Art of Being Human, Ugly As Sin and other books. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications including The Wall Street Journal, Epoch Times, New York Newsday, National Review, and The Dallas Morning News.