I was very encouraged to read a recent New York Times article by Dana Goldstein that asks what students “lose when they stop writing.”
Truth be told, I was a little bummed not to have been interviewed for the piece, given that I was one of the earliest out of the gate championing the need for us to actually double down on teaching writing in a world with AI, but I’m not going to let the dent to my ego get in the way of noticing that the concerns I’ve been voicing for years are making their way into the mainstream.
As to what is lost when students don’t write, the answer is lots of things: the ability to think, plan, research, brainstorm, draft, revise, edit and so on and so on. Students lose a mechanism for understanding and articulating self-knowledge. They miss an opportunity to have their views heard by communities of other humans.
Applications From International Students Down 10%
Rethinking Calculus for Future Engineers
