Teaching During the “Rise of AI” and the “End of Reading”
How did we get here, and where are we going?
This week, I began my sixteenth year teaching English at the college level, and my almost 10-year-old son started fourth grade.
We will be teaching and learning at the confluence of two dramatic social changes: the rise of generative AI and the end of reading. Everyone thinks ChatGPT will replace human writing in the future, and few people want to read anything longer than a headline.
What’s a writing teacher — or a writer — supposed to do when most of the world doesn’t want to read and believes that writing will eventually get outsourced to AI anyway?
Is reading “ending”? Does it matter?
Generative AI needs no introduction. The “end of reading” idea comes from a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, a flagship magazine for American colleges. The article explores the reasons behind college students’ cratering reading abilities: pandemic-related learning loss, poor reading pedagogy, teaching to standardized tests, and simply not reading much besides social media.
I hate bashing “kids these days.” Yes, young people don’t read as much as previous generations. But who let that happen? Their parents and teachers…
