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ChatGPT is the best thing to happen to teaching since the Socratic method

Salutin, Rick
http://rabble.ca/columnists/chatgpt-is-the-best-thing-to-happen-to-teaching-since-the-socratic-method/

Publisher:  Rabble
Date Written:  03/02/2023
Year Published:  2023  
Resource Type:  Article

Can there be another way to teach and learn? ChatGPT is a reminder that the oral tradition is still fitfully around.

Abstract: 
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Extract:

Universities (and public schools like New York City's) are in full panic though they're uncertain why. They've proliferated administrators and support staff in recent years, some for "academic integrity" offices that breed eerie proceedings run by budding Grand Inquisitors. But that's mostly about stuff like plagiarism, which ChatGPT isn't. It's not copying; it's, ugh, creating, so it's like asking your teacher parent about a topic and copying down what he says. There's rules against that too but they're harder to convict on.

Writing in The Atlantic, Stephen Marche says "The College Essay Is Dead," though for generations it's been the way "we teach children how to research, think and write." That would leave Grand Canyon-sized holes in the courses but a better question is: would it be a bad or good thing?

Harold Innis, a colossal U of T prof a century ago, said that the formal, "polished essay" of which he'd written and marked multitudes, was introduced by Chinese dynasties, c. 600-1300 C.E., to "prevent the literati from thinking too much." Those literati can make trouble if they get too critical of state policies. It worked so well that potential troublemakers were kept occupied with their essays and eventually the Mongols took over.

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