364. Why Lift Weights

[Before I explain today's Why Wednesday, I want to note that if you see my mom or BFF the day today's post goes live, you should wish them both a very happy birthday. (HBD, JG and TvS!)]

The photo above shows my summer yoga studio, AKA our back porch. The title of the post is about weights, but it could just as easily be "Why Practice Yoga" or "Why Swim" or "Why Jog" or "Why Hit a Hockey Puck against the Wall." You get the point. The activity doesn't really matter, so even if you won't ever lift a weight, I hope you'll keep reading.

The idea for today's rant came, as my ideas often do, from something Jen Prokop said on one of my favorite podcasts, Fated Mates, which is about romance novels. Jen, in addition to knowing everything about romance novels and editing, is an English teacher. (Click on her name above to go to her website to learn more.) On the podcast episode in which the hosts were talking with audiobook narrator and author Julia Whelan, the conversation turned to the topic of AI narrators.

As you probably know, students' use of AI is a hot topic of conversation in schools these days. Our deans have dealt with far more cheating-by-AI cases this year than all other kinds of discipline cases combined. Even though so many people use it, many of us have lots of questions:

• How much is AI a useful tool vs. how much is cheating?
• Should we teach kids to use it well or prohibit its use until they can do things on their own?
• What happens when AI gets good enough that teachers can't tell the difference? Are we there already?
• Is AI an important tool in a writer's complete toolbox?
• When AI takes over the world, will it matter if we've been saying "please" and "thank you" to our devices? (That one's in there for you, CIO!)

But none of these questions, important as they are, get to the heart of why many of us want our students to learn to write without it. In the podcast, Jen compared writing an essay to lifting weights. The point of weightlifting isn't that the weights need to go up and down. The whole point is to use our own muscles to move them. If we go to a gym and plug the weights into a machine that elevates them for us, we're wasting our time. If we lift light weights instead of ones that challenge our muscles, we're wasting our time.

The world really, truly doesn't need another high-school-quality essay on Jane Eyre. The finished product is not the valuable part of the process. The actual writing is what matters. When students learn to flex their brain muscles (Relax, I know brains don't have muscles.) to come up with a thesis and support it with evidence they have found and identified as important and polish that prose until the essay's ideas sparkle, they're gaining skills that will help them understand and evaluate the world around them.

I heard a comedian (sorry, I don't remember who) say that kids use AI to do their work in school and then wonder why the jobs they can do are getting taken by computers. It's funny because it's true. It's also sad. On the other hand, if kids struggle through doing the work for themselves, they become less likely to fall victim to charlatans and demagogues because they can think critically and analytically. They become more able to make a difference in the world because they can explain themselves clearly, creatively, and persuasively. If they let their computers write their essays for them, they never gain or might lose the ability to generate and express ideas for themselves.

That is a huge loss, right? Seriously, why bother going to school to learn if we're going to let the computers do the learning for us? What do you think? Please share your responses in the comments.