Christopher Schaefer

The academic left has traditionally opposed “the Western canon” but has never supported the idea of expanding the canon to include classic works of ancient India, Arabia, Persia, China. Their opposition is not really against “the West” per se, but rather against the idea of using college to learn “old wisdom,” i.e. knowledge for which there’s no immediate market, whether an economic market (did you learn the type of analysis the financial firm wants?) or political market (did you learn the intersectional formulae the NGO ecosystem wants?).

The convention of anchors “reporting” from news hot spots deserves some scrutiny. Does such Bigfooting add anything to the quality of the coverage?

If you want to read me on Oxbridge undergraduate admissions, responding against a policy paper arguing that decisions should be taken by departments not colleges. (link in reply)

Our university just sent a Canvas message to everyone encouraging them to download or print everything you need from Canvas.

a sadness in getting older that i didn't anticipate is the growing list if places you realize you won't see again. theres something in being young that makes you confident you will always return

🚨 University professors have been saying AI is completely destroying learning and that we'll soon have an AI-powered, semi-illiterate workforce. Here's a glimpse into the educational apocalypse: "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, where she writes under the username maybeimnotsmart. “I spend so much time on TikTok,” she said. “Hours and hours, until my eyes start hurting, which makes it hard to plan and do my schoolwork. With ChatGPT, I can write an essay in two hours that normally takes 12.” - "By November, Williams estimated that at least half of his students were using AI to write their papers. Attempts at accountability were pointless. Williams had no faith in AI detectors, and the professor teaching the class instructed him not to fail individual papers, even the clearly AI-smoothed ones. “Every time I brought it up with the professor, I got the sense he was underestimating the power of ChatGPT, and the departmental stance was, ‘Well, it’s a slippery slope, and we can’t really prove they’re using AI,’” Williams said. “I was told to grade based on what the essay would’ve gotten if it were a ‘true attempt at a paper.’ So I was grading people on their ability to use ChatGPT.” - AI in education is a serious topic, and many schools and universities are blindly jumping into the "AI-first" wave without considering short and long-term consequences. It would be great to hear more from teachers and educators to understand potential solutions. This might be a great opportunity for rethinking the education system and how students are assessed. - 👉 Link to the full article below. 👉 To learn more about AI's legal and ethical challenges, join my newsletter's 94,700+ subscribers (link below).