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Speaking as a sometime writing teacher and international bestselling essayist, 5PEs are objectively bad essays. Their only virtue is that they can be assessed in a standard way, so the grade any given 5PE is awarded by any grader is likely to be the same grade it receives when presented to any other grader. Grading an essay is an irreducibly subjective matter, and the only way to create an objective standard for essays is to make the essays unrecognizable as essays.
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Long thread/32
And yet, the 5PE is the heart of assessment for many AP classes, from History to English to Social Studies and beyond. A kid who scores high on any humanities APs will have put endless hours into perfecting this perfectly abominable literary form, mastering a skill that they will never, ever be called upon to use.
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Long thread/32
@pluralistic@mamot.fr Oh that is so untrue.Tthe 5PE is foundational to corporate white papers! Don't ask me how I know.
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(The top piece of college entrance advice is "don't write your personal essay as a 5PE" and college professors spend the first half of their 101 classes teaching students not to turn in 5PEs.)
The same goes for many other aspects of AP and Common Core assessment. If you do AP Lit, you'll be required to annotate the literature you read by making a set number of marginal observations on every page of the novels, poems and essays you read.
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Long thread/34
Again, as a literary reviewer, novelist, and nonfiction writer who's written more than 30 books, I have to say, this is a batshit way to learn to analyze and criticize literature. It's sole virtue is that it reduces the qualitative matter of literary analysis to a qualitative target that students can hit and teachers can count.
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Long thread/34
Again, as a literary reviewer, novelist, and nonfiction writer who's written more than 30 books, I have to say, this is a batshit way to learn to analyze and criticize literature. It's sole virtue is that it reduces the qualitative matter of literary analysis to a qualitative target that students can hit and teachers can count.
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Long thread/35
And that's where AI comes in. AI - the ultimate bullshit machine - can produce a better 5PE than any student can, because the point of the 5PE isn't to be intellectually curious or rigorous, it's to produce a standardized output that can be analyzed using a standardized rubric.
I've been writing YA novels and doing school visits for long enough to cement my understanding that kids are actually pretty darned clever.
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Long thread/35
And that's where AI comes in. AI - the ultimate bullshit machine - can produce a better 5PE than any student can, because the point of the 5PE isn't to be intellectually curious or rigorous, it's to produce a standardized output that can be analyzed using a standardized rubric.
I've been writing YA novels and doing school visits for long enough to cement my understanding that kids are actually pretty darned clever.
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Long thread/36
They don't graduate from high school thinking that their mastery of the 5PE is in any way good or useful, or that they're learning about literature by making five marginal observations per page when they read a book.
Given all this, why *wouldn't* you ask an AI to do your homework? That homework is already the revenge of Goodhart's Law, a target that has ruined its metric.
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Long thread/36
They don't graduate from high school thinking that their mastery of the 5PE is in any way good or useful, or that they're learning about literature by making five marginal observations per page when they read a book.
Given all this, why *wouldn't* you ask an AI to do your homework? That homework is already the revenge of Goodhart's Law, a target that has ruined its metric.
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Long thread/37
Your homework performance says nothing useful about your mastery of the subject, so why not let the AI write it. Hell, if you're a smart, motivated kid, then letting the AI write your bullshit 5PEs might give you time to write something good.
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Long thread/37
Your homework performance says nothing useful about your mastery of the subject, so why not let the AI write it. Hell, if you're a smart, motivated kid, then letting the AI write your bullshit 5PEs might give you time to write something good.
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Long thread/38
Teachers aren't to blame. They have to teach to the test, or they will fail their students (literally, because they will have to give them a failing grade, and figuratively, because students who get failing grades will face all kinds of punishments). Teachers' unions - who consistently fight against standardization and in favor of their members discretion to practice their educational skills based on kids' individual needs - are our best hope:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/29/jane-mcalevey/#trump-is-a-scab
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Long thread/38
Teachers aren't to blame. They have to teach to the test, or they will fail their students (literally, because they will have to give them a failing grade, and figuratively, because students who get failing grades will face all kinds of punishments). Teachers' unions - who consistently fight against standardization and in favor of their members discretion to practice their educational skills based on kids' individual needs - are our best hope:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/29/jane-mcalevey/#trump-is-a-scab
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Long thread/39
The right hates teachers and keeps on setting them up to fail. That hatred has no bottom. Take the Republican Texas State Rep Ryan Guillen, whose House Bill 462 will increase the state's school safety budget from $10/student to $100/student, with those additional funds earmarked to buy one armed drone per 200 students (these drones are supplied by a single company that has ties to Guillen):
https://dronelife.com/2024/12/08/texas-lawmaker-proposes-drones-for-school-security-a-less-lethal-solution/
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Long thread/39
The right hates teachers and keeps on setting them up to fail. That hatred has no bottom. Take the Republican Texas State Rep Ryan Guillen, whose House Bill 462 will increase the state's school safety budget from $10/student to $100/student, with those additional funds earmarked to buy one armed drone per 200 students (these drones are supplied by a single company that has ties to Guillen):
https://dronelife.com/2024/12/08/texas-lawmaker-proposes-drones-for-school-security-a-less-lethal-solution/
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Long thread/40
Imagine how much Texas schools could do with an extra $90/student/year - how much more usefully that money could be spent if it were turned over to teachers. But instead, Rep Guillen wants to put "AI in schools" in the form of drones equipped with pepper-spray, flash bangs, and "lances" that can be smashed into people at 100mph.
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Long thread/40
Imagine how much Texas schools could do with an extra $90/student/year - how much more usefully that money could be spent if it were turned over to teachers. But instead, Rep Guillen wants to put "AI in schools" in the form of drones equipped with pepper-spray, flash bangs, and "lances" that can be smashed into people at 100mph.
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Long thread/41
The problem with AI in schools isn't that students are using AI to do their homework. It's that schools have been turned into reward-hacking AIs by a system that hates the idea of an educated populace almost as much as it hates the idea of unionized teachers who are empowered to teach our kids.
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Long thread/41
The problem with AI in schools isn't that students are using AI to do their homework. It's that schools have been turned into reward-hacking AIs by a system that hates the idea of an educated populace almost as much as it hates the idea of unionized teachers who are empowered to teach our kids.
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Cory Doctorow
