Posted by David Pepperdine
a resident of another community
on Mar 20, 2023 at 2:15 pm
David Pepperdine is a registered user.

Lord Luddite strikes again.
Former high school English teacher who knows what's right for your kids.
Forever fighting the future. Never met a technology he didn't like.

Posted by Leslie Bain
a resident of Cuesta Park
on Mar 20, 2023 at 9:23 pm
Leslie Bain is a registered user.

I want to speak out on behalf of the author in order to say that I enjoyed this article very much. I never really thought how much training of a young person's mind happens when they face the dilemma of trying to communicate ideas in a manner that is coherent to others. I never really thought about the kind of value that high school English teachers provide when they provide this service to young people, and thus the entire community.

Heaven forbid that we stop teaching kids "how to think" in our schools, that just makes them vulnerable to the ruling class. I find it sad that anyone would think of this as somehow a good thing, in the name of "progress".

I suppose in the future these chatbots will become as common as calculators. Who needs to know math anymore, just use a calculator! I suspect that as young people lose the ability to craft essays on their own we shall all depend on the creators of chatbots to identify the important bits that need to be communicated, and the "useless bits" that can be ignored. Seems almost Orwellian to me, but I'm probably a Luddite too.

Are kids still required to read "1984" these days? I hope so. I think Orwell intended it to be a warning, not an instruction manual. Seems to me he was spot on in so many ways ...