Universities are concerned about AI cheating.
But the problem isn’t AI.
AI just held up a mirror.
We’ve built a culture obsessed
with outputs while neglecting the critical thinking needed to produce them. More
content. More credentials. More polished little rectangles for LinkedIn.
Meanwhile people are walking around undereducated.
So, I suggest universities return to oral exams.
If a student can’t sit in a room and explain what they think
(clearly, spontaneously, and without consulting a prediction machine trained on the
internet’s compost heap) then what exactly are we measuring? Formatting skills?
Citation choreography?
Oral exams test whether knowledge has actually entered the
person. Can you explain something clearly? Can you defend an idea without
collapsing into a haze of jargon? Can you think while another human being is looking
directly at you? You can hear understanding in real time.
As a writer, I believe that writing matters. Good writing
sharpens thought and should be aggressively taught. But modern academia has built
systems to generate, grade, summarize, and value documents nobody actually
wants to read … bureaucratic fog with footnotes.
Then AI arrived and said, “You mean this counts as
intelligence? Hold my beer.”
Educational institutions should start asking: “Has this
person become wiser?” instead of: “Can this person generate acceptable
artifacts at scale?” Oral examinations should be part of answering the former.
They require presence, and you can’t outsource presence. You either know what
you’re talking about or you don’t.
The real purpose of education was never supposed to be
producing polished effluvia on command. It was supposed to build a human being,
someone more thoughtful, articulate, perceptive, difficult to fool.
That’s much harder to fake live.
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Using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym.
The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place.
That is not the work. The work is what happens in you.
- Sam Halpert
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Other posts on education (from the eyes of a writer):
Are we teaching our kids to memorize or to understand?
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