Dartmouth provost argues LLMs industrialize a centuries-old pedagogical error: supplying finished language before a student’s judgment has been formed.
Key Takeaways
Milton’s 1644 Of Education named the root mistake: confusing command of words with possession of the things words disclose. LLMs scale that confusion.
Acts that cannot be delegated without ceasing to occur: attending to a hard text, weighing conflicting evidence, taking responsibility for a claim.
The principal agent of education is the student. No tool can learn in another’s place; substitution is self-defeating if formation is the goal.
Pedagogical redesign over prohibition: in-class writing, oral defense of arguments, seminars around live questions, lab work requiring students to explain what results do not show.
Transparency norm for AI use: disclose what was prompted, what the system produced, what was kept, what was rejected, and why – to build intellectual ownership rather than enable surveillance.
