{"id":3863,"date":"2026-10-23T14:57:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T14:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/?p=3863"},"modified":"2026-10-23T14:57:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T14:57:20","slug":"the-defense-of-written-thought-why-eliminating-writing-in-the-age-of-ai-threatens-educational-equity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/?p=3863","title":{"rendered":"The Defense of Written Thought: Why Eliminating Writing in the Age of AI Threatens Educational Equity"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the modern academic landscape, the rise of artificial intelligence has triggered a profound philosophical panic among educators, prompting some to radically rethink how student comprehension and critical thinking are evaluated. Just months after Harvard University made the controversial decision to close its renowned Writing Center, a faculty member at Williams College published an opinion piece in The New York Times<\/em> that challenged a foundational pillar of higher education. The professor asserted that writing is not, in fact, the highest or best form of thinking. Instead, he argued, talking is\u2014and it is precisely this belief that led him to permit his students to use AI tools on their papers, provided they can successfully defend their arguments live during oral examinations.<\/p>\n

"At least half of the class was more agile, more reflective and clearer during oral exams than they were in their papers," the professor wrote in his op-ed. It was a provocative claim that left many academic observers asking a critical question: Which half?<\/p>\n

For Julia Morgan McKenzie, director of the Williams College Writing Center and a teacher of memoir and creative nonfiction, her colleague\u2019s argument is not merely academic posturing; she believes it is deeply dangerous. The peril, she argues, lies not only in a fundamental disagreement over the value of the written word, but in the glaring demographic and psychological blind spots of an oral-first pedagogy. Writing does far more than provide students with a solitary sandbox to sort through messy ideas and think on the page; it serves as an equalizer that grants every student a distinct voice, including those who cannot\u2014or dare not\u2014find that voice in a bustling classroom or under the intense spotlight of an oral exam.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the Times<\/em> piece, McKenzie considered the diverse realities of modern student bodies. She thought of a student raised in a cultural background where women are strictly prohibited from speaking to men outside their immediate family, let alone challenging the intellect of a male authority figure. She questioned how such a student would navigate being engaged through messy, searching conversations as a professor attempts to gauge comprehension on the fly. She also considered a student who suffered a concussion the previous semester and how he might manage being asked to recall intricate thematic threads from multiple class meetings ago on the spot. And she wondered about the other half of her colleague’s class\u2014the students who remained silent, and whether their confidence was genuinely growing or simply being obscured by more vocal peers.<\/p>\n

This skepticism toward unmediated oral performance is rooted in McKenzie\u2019s own academic upbringing. In the fall of 1993, after spending a grueling year waitressing to save money for higher education, she settled into a seminar table at college with two overwhelming anxieties: whether her trembling hands would ever steady, and what on earth could possibly be discussed in a class dedicated to the colorful clay she had grown up pressing into spaghetti strings. Having initially misheard her professor announce a discussion on Play-Doh, she soon realized with a jolt of panic as syllabi were passed out that the subject was actually Plato’s The Republic<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Fortunately for her, she did not have to confess her confusion immediately because a classmate sitting across the table, who had evidently attended a more privileged preparatory high school, had already read the text. There he was, speaking about classical philosophy with effortless confidence, while the professor nodded along approvingly. <\/p>\n

Of course, McKenzie returned to her dorm room, read and reread Plato, and meticulously unpacked the philosophical arguments. But as her comprehension of the text deepened, her self-assurance did not follow suit; she never once spoke aloud in that seminar. Her professor only ever learned what she thought about Plato\u2014or any other subject\u2014through the essays she submitted. Evidently, her written work resonated: years later, that same professor penned a recommendation letter supporting her application to graduate school.<\/p>\n

Even as her academic understanding evolved, McKenzie never lost sight of a telling dynamic: the only students consistently bold enough to speak up during seminar discussions were young men. She was likely not the only young woman in the room quietly wondering if her admission to the selective college had been a clerical error. That same dynamic is far from lost on her today, as she interacts daily with contemporary college students who view writing as a sanctuary\u2014a safer form of intellectual engagement that temporarily alleviates the crushing weight of impostor syndrome.<\/p>\n

Yet, McKenzie is careful to avoid simplistic reductions. Attributing her own college anxieties solely to impostor syndrome, or her outspoken classmate’s bravado purely to male privilege, misses the mark. She notes that she knows numerous women who speak up in class without a shred of hesitation, alongside plenty of men whose internal impostor syndrome is so acute they struggle to complete basic assignments without experiencing panic attacks. Her core concern is not about gender in a vacuum, but rather about the entrenched and complex power dynamics that govern classrooms and oral examinations, regardless of how earnestly faculty members attempt to mitigate them.<\/p>\n

In her extensive experience, students who have not inherited the innate confidence born of structural power and privilege\u2014including women, international students, students of color, and gender-nonconforming students\u2014frequently feel deeply uncomfortable airing unformed, half-baked ideas in front of an audience. True spontaneous talking can only function as a valid form of thinking when a student already possesses profound confidence, commands a comfortable stage, and rests assured that they will neither be interrupted nor penalized for initial stumbles.<\/p>\n

When higher education casually discards writing\u2014whether driven by acute panic over generative artificial intelligence or a philosophical shift declaring speech to be the superior medium of thought\u2014it abandons a vital lifeline. It fails the very students who most urgently need a structured space to find their intellectual voice, untangle complex ideas, and communicate privately and deliberately with their professors. Without writing, McKenzie contends, true teaching ceases to be universal. Institutions stop teaching every student in the room, and the fundamental obligation of an educator is to reach each individual learner.<\/p>\n

Years earlier, McKenzie wrote about the growing bifurcation that the dawn of the AI era would inevitably deepen within the student population. Now, she fears that the movement toward oral-first evaluations will foster an entirely new kind of divide\u2014one that mirrors broader societal inequities by disproportionately benefiting and privileging white, cisgender men. In his original opinion piece, her colleague openly acknowledged that adopting an oral-centric approach "will take courage on [students’] part to abandon the safe recursion of revision and narrative refinement." McKenzie is left asking a pointed question about who, within the current structure of society, is actually afforded the systemic safety and opportunity to practice that kind of courage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the modern academic landscape, the rise of artificial intelligence has triggered a profound philosophical panic among educators, prompting some to radically rethink how student comprehension and critical thinking are evaluated. Just months after Harvard University made the controversial decision to close its renowned Writing Center, a faculty member at Williams College published an opinion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[80,3332,79,6062,6061,1989,81,2600,2125,2037,3462],"class_list":["post-3863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-and-career","tag-career","tag-defense","tag-education","tag-educational","tag-eliminating","tag-equity","tag-jobs","tag-thought","tag-threatens","tag-writing","tag-written"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xesi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}