Appreciate your thoughtful approach to these questions. If you don't mind, I'd like to pick up on your discussion of critical thinking.
I'd agree that teachers sometimes invoke critical thinking as a kind of protective incantation, without being very specific or practical about where and how our students are engaging in it. In my experience, this is partly because we've learned that it can provide a useful rhetorical lever when we're engaging with external audiences. But for ourselves, and in our teaching, I'd agree that it's good to be more thoughtful - to think more critically - about what critical thinking is and how it happens in the classroom.
With that in mind, I want to respond to what you say in this paragraph:
"The five-paragraph essay and the textbook activity and the standardized test prep drill are sure not inviting it. And even in classrooms that do not center these types of things, some days are about building knowledge or practicing a skill."
Where the second sentence appears to separate critical thinking from building knowledge and practicing skills, I would argue that we should see these things as being interconnected and work to make them *more* interconnected for our students. (And I would add, more interconnected with creative thinking as well.)
I also want to think about *why* things like standard five-paragraph essays, textbook activities, and prep drills fail to encourage critical thinking. I'd suggest that this has to do with the degree to which these practices impose an unquestioned apparatus that displaces and suppresses student thinking. Instead of thinking through the shape of their own thoughts, students are told that their essays should have five paragraphs. Instead of thinking about the questions they want to ask, students are provided with a set of questions that they are required to answer, often provided with the answers they are permitted to give, and frequently told that only one answer is correct. Etc.
I'd argue that consumer AI tools function as this kind of unquestioned apparatus. Human thinking is displaced into the system, which is to a very great degree a black box from the perspective of the person using it. To think critically about the output of the system, it's necessary to engage *adversarially* with the corporate project of generative AI, which is in many ways deeply antagonistic to critical thinking and human creativity (in addition to its other social and environmental costs).
Given the state of the world we live in, I think there's an argument to be made that this kind of critical engagement is a necessary part of our work as English teachers. (Though I think there's also an argument to be made that given the state of the world, it's all the more important to create a space for distinctly human learning and creativity.) But to be clear, the kind of critical engagement I'm talking about is distinct from using AI as a tool. When it comes to the question of whether we can "expand critical thinking by inviting AI into the mix," my answer, when it comes to generative AI in its corporate form, would be a pretty clear no.
Wow! Thanks so much for your thinking here. I'm new to Substack and I never expected this depth of commentary, but I love it! So thank you.
The phrase "invoke critical thinking as a kind of protective incantation" is exactly what I'm talking about, and I love the way you put that.
And the reasoning on why standardized components of education exist and comparing it to AI tools as "unquestioned apparatus" -- that's such a good comparison too! I think AI has the potential to be that way, though it certainly doesn't have to be. Would corporations like to control our thinking and behavior with AI? Sure. Corporations do the same with shopping, entertainment, travel, everything. But just as we can choose to be or not to be savvy shoppers, audiences for entertainment, and travelers, I hope that it's possible we can be thoughtful about when and how to engage with AI. In truth, AI such a tentacled topic, and it's tough to talk about one part of it without getting lost in a tangle of tentacles . . . at least I find it so.
I know there are people online that seem super enthused about how AI makes them "more creative," and I personally do not find it so. I won't rule out that someone can. As far as expanding critical thinking, I think I have experienced that, and I'll offer an example.
Recently, studying Rilke's "The Panther" with a class, I got curious about one turn of phrase. We had read three translations of it and were talking about the differences. In an exchange on Microsoft CoPilot I explored how still other translations convert that line into English, asking for scholarly sources linked all along the way. I learned several things about the original German. And then I learned this . . . the poem is part of a sub-genre of German poetry that I had never heard of before. As I began to investigate the linked sources and learn more about that, it made me want to go back and re-read the other Rilke poems from our set of five Rilke poems we looked at during the week, and suddenly I had a new lens and was seeing details of ALL of the poems differently. I was reading them more critically than before with some new knowledge of this sub-genre . . . which of course speaks to your other point that knowledge and skill are part of critical thinking.
Anyway, I shared that whole exploration with my students and annotated the entire "conversation" with where/how it pushed me to think more and where/how it seemed to want to think for me. The majority of the interaction pushed me, and in the end, I came out a more nuanced reader of Rilke's work, and capable of thinking about something new inside of it.
Could I have done all that with books in a library or online scholarly databases? For sure. It would not have happened that quickly, and given that this started as a quick curiosity about one line that I thought might unlock a little meaning, I would not have taken the time at all . . . I would have just moved on with my understanding of "The Panther" at its present levels. For me, that was an example of AI expanding my critical thinking, even beyond my original intent and the original question I wanted to investigate. I've seen students do the same with it, especially in conversation with a teacher. I think this kind of outcome is so wildly distant from the "write-this-essay-for-me" uses, which clearly erode our thinking and academic integrity.
I appreciate the thoughtful response! And it's awesome that you are not only reading Rilke with your students but looking at issues involving differences between translations. As someone who has spent a certain amount of time working on verse translations for teaching purposes, I find this to be a genuinely thought-provoking example.
To unpack terminology a little, I think that we are using the word "critical" in two different though not entirely distinct ways, one relating to critical thinking, and the other to the critical appreciation of a poem.
When I talk about critical thinking (said Humpty Dumpty...), I'm talking about the way we think about how we think and the way we think through different ways of understanding the world, including our own. This is different though not disconnected from critical in the sense of literary criticism. I think AI dependency is bad for critical thinking for more or less the same reasons that lots of people think AI dependency is bad for critical thinking, so I'm going to pass over that lightly here (though I'd be happy to come back to it if our conversation should happen to continue in that direction).
On the critical appreciation side, it sounds like your experience has been that using Copilot deepened your understanding of Rilke's poem (and I recognize, you're just offering that as an example). While I respect that as being your experience, I think you're giving Copilot too much credit and yourself too little.
As you describe it, if it were not for Copilot, you would likely "have just moved on" with your understanding of the poem "at its present levels." But is that really the case? You're clearly a strong and devoted reader of poetry, and the poem had sparked your curiosity, so I suspect that you would have continued to think about it, and one way or another, I'm confident that your understanding of the poem would have continued to develop.
Would you have found the same things you found through Copilot? Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm neither a Rilke scholar nor an expert in modern poetry generally, and high school German was a *long* time ago. But even with the sad state of internet search these days, an old standby and a couple of quick no-AI searches helped me find, for example:
- The Poetry Foundation biography of Rilke, which provides a very helpful discussion of his Dinggedichte, their place in his poetic career, and their reception by other poets and critics, as well as an extensive bibliography.
- Langenscheidt's German-English dictionary, which can help us see, for example, that "der Blick", the word that Rilke uses in the first line, can be used to denote a gaze, a glance, a view, or an expression. (A number of intriguing interpretive possibilities open up here!)
If I were feeling casual, I could hit up r/literature. If I wanted to get more scholarly, I could go to Jstor. All in all, I think the likelihood is that you could have found the same or similar sources without too much difficulty. There's a lot of cool stuff out there (and in the big picture, Copilot owes it to us, we don't owe it to Copilot)!
And like I said, even if you didn't find those other sources, your understanding of the poem would have continued to grow: as you thought about it yourself, as you talked about it with your students and other people. I think it's important to insist on that readerly resourcefulness, and when I read your description of your experience, I wonder (perhaps without justification, but not without concern) whether there's something about using Copilot that's causing you to doubt it.
All great points! It really comes back to human curiosity in the end doesn’t it? And I think that’s genuinely exciting about living through this particular time of change. It’s a chance to articulate precisely what we value, where technology fits or doesn’t fit with that, and to learn from each other. I find even the variety of perspectives I learn from my students, which I’ve written about elsewhere, pushes me to keep thinking, talking, reflecting.
I appreciate the push in this conversation and your thoughtful engagement! Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and I hope we can keep thinking together. Next post is in the works . . . it’s about geography + reading, no mention of AI. I think that’s important to balance.
Appreciate your thoughtful approach to these questions. If you don't mind, I'd like to pick up on your discussion of critical thinking.
I'd agree that teachers sometimes invoke critical thinking as a kind of protective incantation, without being very specific or practical about where and how our students are engaging in it. In my experience, this is partly because we've learned that it can provide a useful rhetorical lever when we're engaging with external audiences. But for ourselves, and in our teaching, I'd agree that it's good to be more thoughtful - to think more critically - about what critical thinking is and how it happens in the classroom.
With that in mind, I want to respond to what you say in this paragraph:
"The five-paragraph essay and the textbook activity and the standardized test prep drill are sure not inviting it. And even in classrooms that do not center these types of things, some days are about building knowledge or practicing a skill."
Where the second sentence appears to separate critical thinking from building knowledge and practicing skills, I would argue that we should see these things as being interconnected and work to make them *more* interconnected for our students. (And I would add, more interconnected with creative thinking as well.)
I also want to think about *why* things like standard five-paragraph essays, textbook activities, and prep drills fail to encourage critical thinking. I'd suggest that this has to do with the degree to which these practices impose an unquestioned apparatus that displaces and suppresses student thinking. Instead of thinking through the shape of their own thoughts, students are told that their essays should have five paragraphs. Instead of thinking about the questions they want to ask, students are provided with a set of questions that they are required to answer, often provided with the answers they are permitted to give, and frequently told that only one answer is correct. Etc.
I'd argue that consumer AI tools function as this kind of unquestioned apparatus. Human thinking is displaced into the system, which is to a very great degree a black box from the perspective of the person using it. To think critically about the output of the system, it's necessary to engage *adversarially* with the corporate project of generative AI, which is in many ways deeply antagonistic to critical thinking and human creativity (in addition to its other social and environmental costs).
Given the state of the world we live in, I think there's an argument to be made that this kind of critical engagement is a necessary part of our work as English teachers. (Though I think there's also an argument to be made that given the state of the world, it's all the more important to create a space for distinctly human learning and creativity.) But to be clear, the kind of critical engagement I'm talking about is distinct from using AI as a tool. When it comes to the question of whether we can "expand critical thinking by inviting AI into the mix," my answer, when it comes to generative AI in its corporate form, would be a pretty clear no.
Wow! Thanks so much for your thinking here. I'm new to Substack and I never expected this depth of commentary, but I love it! So thank you.
The phrase "invoke critical thinking as a kind of protective incantation" is exactly what I'm talking about, and I love the way you put that.
And the reasoning on why standardized components of education exist and comparing it to AI tools as "unquestioned apparatus" -- that's such a good comparison too! I think AI has the potential to be that way, though it certainly doesn't have to be. Would corporations like to control our thinking and behavior with AI? Sure. Corporations do the same with shopping, entertainment, travel, everything. But just as we can choose to be or not to be savvy shoppers, audiences for entertainment, and travelers, I hope that it's possible we can be thoughtful about when and how to engage with AI. In truth, AI such a tentacled topic, and it's tough to talk about one part of it without getting lost in a tangle of tentacles . . . at least I find it so.
I know there are people online that seem super enthused about how AI makes them "more creative," and I personally do not find it so. I won't rule out that someone can. As far as expanding critical thinking, I think I have experienced that, and I'll offer an example.
Recently, studying Rilke's "The Panther" with a class, I got curious about one turn of phrase. We had read three translations of it and were talking about the differences. In an exchange on Microsoft CoPilot I explored how still other translations convert that line into English, asking for scholarly sources linked all along the way. I learned several things about the original German. And then I learned this . . . the poem is part of a sub-genre of German poetry that I had never heard of before. As I began to investigate the linked sources and learn more about that, it made me want to go back and re-read the other Rilke poems from our set of five Rilke poems we looked at during the week, and suddenly I had a new lens and was seeing details of ALL of the poems differently. I was reading them more critically than before with some new knowledge of this sub-genre . . . which of course speaks to your other point that knowledge and skill are part of critical thinking.
Anyway, I shared that whole exploration with my students and annotated the entire "conversation" with where/how it pushed me to think more and where/how it seemed to want to think for me. The majority of the interaction pushed me, and in the end, I came out a more nuanced reader of Rilke's work, and capable of thinking about something new inside of it.
Could I have done all that with books in a library or online scholarly databases? For sure. It would not have happened that quickly, and given that this started as a quick curiosity about one line that I thought might unlock a little meaning, I would not have taken the time at all . . . I would have just moved on with my understanding of "The Panther" at its present levels. For me, that was an example of AI expanding my critical thinking, even beyond my original intent and the original question I wanted to investigate. I've seen students do the same with it, especially in conversation with a teacher. I think this kind of outcome is so wildly distant from the "write-this-essay-for-me" uses, which clearly erode our thinking and academic integrity.
I appreciate the thoughtful response! And it's awesome that you are not only reading Rilke with your students but looking at issues involving differences between translations. As someone who has spent a certain amount of time working on verse translations for teaching purposes, I find this to be a genuinely thought-provoking example.
To unpack terminology a little, I think that we are using the word "critical" in two different though not entirely distinct ways, one relating to critical thinking, and the other to the critical appreciation of a poem.
When I talk about critical thinking (said Humpty Dumpty...), I'm talking about the way we think about how we think and the way we think through different ways of understanding the world, including our own. This is different though not disconnected from critical in the sense of literary criticism. I think AI dependency is bad for critical thinking for more or less the same reasons that lots of people think AI dependency is bad for critical thinking, so I'm going to pass over that lightly here (though I'd be happy to come back to it if our conversation should happen to continue in that direction).
On the critical appreciation side, it sounds like your experience has been that using Copilot deepened your understanding of Rilke's poem (and I recognize, you're just offering that as an example). While I respect that as being your experience, I think you're giving Copilot too much credit and yourself too little.
As you describe it, if it were not for Copilot, you would likely "have just moved on" with your understanding of the poem "at its present levels." But is that really the case? You're clearly a strong and devoted reader of poetry, and the poem had sparked your curiosity, so I suspect that you would have continued to think about it, and one way or another, I'm confident that your understanding of the poem would have continued to develop.
Would you have found the same things you found through Copilot? Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm neither a Rilke scholar nor an expert in modern poetry generally, and high school German was a *long* time ago. But even with the sad state of internet search these days, an old standby and a couple of quick no-AI searches helped me find, for example:
- The Poetry Foundation biography of Rilke, which provides a very helpful discussion of his Dinggedichte, their place in his poetic career, and their reception by other poets and critics, as well as an extensive bibliography.
- Langenscheidt's German-English dictionary, which can help us see, for example, that "der Blick", the word that Rilke uses in the first line, can be used to denote a gaze, a glance, a view, or an expression. (A number of intriguing interpretive possibilities open up here!)
If I were feeling casual, I could hit up r/literature. If I wanted to get more scholarly, I could go to Jstor. All in all, I think the likelihood is that you could have found the same or similar sources without too much difficulty. There's a lot of cool stuff out there (and in the big picture, Copilot owes it to us, we don't owe it to Copilot)!
And like I said, even if you didn't find those other sources, your understanding of the poem would have continued to grow: as you thought about it yourself, as you talked about it with your students and other people. I think it's important to insist on that readerly resourcefulness, and when I read your description of your experience, I wonder (perhaps without justification, but not without concern) whether there's something about using Copilot that's causing you to doubt it.
All great points! It really comes back to human curiosity in the end doesn’t it? And I think that’s genuinely exciting about living through this particular time of change. It’s a chance to articulate precisely what we value, where technology fits or doesn’t fit with that, and to learn from each other. I find even the variety of perspectives I learn from my students, which I’ve written about elsewhere, pushes me to keep thinking, talking, reflecting.
I appreciate the push in this conversation and your thoughtful engagement! Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and I hope we can keep thinking together. Next post is in the works . . . it’s about geography + reading, no mention of AI. I think that’s important to balance.