By now, the ritual is as familiar as the start of any academic semester: the frantic email from a department chair, the updated syllabus, and the tired plea from faculty members begging students to refrain from outsourcing their intellect to generative AI. For Anne Lovering Rounds, a professor of English at Hostos Community College, CUNY, that ritual has become a source of profound professional dissonance. Like thousands of her peers, she has dutifully pasted the boilerplate institutional warning into her syllabus: “The use of generative AI tools such as, but not limited to, ChatGPT is prohibited on all assignments and assessments in this course.” Yet, as the novelty of the “AI panic” fades into a grim, daily reality, Rounds and a growing chorus of educators are beginning to suggest that the problem isn’t the technology itself. Instead, the rise of AI is acting as a stress test for a structural failure that has existed in the humanities for decades: the conflation of literary appreciation, historical literacy, and technical composition. The “Delve” Dilemma: Why Current Anti-AI Arguments Are Failing The surface-level frustration for English professors is palpable. Educators are exhausted by the robotic cadence of student submissions—papers that consistently “delve” into assigned texts or rely on the tired, formulaic “It’s not X—it’s Y” rhetorical structure favored by Large Language Models. However, Rounds argues that the common arguments against AI in the classroom—that it kills “original thought” or “cheats the learning process”—are, in her words, “cringe.” They ignore the pedagogical crisis that has been simmering long before the advent of LLMs. By treating AI as a mere moral failing on the part of the student, departments are missing a pivotal opportunity to decouple the disparate skills currently being jammed into a single semester. The Fuzziness of the “And”: A Chronology of Curricular Bloat To understand the current crisis, one must look at the evolution of the standard undergraduate English requirement. Historically, the transition from classical rhetoric to the modern “Literature and Composition” model has been driven by a desire to optimize credit hours. The Mid-20th Century Shift: As higher education expanded, departments sought to justify the value of the humanities by packaging literary study with professional communication skills. The goal was to produce "well-rounded" citizens who could both appreciate Keats and draft a coherent memo. The “And” Burden: The title of the standard requirement—Literature and Composition—is, according to Rounds, the source of the pedagogical rot. It implies that the two are inextricably linked, when in practice, they are entirely different intellectual pursuits. The Current AI Pivot: With the accessibility of tools like ChatGPT, the "writing" component of this equation has become easily automated, while the "literary" component remains a human-centric, labor-intensive process. This has created a "writing tax," where students are forced to produce deliverables on texts they barely understand, leading to the inevitable reliance on AI to fill the gap. The Fallacy of the "Well-Rounded" Communicator In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Frank Bruni offered a romanticized defense of the English major, arguing that the study of literature creates "better communicators" who are capable of "shaping stories" and "persuading." While the sentiment is noble, it glosses over the granular reality of the classroom. What is a "better communicator"? In the digital age, is it a succinct emailer? A master of slide-deck presentations? Or a poet capable of meter and rhyme? Rounds suggests that we have confused the seeds of creativity with the act of production. By insisting that a student learn the intricacies of Shakespearean meter, the historical context of the Elizabethan stage, and the mechanics of a five-paragraph argumentative essay simultaneously, we are setting them up for failure. It is, as Rounds notes, “like asking a total novice to ace a drop-the-needle test on all of classical music after 15 weeks, and also learn to play an instrument.” Supporting Data: The Disconnect Between Appreciation and Composition If one examines the learning objectives of a standard freshman English course, the cognitive load is staggering. Students are expected to: Perform Literary Analysis: Identify tropes, themes, and motifs in complex, often archaic texts. Master Technical Composition: Learn the nuances of MLA/APA formatting, logical progression, and thesis development. Demonstrate Synthesis: Connect the two above skills under the pressure of a 15-week semester. The data—if measured by student satisfaction and genuine retention of literary knowledge—suggests this model is failing. When students are faced with a "writing tax"—the requirement to produce analytical essays on material they are still struggling to decode—the path of least resistance is inevitably the use of generative AI. It is not necessarily a sign of intellectual laziness, but a rational response to an irrational workload. Official Responses and Institutional Inertia Institutional responses to the AI crisis have been largely reactive. Most colleges have opted for a "prohibitionist" approach, investing in AI-detection software that is notoriously unreliable and prone to false positives, or tightening the surveillance of student work. However, a small but influential faction of the faculty is pushing for a shift toward "AI-resilient" assignments. These include: In-class writing: Reverting to the "blue book" exam style to ensure work is original. Oral exams: Requiring students to discuss texts in real-time, echoing the Socratic method. Process-based grading: Valuing the development of a student’s thought process over the final, polished deliverable. Yet, these solutions often ignore the fundamental question: Why are we still forcing the essay as the primary vehicle for literary assessment? Implications: A Future for the Humanities The way forward, according to reformers like Rounds, requires a radical decoupling of English studies. 1. The Separation of Disciplines If a course is titled Writing Essays, the focus should be on logic, clarity, and the architecture of argument—a skill set that does not require a deep dive into the canon of Victorian poetry. Conversely, a course titled Literary Appreciation or Identifying Literary Techniques should be freed from the "writing tax." In such a class, students could be assessed through creative projects, oral debates, or annotated readings that prioritize deep engagement with the text over the production of a standard, MLA-formatted paper. 2. A New Definition of "Humanity" We must stop pretending that forcing students to churn out semi-literate essays about Macbeth constitutes an education in the "humanities." The obsession with the essay as the sole arbiter of student intelligence is a relic of an era that assumed every student had the luxury of time and the inclination to become a scholar. 3. Embracing the Socratic Alternative As Rounds points out, Socrates never had to write a paper in MLA format to prove his wisdom. The future of the humanities may lie in returning to the dialogue. If we can facilitate environments where students discuss the "seeds of creativity" without the looming threat of a "deliverable," we might actually see a resurgence in genuine literary interest. Conclusion: The End of the "Writing Tax" The AI crisis is not the death of the English department; it is the death of a specific, outdated mode of assessment. By holding onto the myth that reading and writing are always better together, we have turned the study of literature into a chore and the practice of writing into a mechanical output that AI is happy to provide. It is time to be honest about what we want students to take away from their time in our classrooms. If we want them to write, we should teach them to write. If we want them to love literature, we should teach them to read. To insist on both, within the constraints of a standard, credit-heavy college model, is to invite the very technological interference we claim to fear. The "humanity" of the English department will not be saved by stricter bans on ChatGPT; it will be saved by the courage to simplify our mission and admit that some things, like deep reading, are worth doing for their own sake, not for the sake of an essay. Post navigation Beyond the Page: How Zig Engelmann’s Radical Education Experiment Reshaped the Classroom
