Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
For anyone unfamiliar with Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the entire thesis is that traditional educational models promote oppression by removing students' agency in their own learning. Freire argues that currently education functions as a "banking model" - teachers are the holders of knowledge, and students are empty vessels, waiting to have that knowledge put into their heads like a piggy bank. This reinforces a passive attitude towards information, not seeking and understanding it on your own terms, but waiting for a "banker" to deposit it into your head.
Instead, Freire proposes that teachers and students act as co-creators of knowledge, where students become active participants in their own learning through questions and dialogue. Teachers are also open to changing their understanding of topics in the process of critical dialogue - the goal is not "student learns Fact A and memorizes it as presented," but instead the goal is the knowledge itself, discovered collaboratively by teacher and student, who are acting with empathy and respect towards each other. This also starts the process of the oppressed being able and empowered to question structures of power, take agency, and actively participate in the transformation of society.
So, the irony of writing an AI essay on critical pedagogy is actually insane; because it's essentially the extrapolated endpoint of Freire's arguments that our current educational system creates passive receptacles who not only can't think critically in an educational context, but also become the perfect citizens for a world that doesn't want us questioning structures of power, to view those in power as we viewed our teachers - deliverers of indisputable facts that must be memorized and regurgitated because they command it, and not co-creators of true understanding.
When your at uni the ultimate goal is to learn how to think through problems yourself by writing essays and papers or taking exams or solving math or engineering problems etc. The end result is secondary the way to get there is what truly matters so if you take a shortcut then you haven't actually learned anything because you didn't critically engage with the matter.
And let's think about it in the long run: would you let someone, who wouldn't have gotten through uni without an ai chatbot, perform brain surgery on yourself or a loved one?
That's not to say the current education stystem isn't massively fucked up because it actually is since it priorities performance over learning. But it's still a fact that you aren't cheating the corrupt system by getting a degree without actually having the knowledge and problem solving skills, you are actively helping an even bigger corrupt system to turn you into a sheep by giving away your own intelligence.
