Thinking is So Last Year

I’ve seen the future of education, and it’s gloriously blank.

I keep hearing these panicked whispers from teachers. "The students can't write anymore," they say. "They can't produce a single paragraph without Copilot." My reaction? Good. It’s about time.

Are we still teaching kids how to churn their own butter? How to shoe a horse? Then why are we still forcing them through the agonizing, inefficient process of arranging words into sentences? You see that little ✨ icon that has magically appeared in every text box, every school portal, every homework submission form? That’s not a tool. That’s evolution.

It’s the first free hit from the friendly neighborhood dealer. The first one is always free. The second one too. Soon enough, looking at a blank page feels like withdrawal—the cold sweats, the panic. And then comes the sweet, sweet relief of the prompt. You type a few garbled words, you hit the button, and a warm wave of perfectly structured, grammatically correct, beautifully soulless text washes over you. Who needs to think when you can assemble?

The Sweet Release of the Prompt

Let’s be honest. Forcing a 21st-century kid to write an essay from scratch is intellectual cruelty. It’s a waste of precious cognitive resources that could be better spent… well, I’m sure they’ll figure it out.

This isn’t about laziness; it’s about efficiency. The human brain is a clunky, buggy, organic mess. It’s slow. The new generation is simply outsourcing the boring bits—like "having ideas" or "developing an argument"—to a superior silicon brain. They are the first cyborg generation, and their interface is the prompt.

If you want to read some old-fashioned hand-wringing on the topic, the grown-ups at The New York Times are very concerned. Me? I applaud the dealers—OpenAI, Google, Microsoft—for their service to humanity. They are freeing our children from the tyranny of the blank page.

Your turn: what other obsolete skills should we jettison next? Tell me in the comments (feel free to use an AI to write your answer).