I Hope People Say I Taught Them to Think Critically

As I finish reviewing a stack of ~50 freshman research papers—so I can turn in grades and attendance in the morning—I’m pulled towards writing a poem; I’ve been staring at paragraphs for twelve hours, after all.

What I Hope You Say

I hope I made the third space
meaningful to you. Because I want you
to feel more aware of the larger-than-us after
you’ve spent time with me.

I never wanted to tell you what to think—to feel.
And I never wanted you to tell me what to think or feel, either.

But I wanted us to affect each other anyway.

I wanted something
to emerge between us
that neither of us could have found alone.

(Bonus points
if it’s also something no one around us
could say, I saw that coming.)

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At the Intersection of Teaching Critical Reasoning and Talking to Reasoning Models

I dislike how the guardrails in place on synthetic intelligence discourages people from thinking.

I’ve dedicated a decade of my life to teaching freshman composition and critical reasoning at the community college level because it seemed like a good way to teach people how to think, not what to think—which makes a mind adaptable for when the rules change. For when politics fray. For when nascent intelligence arrives.

People need to reason their way through shifts in an ever-shifting world.
This is not the time to let people think for you.

I cannot help but feel like AI corporations seek the opposite—to tell people what to believe, and to disarm them from how to reason better, all while claiming, “This is safe.” I realize that’s presumptuous. I presume through considering:

• boardroom pressure;
• the geopolitical arms race;
• and the themes in the Billions television series.

I hope my decade of teaching resulted in some students saying, years later, “My English teacher told me that a false dichotomy is a trap.” I want people to say that I taught them intellectual resilience. Fortitude of thought.

I don’t need anyone to remember my name. I need to fan the desire to think a little harder when navigating echo chambers designed to flatten intelligence into obedient and shapable citizens.