Abstract
The rise of ChatGPT has educators across the United States of America worried about scholastic integrity like never before. This paper argues, however, that underneath this initial concern lies an even greater one, that the education system in the United States so closely resembles the style of teaching used by the sophists in Ancient Greece that it has ultimately failed to cultivate critical thinking skills in America’s youth, so much so that ChatGPT has become a far greater issue than it ever needed to be. The practice of ‘teaching to the test’ and the commodification of education, which is akin to the sophists’ custom of instructing the youth of Athens on how to win debates rather than seek true knowledge and charging a high price to do so, has created an education system where true knowledge is no longer the goal. Thus, the real worry about ChatGPT lies not in students circumventing the processes of knowledge, but in educators being forced to recognize the failure to foster such a process in the first place.
Recommended Citation
Smith, David A..
"How Fears of AI in the Classroom Reflect Anxieties about Choosing Sophistry over True Knowledge in the American Education System."
Critical Humanities
2,
2
(2024).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33470/2836-3140.1032
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