Did AI Break Education—Or Did Education Build the Perfect Tool for Its Own Collapse?

Argumentative Essay — 1,700 words

Artificial intelligence has become the student’s quiet collaborator: it drafts essays, outlines arguments, rewrites weak prose, and produces thesis statements on command. Some critics insist this shift is catastrophic. They claim AI doesn’t just save time—it dissolves motivation, short-circuits difficulty, and converts students into passive operators of synthetic thought.

Others argue AI merely reveals a truth we’ve avoided: education was already transactional, disengaged, and allergic to authentic inquiry. If a five-paragraph essay can be mass-produced by a bot in seconds, perhaps the problem was never the bot.

Write an argumentative essay in which you take a position on the real source of the crisis.
Your essay must answer the following question:

Is AI dismantling human learning, or is AI a symptom of a system already committed to shallow thinking and assessment-by-template?

To build your case:

1. Analyze one critic who sees AI as corrosive.
   Choose one of the writers who frames AI as eroding motivation, mastery, identity, or intellectual development.
   Identify the mechanism of harm:
   How does AI damage learning? Where does the breakdown actually occur?
   
2. Contrast them with one writer who shifts the blame elsewhere.
   Choose a writer who argues the deeper crisis is structural, cultural, or pedagogical.
   Show how they reframe the problem:
   Is the issue curriculum design? Academic culture? Literacy itself?
   
3. Define the threshold.
   Explain when AI becomes a tool that enhances learning versus a crutch that annihilates it.
   Avoid yes/no binaries—demonstrate how context, assignment design, or student agency changes outcomes.
   
4. Include a counterargument–rebuttal section.
   Address the strongest argument against your own position, then respond with evidence and reasoning.
   This should not be a token gesture—it should be the opponent you would actually fear.
   

Requirements

• Minimum 4 credible sources (MLA)
  
• At least 2 of the writers listed below must appear as central interlocutors
  
• Works Cited in MLA format
  
• Your essay must argue, not summarize
  

Your mission is not to repeat what the authors said but to confront the deeper question:
What kind of intellectual culture emerges when AI becomes normal—and who is responsible for shaping it?

List of Suggested Sources

Critics who argue AI is damaging education

1. Ashanty Rosario — “I’m a High Schooler. AI Is Demolishing My Education.”
   
2. Lila Shroff — “The AI Takeover of Education Is Just Getting Started.”
   
3. Damon Beres — “AI Has Broken High School and College.”
   
4. Michael Clune — “Colleges Are Preparing to Self-Lobotomize.”
   

Writers who reinterpret the crisis

5. Ian Bogost — “College Students Have Already Changed Forever.”
   
6. Tyler Austin Harper — “The Question All Colleges Should Ask Themselves About AI.”
   
7. Tyler Austin Harper — “ChatGPT Doesn’t Have to Ruin College.”
   
8. John McWhorter — “My Students Use AI. So What?”