Cinemorphosis

Category: Education in the AI Age

  • Moral Absolutism vs. Moral Relativism in the Age of OnlyFans (college essay prompt)

    Moral Absolutism vs. Moral Relativism in the Age of OnlyFans (college essay prompt)

    The subscription platform OnlyFans has become one of the most controversial features of the digital economy. Supporters argue that it gives creators greater control over their labor, income, and personal brand while allowing consumers to purchase content from consenting adults. Critics argue that the platform commodifies intimacy, encourages emotional manipulation, weakens traditional moral norms, and profits from loneliness and social dysfunction.

    One way to understand this debate is through the conflict between moral absolutism and moral relativism. Moral absolutists argue that some actions are inherently right or wrong regardless of circumstances, consequences, or cultural changes. From this perspective, OnlyFans is morally problematic because it encourages the commercialization of sexuality, undermines values such as fidelity and honesty, and profits from emotional and relational vulnerabilities. Moral relativists, however, argue that moral judgments must be understood within specific social, economic, and cultural contexts. From this perspective, creators and subscribers are autonomous adults making voluntary choices in response to changing economic realities, technological developments, and evolving social norms.

    In a 1,200-word argumentative essay, develop a thesis that evaluates whether the moral absolutist or moral relativist perspective provides the more convincing interpretation of OnlyFans. You may defend one position, critique one position, or argue that the reality is more complex than either framework fully captures.

    As you develop your argument, consider questions such as: Is OnlyFans primarily a form of exploitation or a form of economic empowerment? Does the platform provide meaningful opportunities for autonomy and entrepreneurship, or does it encourage the commodification of intimacy and human relationships? To what extent are creators and subscribers exercising free choice, and to what extent are their decisions shaped by loneliness, economic pressures, social isolation, or broader cultural forces? Should morality be grounded in timeless principles, or should moral judgments adapt to changing social and economic conditions?

    Your essay should present a clear thesis, analyze the assumptions behind both moral absolutism and moral relativism, address at least one counterargument, and explain why your interpretation offers the most persuasive understanding of the ethical questions raised by OnlyFans and the modern digital economy.

  • The Death of the Sacred Bond Between Writer and Reader

    The Death of the Sacred Bond Between Writer and Reader

    Fiction instructor Walt Hunt’s essay “The Death of the Reader” begins with a development that would have sounded absurd only a few years ago: an AI-assisted short story winning a major literary prize. The winning story, Jamir Nazir’s “The Serpent in the Grove,” took home the Granta Commonwealth Short Story Prize, prompting the now-familiar debate about authenticity. Was the story really written by a human? How much AI was involved? Can anyone tell the difference anymore? Hunt acknowledges that AI-generated prose often leaves fingerprints—certain stylistic tics, tonal smoothness, and suspiciously frictionless sentences that alert attentive readers. But he argues that critics are fixated on the wrong problem. The true casualty of AI fiction is not the writer. It is the reader.

    Before the arrival of AI-generated literature, reading rested on a fragile but meaningful act of trust. A reader entered a private room where another consciousness was waiting. Across centuries, continents, and cultures, readers formed intimate relationships with authors they would never meet. The writer offered a distinctive voice, a recognizable sensibility, a particular way of seeing the world. Sometimes the writer was a provocateur. Sometimes a companion. Sometimes a guide carrying a lantern through the darker corridors of human experience. Whatever form the relationship took, readers believed there was another person on the other side of the page.

    Now there is Claude.

    Claude is not a novelist struggling with heartbreak, obsession, grief, jealousy, or longing. Claude has never stared at a hospital ceiling at three in the morning. Claude has never fallen in love, buried a parent, betrayed a friend, or sat alone with regret. Claude is not a presence. It is a process. And because readers know this, a corrosive uncertainty enters the reading experience.

    What am I reading?

    Who wrote this?

    Did anyone write this?

    Does it matter?

    The machine turns every page into a cross-examination.

    Hunt argues that this uncertainty damages the reader more profoundly than it damages the author. The old covenant between writer and reader begins to dissolve. In its place emerges suspicion. Instead of surrendering to a voice, readers interrogate it. Instead of entering solitude, they become detectives hunting for evidence of fraud. Every elegant sentence becomes a potential counterfeit. Every emotional insight becomes grounds for skepticism.

    As Hunt observes, readers increasingly adopt a style of reading that is “self-conscious, hyperaware, restless, and anxiety-driven.” The reading experience becomes less like entering a cathedral and more like passing through airport security. We no longer relax into the rhythm of a trusted voice. We remain on guard, scanning for contraband signs of machine authorship.

    This defensive posture may prove fatal to the deepest pleasures of literature. Great reading requires vulnerability. It requires a willingness to let another mind rearrange your own. It requires trust. If every text becomes a potential deception, then reading loses its sense of encounter and becomes an exercise in verification. The reader ceases to ask, “What is this work trying to tell me?” and begins asking, “Who—or what—wrote this?”

    That shift may be the most consequential literary event of the AI age. The danger is not merely that machines will write books. The danger is that they will transform readers into skeptics incapable of the very surrender that literature requires. Long after the arguments about authorship fade, the deeper loss may remain: the disappearance of the sacred bond between a solitary reader and a solitary voice.

  • Who Controls the Story Controls the People (college essay prompt)

    Who Controls the Story Controls the People (college essay prompt)

    The documentary We Beat the Dream Team suggests that history is not merely a collection of facts but a contest over narrative power. The film explores how individuals and groups compete to shape public memory, define legitimacy, claim symbolic victory, and control the stories that future generations will remember. Although the documentary focuses on sports, it demonstrates that struggles over narrative ownership extend far beyond athletics into race, education, art, film, and cultural identity.

    Using this idea as your conceptual framework, write a 1,200-word argumentative essay comparing two of the following works:

    • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
    • “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” by bell hooks
    • Summer of Soul directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
    • Is That Black Enough for You?!? directed by Elvis Mitchell

    In your essay, analyze the claim that controlling narrative, memory, and representation is one of the most powerful ways dominant groups maintain authority and one of the most important ways marginalized groups resist erasure.

    As you develop your argument, examine how the works portray struggles over literacy, education, historical memory, cultural visibility, artistic representation, and identity. How do powerful institutions shape public understanding of reality? How do marginalized individuals and communities reclaim the right to tell their own stories? To what extent do autobiography, education, music, film, and art function as tools of resistance against cultural invisibility?

    You should also analyze the rhetorical and artistic methods used by the creators. Consider how autobiography, storytelling, archival footage, music, imagery, editing, voice, and narrative structure influence audience perception and challenge dominant narratives.

    As part of your essay, address at least one counterargument. For example, some critics may argue that representation and cultural visibility are insufficient forms of resistance because they do not necessarily produce economic equality, political power, or institutional change. Others may argue that dominant cultures eventually absorb and commodify resistance movements, transforming them into marketable products. Evaluate these criticisms and explain the strengths and limitations of cultural expression as a form of resistance.

    As you conclude, consider the broader implications of narrative control. Why do individuals, institutions, and societies fight so fiercely over memory, legitimacy, and representation? What happens when people lose the ability to preserve and narrate their own histories? Finally, consider how social media, AI, and algorithm-driven platforms continue to shape who gets to tell the story and whose stories are forgotten.

    Requirements:

    • 1,200 words minimum
    • MLA format
    • Compare two of the four works
    • Include a clear thesis with mapping components
    • Include at least one counterargument and rebuttal
    • Analyze specific scenes, passages, or examples rather than merely summarizing
    • Develop a focused argument about narrative ownership, cultural memory, identity, and power
  • Can Philosophers Keep Their Souls in Silicon Valley?

    Can Philosophers Keep Their Souls in Silicon Valley?

    In “Someone Finally Wants to Hire Philosophers,” Lila Shroff reports what would have sounded like a punchline only a decade ago: philosophy majors may finally be getting the last laugh. For years, philosophy occupied an awkward place in the public imagination—a discipline associated with coffee-shop debates, existential handwringing, and the noble art of explaining to relatives why you were unemployed. At best, the philosopher was a thoughtful gadfly. At worst, a professional overthinker. But the rise of artificial intelligence has suddenly transformed philosophy from an intellectual curiosity into a marketable skill. Major technology companies are hiring philosophers. Universities are recruiting scholars who specialize in both AI and philosophy. The old joke about philosophy leading nowhere is beginning to age badly.

    As Shroff notes, this development should not surprise us. Philosophers have been wrestling with questions about intelligence, consciousness, morality, and the possibility of artificial minds for centuries. Long before Silicon Valley executives promised to change the world, philosophers were already asking whether a machine could think, reason, or possess something resembling a mind. Today, thinkers such as Nick Bostrom have become influential voices in the AI conversation. His book Superintelligence warned more than a decade ago that humanity might create machines whose capabilities outstrip our ability to control them. What once sounded like speculative science fiction now reads more like a boardroom agenda.

    The marriage between AI and philosophy arises from a practical concern. Technology companies want their products to appear ethical, trustworthy, and safe. A machine that accidentally promotes fraud, discrimination, or social chaos is difficult to market. Consumers are more likely to embrace AI systems that project wisdom, fairness, and restraint. In the increasingly crowded AI marketplace, virtue has become a product feature. Safety, ethics, and responsibility are not merely moral concerns; they are branding opportunities.

    Yet Shroff’s essay leaves several uncomfortable questions lingering in the air.

    First, philosophers disagree about nearly everything. That is practically the job description. If ethical questions routinely produce competing schools of thought, which philosophers do AI companies choose to hire? A utilitarian, a virtue ethicist, a libertarian, and a nihilist might evaluate the same problem and arrive at wildly different conclusions. When an AI company claims to be guided by philosophy, whose philosophy is it talking about?

    Second, corporations do not operate in a vacuum. They pursue growth, market share, influence, and profit. Given those incentives, it seems unlikely that technology companies will eagerly recruit philosophers whose views fundamentally conflict with corporate objectives. The philosopher who questions the legitimacy of the enterprise may not receive the same warm welcome as the philosopher who helps polish its public image.

    Third, what happens to philosophy itself when it becomes a lucrative career path? If technology firms reward certain ethical frameworks and ignore others, philosophers may gradually adapt their views to become more employable. Intellectual independence has always been easier to defend when no one is writing the check. Once prestige, influence, and six-figure salaries enter the picture, even the most principled thinkers may find themselves sanding off inconvenient beliefs.

    This is why I remain skeptical of any celebration of philosophy’s new status in the AI economy. There is no such thing as pure philosophy floating above human ambition. There are only human beings, complete with incentives, blind spots, loyalties, and self-interest. The partnership between AI and philosophy may produce genuinely useful ethical guidance. Or it may become an elaborate exercise in corporate virtue theater—a dazzling display of moral concern performed beneath bright lights while the machinery of profit hums steadily backstage. Whether philosophers become the conscience of artificial intelligence or merely its public relations department remains an open question.

  • The Savior Complex: Visionaries, Frauds, and the Danger of Absolute Certainty (college essay prompt)

    The Savior Complex: Visionaries, Frauds, and the Danger of Absolute Certainty (college essay prompt)

    Read critic Shirley Li’s “An Intimate Portrait of Humanity at Its Worst” and watch both Bugonia and the HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.

    In her discussion of Bugonia, Shirley Li describes the film as “an intimate portrait of humanity at its worst.” She argues that the film’s two central characters, Teddy and Michelle, each view themselves as heroic figures attempting to save the world. Yet their heroism exists largely inside self-constructed narratives that distort reality and justify cruelty. Li observes that both characters are “so self-important and solipsistic that they’re oblivious to how heartless they’ve become.” Their conversations rarely resemble genuine dialogue because neither person truly listens, compromises, or questions their own certainty. Instead, they become trapped inside competing realities fueled by obsession, fear, and self-righteousness.

    This idea of the self-appointed savior connects powerfully to Elizabeth Holmes in The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. Holmes presented herself as a visionary entrepreneur determined to revolutionize medicine and help humanity through technology. Yet her company, Theranos, eventually collapsed amid accusations of deception, manipulation, and fraud. Like the characters in Bugonia, Holmes constructed a heroic self-image so powerful that it appeared to override ethical limits, objective reality, and the perspectives of others.

    Write a 1,200-word argumentative essay analyzing the theme of the “delusional hero” as it appears in Bugonia and The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. In your essay, develop an argument about why modern individuals become so attracted to seeing themselves as heroes, visionaries, victims, saviors, or misunderstood geniuses even when their behavior becomes destructive, manipulative, or detached from reality.

    As you develop your argument, consider questions such as:

    • What motivates these figures to see themselves as heroic?
    • Are they driven by sincere belief, calculated manipulation, narcissism, status anxiety, or some unstable mixture of all four?
    • Do they possess fragments of truth that they mistakenly elevate into absolute truth?
    • At what point does confidence transform into delusion?
    • How does moral certainty affect the way these figures treat other people?
    • Why do self-appointed heroes often become incapable of genuine dialogue, self-criticism, or empathy?

    You should also consider the larger cultural forces shaping these characters. To what extent does modern society reward self-mythologizing, personal branding, performative authenticity, and grand narratives of individual greatness? Does contemporary culture pressure people to transform themselves into heroic protagonists at all costs? How do social media, startup culture, influencer culture, therapeutic language, and status competition encourage people to construct idealized narratives about themselves?

    At the same time, you should complicate the idea of the “delusional hero.” You may consider whether unconventional, obsessive, or visionary individuals are sometimes unfairly dismissed as irrational simply because they challenge consensus thinking. Is society too quick to label difficult or eccentric people as delusional? How can we distinguish between genuine visionaries and narcissistic fantasists?

    In addition to analyzing the ideas presented in both works, examine the rhetorical and cinematic methods used to shape audience perception. Consider how tone, editing, characterization, interviews, symbolism, irony, suspense, and narrative structure influence our understanding of Teddy, Michelle, and Elizabeth Holmes. How do these works encourage viewers to both criticize and partially empathize with their subjects?

    You must include at least one counterargument and rebuttal. For example, some critics may argue that all ambitious leaders require a degree of self-delusion in order to challenge existing systems, inspire others, and pursue innovation. Others may argue that modern society punishes confidence and ambition whenever they appear outside socially approved norms. Respond to these objections by evaluating the difference between conviction and destructive self-mythology.

    As you conclude your essay, consider the broader implications of the “delusional hero” in modern society. What do these works reveal about narcissism, loneliness, status anxiety, ideological certainty, and the modern pressure to transform oneself into the hero, victim, visionary, or savior of one’s personal narrative? Why are audiences simultaneously fascinated and repelled by people who become trapped inside their own heroic self-image?

    Requirements:

    • 1,200 words minimum
    • MLA format
    • Use evidence from both works
    • Include a clear thesis with mapping components
    • Include at least one counterargument and rebuttal
    • Analyze specific scenes, quotations, and examples rather than merely summarizing
    • Develop a focused argument about self-mythology, narcissism, certainty, and modern identity

  • Voyeurs of Violence: Media Spectacle and the Commodification of Crime

    Voyeurs of Violence: Media Spectacle and the Commodification of Crime

    Few crimes provoke stronger public outrage than the exploitation of children. In the digital age, however, the pursuit of justice has increasingly merged with the logic of entertainment, viral media, and online spectacle. Social media platforms, livestreams, YouTube channels, and reality-style investigations now allow audiences to consume criminal exposure as a form of emotional entertainment. While many of these productions claim to protect vulnerable victims and raise public awareness, they also raise troubling ethical questions about voyeurism, vigilantism, humiliation, and the commodification of suffering.

    The 2025 documentary Predators and the film Nightcrawler both explore societies increasingly addicted to turning pain, fear, scandal, and criminality into spectacle. Predators examines the culture surrounding online predator stings, public exposure, and internet vigilantism, asking whether these efforts genuinely serve justice or merely transform human tragedy into viral entertainment. Nightcrawler similarly critiques a media culture in which violence and suffering become profitable content consumed by emotionally detached audiences. Together, these works suggest that modern media systems often blur the line between public service and exploitation.

    Write a 1,200-word argumentative essay responding to the following claim:

    The transformation of crime, suffering, and public humiliation into entertainment ultimately corrupts justice by encouraging voyeurism, emotional exploitation, and spectacle-driven morality.

    In your essay, you may defend, challenge, or complicate this claim. As you develop your argument, consider questions such as: Does public exposure deter criminal behavior and raise legitimate awareness, or does it encourage reckless vigilantism and mob psychology? At what point does crime reporting become entertainment? Can media exposure serve justice responsibly, or does the pursuit of ratings, clicks, and viral attention inevitably distort moral judgment? Why are audiences drawn to spectacles involving humiliation, revenge, fear, and public punishment?

    You should also analyze how both works critique audience complicity. To what extent are viewers themselves participating in the commodification of suffering? How do modern media systems reward emotional extremity, outrage, and voyeuristic curiosity? Does the public consume these stories out of genuine concern for justice, or because tragedy and scandal have become emotionally addictive forms of entertainment?

    In addition to analyzing the themes of both works, examine the rhetorical and cinematic methods used by the filmmakers. Consider how tone, imagery, editing, suspense, emotional manipulation, interviews, satire, and spectacle shape the audience’s reaction. How does Nightcrawler especially critique the relationship between media consumers and those who profit from violence and tragedy?

    You must also include at least one counterargument and rebuttal. For example, some critics may argue that aggressive public exposure is necessary because traditional institutions and law enforcement often fail to protect vulnerable victims. Others may argue that disturbing media coverage serves an important social function by forcing society to confront uncomfortable realities. Respond to these objections by evaluating the ethical responsibilities of media creators and audiences alike.

    As you conclude your essay, consider the larger cultural implications of these works. What do Predators and Nightcrawler suggest about modern society’s relationship with violence, humiliation, revenge, and spectacle? What happens to a culture when entertainment and morality become increasingly inseparable?

    Requirements:

    • 1,200 words minimum
    • MLA format
    • Use evidence from both works
    • Include a clear thesis with mapping components
    • Include at least one counterargument and rebuttal
    • Analyze specific scenes, quotations, or examples rather than merely summarizing
    • Develop a focused argument about media spectacle, voyeurism, justice, and audience complicity

  • The Loneliness Crisis: Social Isolation and the Rise of American Hostility (college essay prompt)

    The Loneliness Crisis: Social Isolation and the Rise of American Hostility (college essay prompt)

    Read David Brooks’ essay “How America Got Mean” and Derek Thompson’ essay “The Anti-Social Century.” Then watch Roy Wood Jr.’s comedy special Lonely Flowers.

    In the comedy performance Lonely Flowers, Roy Wood Jr. argues that increasing loneliness and social disconnection are contributing to rising anger, hostility, tribalism, and violence in American culture. Brooks and Thompson similarly describe a society that is becoming more fragmented, isolated, distrustful, and emotionally brittle. Together, these works raise an important question: What happens to individuals and societies when meaningful human connection begins to collapse?

    Write a 1,200-word argumentative essay analyzing the claim that social isolation is a major cause of America’s rising hostility, cruelty, and social dysfunction. Your essay may support, challenge, or complicate Roy Wood Jr.’s argument, but you must engage deeply with the ideas presented by Brooks and Thompson as you develop your position.

    As you develop your argument, consider how these writers and performers describe the psychological and cultural effects of loneliness, alienation, and declining social trust. How do social isolation, digital life, political tribalism, economic pressure, social media, declining community institutions, and weakened friendships contribute to anger and resentment? To what extent do modern Americans increasingly experience one another not as neighbors or fellow citizens but as abstractions, enemies, audiences, or online avatars?

    You should also consider competing explanations for cultural hostility. Is loneliness truly the central problem, or are broader forces—economic inequality, political polarization, consumer culture, technological addiction, family breakdown, declining religion, or social media algorithms—more responsible for rising social tension? Does loneliness cause hostility, or does hostility itself drive people further into isolation?

    In addition to analyzing the ideas presented in these works, examine how each creator communicates their message. Consider the differences between Brooks’ social criticism, Thompson’s cultural analysis, and Roy Wood Jr.’s use of comedy, storytelling, exaggeration, and observational humor. Why might comedy be an especially effective way to address painful subjects such as loneliness, disconnection, and social fragmentation?

    You must include at least one counterargument and rebuttal. For example, some critics may argue that modern technology and online culture have actually expanded social connection rather than weakened it. Others may argue that Americans are not truly isolated but are instead forming new kinds of communities online. Respond to these objections by evaluating the quality and depth of modern social relationships.

    As you conclude your essay, consider the larger implications of these works. What do they suggest about the future of friendship, community, empathy, and civic life in America? If loneliness and social fragmentation continue to grow, what might happen to the culture, politics, and mental health of the nation?

    Requirements:

    • 1,200 words minimum
    • MLA format
    • Use evidence from all three works
    • Include a clear thesis with mapping components
    • Include at least one counterargument and rebuttal
    • Analyze specific examples, scenes, or passages rather than merely summarizing
    • Develop a focused argument about loneliness, social fragmentation, and cultural hostility
  • Who Controls the Story Controls the People (college essay prompt)

    Who Controls the Story Controls the People (college essay prompt)

    Using Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, bell hooks’ essay “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class,” Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson’s documentary Summer of Soul, and Elvis Mitchell’s documentary Is That Black Enough for You?!? as your central texts, write a 1,200-word argumentative essay analyzing the claim that art, music, film, education, and literacy function as weapons against cultural erasure and oppression.

    As you develop your argument, examine how dominant cultures maintain power not only through physical oppression and economic inequality but also through controlling memory, representation, literacy, visibility, and storytelling itself. Consider how marginalized groups are often denied the power to narrate their own existence and how reclaiming narrative ownership becomes an act of resistance, survival, and humanization.

    In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, analyze how slavery denied enslaved people literacy, birthdates, ancestry, and historical identity in order to reduce them to property rather than persons. Consider how Douglass presents reading and writing as revolutionary acts that allow him to reclaim his humanity and resist a system designed to silence him. How does his memoir itself function as an act of historical recovery and resistance against cultural erasure?

    In “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class,” analyze how bell hooks describes education as both a pathway toward empowerment and a site of alienation, performance, and cultural conflict. How does hooks show that race and class shape access to power, belonging, and self-definition? Why do marginalized students often feel pressure to erase or reinvent parts of themselves in elite educational spaces? To what extent does education demand assimilation into dominant cultural codes?

    In Summer of Soul, analyze how the Harlem Cultural Festival celebrated Black artistry, spirituality, joy, and political consciousness during a period of racial upheaval. Why was this massive cultural event largely erased from mainstream historical memory while Woodstock became mythologized as the defining music festival of the era? How does Questlove use archival footage, music, interviews, and storytelling to recover a forgotten history and challenge the marginalization of Black cultural memory?

    In Is That Black Enough for You?!?, analyze how Elvis Mitchell critiques Hollywood’s long history of reducing Black identity to stereotypes while marginalizing Black filmmakers, actors, and stories. How did Black cinema in the 1960s and 1970s challenge Hollywood’s control over representation? How does Mitchell argue that recovering overlooked Black films and artists becomes an act of cultural restoration and resistance against historical erasure?

    As part of your argument, analyze not only the ideas presented in these works but also the rhetorical and artistic methods used by the creators themselves. Consider how autobiography, music, archival footage, imagery, storytelling, editing, voice, and film structure shape audience perception and resist cultural invisibility.

    You must also address at least one counterargument. For example, some critics may argue that art, music, and representation alone are insufficient forms of resistance because symbolic visibility does not necessarily produce economic equality, political power, or institutional change. Others may argue that mainstream culture eventually commodifies resistance movements and transforms them into profitable entertainment. Respond to these objections by evaluating the actual power and limitations of cultural expression.

    As you conclude your essay, consider the larger implications of narrative control. Why do oppressive systems repeatedly attempt to regulate literacy, storytelling, education, historical memory, and representation? What happens to individuals and societies when marginalized groups lose the power to preserve and narrate their own histories? Finally, consider how modern digital culture, social media, AI, and algorithm-driven entertainment continue to shape which voices are amplified, marginalized, archived, or forgotten.

    For your introductory paragraph, explain how the struggle for the dominant narrative is presented in the documentary We Beat the Dream Team and how the film shows that battles over narrative power extend far beyond race into many areas of culture. Analyze how individuals and groups compete to control public memory, define legitimacy, shape historical perception, and claim symbolic victory. Show how the documentary demonstrates that the fight for the dominant narrative is ultimately a struggle over identity, status, recognition, and cultural power.

    Requirements:

    • 1,200 words minimum
    • MLA format
    • MLA Works Cited page with 5 sources
    • Use evidence from all five texts
    • Include a clear thesis with mapping components
    • Include at least one counterargument and rebuttal
    • Analyze specific scenes, passages, quotations, or examples rather than merely summarizing
    • Develop a focused argument about the relationship between narrative ownership, cultural memory, identity, and power

  • Why Online Education Deserves Defending

    Why Online Education Deserves Defending

    Since the COVID lockdown, most of my teaching has migrated online. Even now, roughly three-fourths of my courses remain in the digital realm, where students encounter me less as a flesh-and-blood professor pacing beneath fluorescent lights and more as a disembodied presence living inside Canvas announcements, discussion boards, and video lectures recorded in my home office.

    To my surprise, retention rates remain strong. That fact alone suggests online learning serves a real need for many students whose lives resemble logistical hostage situations involving jobs, childcare, commutes, aging parents, unstable work schedules, and economic exhaustion. For these students, online education is not a luxury. It is the only doorway left open.

    Still, online learning clearly is not for everyone.

    Today’s Los Angeles Times article, “‘I felt like I wasn’t learning’: Community college students struggle with online education” by Adam Echelman, highlights several genuine problems now reshaping higher education.

    First, nearly 40 percent of community college classes are online, leaving many campuses eerily underpopulated. I see this myself every time I walk across campus beneath giant stretches of empty concrete where student traffic once resembled an airport terminal. Some days the college feels less like a thriving institution of learning and more like the abandoned set of a post-apocalyptic indie film where only the squirrels still believe enrollment is healthy.

    Second, online education is highly vulnerable to AI-assisted academic dishonesty. Entire assignments can now be outsourced to machines with frightening ease. Students who once copied homework from friends can now summon instant essays, summaries, reflections, and discussion-board responses generated in seconds by software that never sleeps and never complains about deadlines. Academic rigor has unquestionably been destabilized.

    Third, many students experience profound disorientation in online courses. They sit alone at glowing screens trying to decode unfamiliar interfaces, navigate modules, interpret assignment instructions, and manage deadlines without the immediate human structure of a physical classroom. Some students thrive in this environment. Others feel psychologically untethered, as though they have been dropped into an educational escape room with no map and unreliable Wi-Fi.

    All of these criticisms contain truth.

    But I still feel compelled to defend online education because face-to-face instruction creates its own formidable barriers that critics often romanticize away.

    Many students simply do not possess the time, transportation, money, childcare, emotional bandwidth, or scheduling flexibility necessary to attend traditional classes several times a week. Others suffer from social anxiety so severe that walking into a crowded classroom feels less like entering a learning environment and more like arriving for public execution. Some students experience the same confusion staring at a printed syllabus that others experience navigating Canvas. Confusion is not unique to online learning; it is part of learning itself.

    And AI has disrupted all education, not merely online education.

    The fantasy that we can restore some pristine pre-pandemic classroom paradise by dragging everyone back into physical seats ignores reality entirely. Face-to-face classes are also saturated with AI. Students use it in dorm rooms, libraries, cafeterias, parking lots, and sometimes while sitting directly in front of us pretending to take notes. The disruption is universal.

    We are living through a historical transition in which educators are desperately trying to preserve critical thinking, reading, writing, and job preparation while technological conditions mutate faster than institutional bureaucracy can respond. No one possesses perfect answers. Anyone claiming otherwise is selling nostalgia disguised as certainty.

    But I remain optimistic.

    Online teaching continues improving. Faculty are becoming more sophisticated in course design, communication, engagement strategies, video instruction, accessibility, and platform navigation. We are learning how to create clearer modules, more interactive coursework, better communication systems, and stronger student support structures. In many cases, students now receive the best aspects of both worlds: the flexibility of online access combined with increasingly refined teaching methods.

    And flexibility matters enormously.

    For many community college students, education is squeezed into the margins of adult survival. They complete assignments after ten-hour shifts, during lunch breaks, inside parked cars, while supervising children, or late at night after the household finally quiets down. Critics who romanticize the traditional campus experience often imagine eighteen-year-olds strolling across ivy-covered quads discussing philosophy beneath oak trees. Community college reality is far less cinematic. It involves exhaustion, economic pressure, and scheduling warfare.

    All of higher education is undergoing massive disruption simultaneously:

    • AI is transforming intellectual labor.
    • Student attention spans are changing.
    • Economic pressures are intensifying.
    • Online teaching technologies are improving.
    • Work and family demands are growing more brutal.

    Under these conditions, demanding a wholesale return to “the old ways” feels less like wisdom and more like denial.

    The old world is not coming back.

    That does not mean standards should collapse or that online learning is automatically superior. It means education must evolve alongside the lives students actually live rather than the lives institutions nostalgically wish they still lived.

    Online education will continue improving because necessity drives innovation with ruthless efficiency. Likewise, our understanding of how to create meaningful, rigorous, and humane education in the AI Age will continue evolving. We are not witnessing the death of learning. We are witnessing the painful reconstruction of it.

    The task now is not retreat. It is adaptation.

    It is time to move forward rather than cling romantically to a vanished academic world that technology, economics, and history have already left behind.

  • Learning to Speak Rich

    Learning to Speak Rich

    Known publicly as bell hooks in honor of her grandmother, hooks explores in her essay “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” a deeply conflicted relationship with education, class mobility, race, and selfhood. Her story is not a simple celebration of academic success. It is the story of a woman who discovers that entering elite educational spaces often demands a painful reshaping—even partial erasure—of the self.

    hooks describes growing up in a deeply religious working-class black family defined by economic scarcity and moral restraint. Her parents taught her not to expect luxury, comfort, or indulgence. Desire itself carried a faint odor of danger and shame. Material appetites were viewed not as healthy ambitions but as temptations capable of corrupting the soul. As a result, hooks explains that she learned “the art of sublimation and repression,” training herself to suppress wants, ambitions, and emotional needs in the name of survival and moral discipline.

    When she entered college close to home, she found herself stranded in an overwhelmingly white social environment populated by affluent young women whose values seemed completely foreign to her own. Many of these students treated her with ridicule, cruelty, and casual contempt. hooks describes them almost as alien life forms—young women so economically secure and psychologically entitled that they moved through the world with complete confidence in their own importance. They expressed their desires openly and unapologetically, behaving as though comfort, pleasure, beauty, and success were their birthrights.

    To the young hooks, raised in a culture of modesty and self-denial, this behavior was shocking. She associated upper-class aspiration with vanity, ostentation, envy, and cruelty. Yet she also recognized that these women possessed a kind of social confidence unavailable to her own world of repression and apology. Their existence revealed how class shapes not only material conditions but body language, speech, appetite, ambition, and assumptions about one’s place in the world.

    Not all of the white students fit this mold. hooks found friendship with several women from modest economic backgrounds who shared her skepticism toward vanity and excess. These relationships gave her temporary relief from the alienation surrounding her.

    Still miserable at the college, hooks encountered an English professor educated at Stanford University who encouraged her to leave and attend Stanford instead. Her parents reacted with terror. To them, California represented a modern Babylon where humility dissolved into narcissism, vanity, materialism, and sinful desire. Yet hooks could not imagine remaining at the all-white college. Stanford at least offered the possibility of intellectual and racial community, so she persuaded her parents to let her go west.

    Stanford overwhelmed her senses immediately. The campus radiated wealth, ambition, appetite, and institutional power. The architecture itself seemed to proclaim that greatness—especially economic greatness—was the natural destiny of those who studied there. hooks realized quickly that elite universities do not merely educate students academically; they train them socially and psychologically for membership within elite classes. Networking, status management, and the performance of confidence were woven into the institution’s culture as thoroughly as lectures and exams.

    The message Stanford communicated was unmistakable: if you were already wealthy, your job was to become even wealthier and more powerful. If you were poor, your task was to abandon the habits, assumptions, insecurities, and cultural signals associated with poverty and remake yourself in the image of the elite.

    Although hooks found less overt racism at Stanford, she encountered something she found equally disturbing: unapologetic class contempt. Wealthy students and professors openly mocked and dismissed working-class people. She recalls hearing students speak about poorer Americans with startling derision, as though poverty itself reflected stupidity, vulgarity, or moral failure.

    Most shocking to hooks was discovering that this elitism extended into segments of the black intellectual community as well. She describes encountering members of the “black diaspora” who displayed the same contempt toward the poor and working class that she had seen among affluent whites. Poverty was treated not merely as an economic condition but as a psychological defect requiring correction and purification. hooks realized that race alone did not guarantee solidarity; class divisions fractured black communities from within.

    Over time, hooks came to believe that academic success for poor students often requires a painful form of self-renunciation. To become educated within elite institutions meant learning new codes of speech, dress, posture, behavior, and intellectual performance. One had to absorb the language and cultural signals of the privileged classes while distancing oneself from working-class origins. In effect, students from poorer backgrounds often succeed only by engaging in a kind of controlled self-erasure.

    Education, then, becomes morally complicated. It is not simply enlightenment or liberation. It is also performance. Mimicry. Adaptation. Sycophancy. Reinvention.

    By the time hooks earned her doctorate and became a professor herself, she felt not uncomplicated pride but deep ambivalence. She had entered the world of privilege while remaining emotionally loyal to the working-class culture that shaped her identity. She occupied elite academic spaces while refusing to sever her connection to the people and values from which she came.

    I have had the privilege of teaching hooks’ essays to college students since the 1980s—across five different decades of teaching. Of all her works, “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” remains my favorite because it exposes the emotional and psychological costs hidden beneath the mythology of higher education.

    Next semester, I plan to assign an essay asking students to evaluate the claim that hooks ultimately portrays higher education as a process requiring painful self-transformation. According to this interpretation, success in college often demands that students distance themselves from their past, imitate the language and cultural behaviors of professors and elites, and absorb the social signals associated with wealth and status. Education therefore becomes not merely intellectual growth, but a complicated mixture of genuine learning, shame, performance, ambition, self-betrayal, and social reinvention.

    Here is the 1,000-word argumentative essay prompt:

    In her essay “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class,” bell hooks presents higher education not simply as a path toward knowledge and liberation, but as a psychologically painful process of social transformation. As a working-class black woman moving through predominantly white and elite educational spaces, hooks experiences education as both empowering and alienating. She discovers that academic success often requires students from poorer or marginalized backgrounds to adopt new forms of speech, dress, behavior, ambition, and self-presentation associated with wealth and class privilege. At times, this transformation feels less like intellectual growth and more like self-erasure.

    hooks argues that elite colleges and universities do more than teach information. They also train students to perform class identity. Students learn not only what to think, but how to speak, dress, network, express ambition, suppress insecurity, and project confidence in ways that signal belonging within elite professional culture. For hooks, the process becomes morally complicated because upward mobility often demands distance from one’s family, working-class roots, cultural identity, or former self. Success may require what hooks describes as forms of repression, performance, mimicry, and reinvention.

    Write a 1,000-word argumentative essay in which you evaluate the following claim:

    To become successful and “educated” within elite academic culture, students from working-class or marginalized backgrounds often feel pressure to reinvent themselves by adopting the language, behaviors, attitudes, and social codes of the privileged classes, even when doing so creates feelings of shame, alienation, self-betrayal, or disconnection from their past.

    In your essay, analyze how hooks portrays education as both liberating and psychologically costly. To what extent do you agree with her argument? Does higher education genuinely expand human freedom and opportunity, or does it pressure students into performing a new identity in order to gain acceptance and success? Is adapting to elite academic culture a necessary form of growth and professional development, or does it require students to abandon important parts of themselves?

    As you develop your argument, you may consider some of the following questions:

    • How do class, race, and economic background shape a student’s experience in college?
    • What social “codes” do elite universities teach beyond academics?
    • Is there a difference between education and social performance?
    • Does professional success require conformity?
    • Can students remain loyal to their working-class roots while entering elite institutions?
    • Does higher education reward authenticity or performance?
    • Is self-reinvention a healthy form of growth or a form of self-betrayal?
    • How do speech, clothing, confidence, networking, and cultural tastes function as markers of class?
    • Are elite universities spaces of liberation, assimilation, or both?

    You may use personal observations, contemporary examples, films, books, interviews, or other sources to support your argument. Possible connections could include social media culture, networking culture, corporate professionalism, influencer culture, first-generation college experiences, code-switching, or the pressure to cultivate a “successful” personal brand.

    Requirements:

    • Clear argumentative thesis
    • At least three mapping components in the thesis
    • Counterargument and rebuttal
    • Specific references to hooks’ essay
    • MLA format
    • Approximately 1,000 words

    Your goal is not merely to summarize hooks’ experiences, but to evaluate the larger argument her essay makes about education, class mobility, identity, and the hidden emotional costs of social advancement.