The plea has become a familiar refrain in the halls of academia, a desperate message echoed by teachers, professors, and professional writers alike: Please, do not use artificial intelligence to write for you. It is a request born of frustration, a desire to preserve the sanctity of original thought in an era where a chatbot can generate a thousand-word essay in seconds. For Anne Lovering Rounds, a professor of English at Hostos Community College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), this plea is more than just a sentiment; it is a policy. Like many of her colleagues across the country, Rounds has dutifully codified this prohibition into her syllabus, employing the legalistic, boilerplate language suggested by her institution. The mandate is clear: the use of generative AI tools, such as but not limited to ChatGPT, is strictly prohibited on all assignments and assessments.
However, as the novelty of these tools wears off and the reality of their presence in the classroom sets in, a deeper frustration has emerged. It is a weariness shared by educators who find themselves reading student work that claims to "delve" into assigned texts or that relies on formulaic rhetorical structures, such as arguing that a reading "isn’t X—it’s Y." These linguistic tics have become the telltale signs of machine-generated prose, a hollow mimicry of academic inquiry. Yet, for Rounds, the common arguments against using AI in the English classroom have begun to feel, in her own words, "cringe." She suggests that the current panic over AI is merely a symptom of a much larger, more systemic issue within the humanities. AI is not just creating a technological hurdle; it is forcing a pedagogical crisis that exposes an existing lack of clarity regarding what English courses are actually meant to achieve and how they are described to the public.
As generative AI shows no signs of slowing its integration into daily life, Rounds argues that this moment presents a unique opportunity to dismantle the professional and public conflation of three distinct skills: literary appreciation, knowledge of literary history, and the craft of essay writing. For decades, these three pillars have been treated as a single, inseparable unit within the English department, but Rounds contends that they are, in fact, entirely different disciplines. By separating them, educators might finally be able to address the "fuzziness" that has long plagued the field.
This lack of distinction is perhaps most evident in the very title of the course Rounds teaches—a requirement for nearly every student at her college: Literature and Composition. In the daily reality of the classroom, Rounds has found herself increasingly burdened by the weight of that "and." The title suggests a seamless integration of two complex tasks, but for students who are new to literary study, the cognitive load is immense. Asking a student to read a complex text for the first time, learn the nuances of literary devices, and then logically describe the effects of those devices in a structured written response is a monumental task. Rounds notes that a course more accurately titled "Literary Appreciation" or "Identifying Literary Techniques" would provide enough material to fill a semester on its own. Such a shift would allow students to understand, on a more granular level, exactly what skills they are expected to master.
In her teaching, Rounds finds the greatest joy in showing students the intricate details of poetry and prose—the foundational elements that make literature work. She points out that rhythm and rhyme, while often paired, are distinct concepts; that meter is far more complex than a simple syllable count; and that the line itself is the defining feature of a lyric poem. These are the "seeds of creativity," the technical mechanics of the written word. However, Rounds observes that understanding these elements has nothing to do with the act of composing a formal essay. In the current system, however, the two are inextricably linked by what she calls a "writing tax."
The expectation that students must write expertly about texts they are encountering for the first time is, Rounds argues, an unreasonable demand. She likens it to asking a total novice to pass a "drop-the-needle" test on the entirety of classical music after only 15 weeks of study, while simultaneously demanding they learn to play a musical instrument to a professional standard. The pressure to produce "deliverables"—pages of essays that conform to specific academic standards—often gets in the way of the actual learning process. If the pressure to produce these essays were removed, Rounds suggests, there would be no more hand-wringing about whether a student used AI. Educators would have the freedom to drill down into the details of a text, fostering a genuine understanding of literature without the constant anxiety over the authenticity of a written submission.
This perspective stands in contrast to the more traditional, often romanticized views of the English major. Frank Bruni, a prominent opinion contributor for The New York Times, recently wrote a column rhapsodizing about the enduring benefits of studying English. Bruni argued that by majoring in the subject, students would "better understand the seeds of creativity and how they’re made to flower." He described the experience as swimming in a "borderless sea of thoughts beautifully expressed," suggesting that the more a student immerses themselves in great literature, the more expert they will become at "shaping stories" and "persuading." Bruni concluded that he could not imagine a world in which "better communicators aren’t better off."
Rounds, however, questions the vagueness of the term "better communicator." In a modern professional context, does that mean being a more succinct writer of emails, a more entertaining presenter, or a more precise poet? She admits that the definition is no longer clear. While she agrees that understanding the "seeds of creativity" is a valuable pursuit, she maintains that it is fundamentally different from the act of shaping stories or producing written text. While an English department should certainly have the capacity to teach both, Rounds argues that it might take much longer than a single semester to create a positive feedback loop between reading and writing.
To illustrate her point, Rounds looks back to the foundations of Western philosophy. When Socrates engaged in his famous dialogues with his interlocutors, the goal was the pursuit of truth through rigorous verbal exchange. The participants were not required to go home and write a formal paper about their discussion in MLA format. The intellectual rigor was contained within the dialogue itself. Rounds suggests that modern education has lost sight of this possibility, becoming obsessed with the written "tax" as the only valid proof of learning.
The potential abandonment of the essay would be a sad development for English teachers, but Rounds believes that saving the essay requires a fundamental admission: vivid, logical writing does not necessarily need to be about literature. Conversely, reading literature does not need to be tethered to a writing requirement. If the goal is to teach young people how to write essays, she suggests the course should simply be called "Writing Essays." If the goal is for students to know the cultural history behind a phrase like "Out, damned spot," a Shakespeare course can cover that material with immense rigor without requiring pages of essays by the end of the term.
The current model of cramming both intensive reading and intensive writing into every semester-limited course is, in Rounds’ view, a "lie." It is a structure that assumes a level of mastery that many students, particularly those in a community college setting who may be balancing multiple responsibilities, cannot reasonably achieve in 15 weeks. By continuing to call this overstuffed curriculum "humanity," the academic community may be doing a disservice to both the students and the subjects themselves.
As the debate over AI in education continues, the focus remains largely on detection and prohibition. But for educators like Rounds, the real conversation should be about the structure of the curriculum itself. The rise of generative AI has acted as a catalyst, forcing a long-overdue examination of the "and" in Literature and Composition. By acknowledging that these are separate, though related, skills, higher education may find a way to preserve the value of the English department in a world where the act of writing is being fundamentally transformed by technology. The path forward may involve less "hand-wringing" about the tools students use and more honesty about what we are actually asking them to learn.
