In defence of close reading and writing as forms learning and assessment
Marginalia from page 72 of the Códice Emilianense 60, San Millán de la Cogolla. Photograph by Rafael Nieto, via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. Three fingers write, but the whole body labours . Medieval scribal proverb found in manuscript colophons Language and learning after GenAI Education after GenAI may depend less on proving who can speak and write unaided and more on creating the conditions for experience in the world, attention, close reading, and writing to generate understanding. Rather than treating learning mainly as a performance to be authenticated, higher education may need to return to something older and slower ( and more expensive ) that has been one of the primary methods of teaching in the humanities: designing environments where meaningful encounters with the world are followed by reflection, articulation, and dialogue. In these environments, reading and writing do not just record knowledge; they become the medium through which understanding takes shape and ...