[MandieD]

Being able to give a well-reasoned opinion about a matter in your particular area of expertise to a manager who isn't deep into it during a face-to-face meeting without pulling out your phone or laptop is essential to career progress. Essays are a good way to develop this, especially the kind you have to be able to write in-class. Can you absorb enough information and context about a topic to make a decent argument on demand?

Being able to distinguish between useful, valid information and whatever YouTube video the search engine happened to turned up is going to be an even more important skill for those kids in school now than it was for those of us who were in college when Google was a hot new startup.

For those of you who didn't read the whole post (and it was long, so I kind of understand), Mr. Devereaux made an aside about his belief in the continuing value of initially learning how to do arithmetic without a calculator despite their easy availability over the past few decades, an opinion I've always shared.

Before reading this post, I still believed the same about the value of learning how to write essays ("delivery boxes for thoughts" was his expression, I think) and will make sure that my kid can write one with just a pencil and paper, even though he'll also be able to use whatever technical assistance is available in 10-15 years. He's learning to draw and make letters with crayons and pens before I'll let him spend a lot of time with my iPad; he's sussed out how that worked just by watching me, so I'm not concerned about a technology gap with his future classmates.

This post gives me something to forward to my non-technical but curious friends when they ask about ChatGPT and similar.