Pretexting in Medias Res
Source: Nick Potkalitsky Substack
Author: Nick Potkalitsky, Terry Underwood
Original source: https://nickpotkalitsky.substack.com/p/pretexting-in-medias-res
Private backup: the full article text is archived in the private repository at archives/articles/nickpotkalitsky-substack-com-pretexting-in-medias-res.source.md. It is not published on the public Quartz site.
Summary
Potkalitsky shares the introductory chapter of an unpublished manuscript co-authored with Terry Underwood that argues AI has exposed longstanding flaws in dominant writing instruction. The target is prompt-and-rubric pedagogy plus staged writing-process instruction, which the authors see as psychologically implausible because actual composing is recursive, parallel, and constraint-based. Since AI can satisfy prompts and rubrics without human composing, the system’s weakness becomes visible: it rewards surface compliance rather than meaningful writing practice. The alternative is a scenario-based, constraint-satisfaction model using REACT to analyze writing situations, CRAFT to cultivate writer capacities, and layered communities of practice to make writing socially meaningful.
Big ideas
- Students need to bring the purpose; AI should not supply it for them
- AI literacy has to be taught inside real subjects
- Learning still needs some struggle, even when AI can make things easier
- AI literacy should help people notice how AI changes what counts as knowing
Claims
- Prompt-and-rubric writing is especially vulnerable to AI shortcuts
- AI-assisted homework requires redesign, not just policing
- In an AI world, assessment should focus on watching students think
- Take-home essays are no longer reliable evidence by themselves
- AI-generated text can make finished writing less trustworthy as evidence
Key evidence and examples
- The article argues that AI appeared as a homework machine because it can produce texts that satisfy existing prompts and rubrics.
- It compares prompt-and-rubric pedagogy to transformational grammar: formally neat but psychologically implausible.
- Research references include Janet Emig, Flower and Hayes, Sondra Perl, and Nancy Sommers on recursive composing and revision.
- The alternative architecture uses writing scenarios, REACT constraints, CRAFT capacities, and layered communities of practice.
Education relevance
Very high for writing instruction, English/language arts, teacher preparation, AI-era assessment, academic integrity, composition pedagogy, and disciplinary literacy.