When I say easy mode, we all know what I mean. I am referring here to large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, which make writing feel almost effortless. This technology is truly incredible, even miraculous. It is here, it works (kind of), and it is natural to ask: why shouldn’t students use it?
I know many students and even some faculty feel this way. LLMs are new, and it can feel like a no-brainer to let students write with a co-pilot or digital assistant. It would be easier, after all.
The problem with easy mode in education is that ease short-circuits learning and erases identity.
Easy Mode Teaches Students How Not to Learn
Learning happens because of difficulty. When we remove the struggle, we remove the learning. A simple metaphor might help here: school is a gym.
In my class, reading, writing, and thinking are the work, the reps. When LLMs do that work for you, you may produce something that looks finished, but you have not learned how it was made. You have not built strength. You have practiced avoidance rather than taking steps towards improving your strength, skill, and competence. Using an LLM to write for this class makes you like the guy with a clean towel draped around his neck, scrolling fitness influencer videos on his phone next to the weight machines.
Going to the gym is not about watching weights move. You could use a forklift to lift them, but that would be a hilarious misunderstanding of why people go to the gym in the first place. LLMs can be helpful in many ways, just like mirrors, trainers, or instruction videos can be helpful at a gym. I include many carefully prompted LLM assignments designed to support rather than replace learning in my own classes. But in the end, lifting needs to happen. Your muscles need to work. It is pretty weird to imagine going to the gym to watch weights move back and forth, but in classrooms across the world, that is essentially what is happening.
Easy Mode Erases Individual and Cultural Voices
Because so many students come into my freshman composition class feeling uncertain or intimidated, LLM generated writing creates a very specific problem. Many students look at LLM writing and think, “This is what my teacher wants. I could never write like this. I am already not adequate to the task of college writing. I should just use this tool to give my teacher what he wants.”
I cannot say this strongly enough. The very last thing I want is LLM written work turned in as original student writing. Langston Hughes gets closer to what we English teachers really want when he writes in “Theme from English B”:
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.
Langston Hughes photograph, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The LLM voice may be grammatically correct, but as a writing teacher, correctness sits fairly low on my list of things to work on with students. When you take your experiences in life and with language and try to shape them into an essay, you leave something on the page that carries the imprint of you and where you come from, the language you grew up with, the culture that shaped you, and the people who taught you along the way.
As Hughes concludes his poem:
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
What true means can be complicated, but in “Theme for English B,” Hughes shows how meaning comes from difference, from tension, and from the uncomfortable fact that we learn from one another across history, culture, and power, even when that learning is imperfect or incomplete. If we want writing to help us make sense of the world we actually inhabit, then that work cannot be outsourced, because it only happens when people struggle to speak in their own voices and listen carefully to voices unlike their own.
Writing, even academic writing, is personal. It is shaped by where you come from, what you notice, what you value, and what you struggle to say.
When easy mode replaces your voice, it does not elevate you. It replaces you.
Why This Matters to Me as a Teacher
Every time I see a paper written in that obvious LLM voice, my heart sinks. It turns the project of teaching and learning into a sham.
Before easy mode, I was always happy to see papers that needed work – papers that need work are opportunities for me to give guidance and for students to learn and improve. Now that LLMs are here, seeing a paper with lots of room for growth is a breath of fresh air, a chance to do some real and meaningful work with a student who has done the reps.
I love real student writing, no matter how imperfect it is. Errors, rough spots, confusion, and uneven thinking are like the sweat-stained clothing that provides evidence that you have been to the gym. From there, we can figure out how to lift better.
Learning Requires Productive Struggle
Fear drives a lot of easy mode behavior. Writing makes people feel exposed. It brings up insecurity, comparison, and the feeling of being judged.
But that fear is built on a misunderstanding of what this class is for.
Easy mode promises comfort. Productive struggle, or simply doing the work, builds agency, deepens self-understanding, strengthens critical thinking, and makes you more capable with language and more engaged with the ideas of the world.
You deserve the strength that comes from doing the reps yourself.
Leave a Reply