RE: I’m a Professor. A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse.

I recently read a lengthy article in the New York Times Magazine section titled “I’m a Professor. A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse, written by Carlo Rotella. It is a 27-minute “listen” if you choose to listen instead of read, but it is fascinating and definitely worth half an hour of your time.

Rotella’s article is about a college professor trying to keep AI out of the classroom and learning experience entirely. It is a noble endeavour, but it struck me as replacing one “evil” with another, and reminded me of the heartbreaking words “chemo treatment is worse than the disease“.

Carlo Rotella is quite distinguished, and Boston College would likely call security if I even thought about stepping on their campus, so who am I to have a contrarian opinion? But of course, contrarian I did. And, of course, I also wrote a relatively lengthy comment that the NY Times deemed worthy of approval.

And since Rotella’s article is about minimising AI’s influence in higher education, I also discussed it with ChatGPT.

It was interesting that one of the things I find most disturbing about Rotella’s teaching style, students having to scan their books to share their margin notes, underlining, etc., so Rotella could “see them think”, wasn’t even picked up by ChatGPT.

The results of my conversation with AI about Rotella’s article:

(1) Blog-Ready Section: “The Problems With Rotella’s Teaching Approach”

Carlo Rotella is clearly a gifted teacher who cares deeply about his students, but the methods described in the article raise serious concerns about autonomy, privacy, and intellectual freedom. His goal is admirable — to help students develop critical thinking in an age of shortcuts — but the techniques he uses risk becoming more intrusive than AI itself.

For example, Rotella requires students to scan and submit their annotated pages — their underlining, highlighting, and margin notes — because, in his words, it’s “as close as I can get to watching them think as they read.” But that’s precisely the problem: when you know your professor is reading your private reactions, it becomes almost impossible to think authentically. Many students will inevitably begin writing “the kinds of comments he wants,” not the ones they truly felt. Instead of encouraging genuine reflection, this method encourages a performance of critical thinking.

Rotella also forces students to speak early and often in class, regardless of whether they’re ready, comfortable, or wired for that mode of engagement. His belief that “if you don’t speak in the first two weeks, you never will” isn’t a fact of human behavior — it’s simply a justification for compulsory participation. Some students process internally, quietly, and deeply. Others have anxiety, are ESL learners, or simply need time. Mandatory speech doesn’t cultivate thought; it rewards fast talkers and penalizes slow thinkers.

And there is a deeper philosophical issue: Rotella seems to impose a single “correct” way of being a student. Real thinking, in his view, happens with pencils on paper, in a physical book, spoken aloud, in a room free of technology. But this excludes entire groups of students — neurodivergent learners, introverts, ESL students, students with reading disabilities, or students whose thinking unfolds privately and gradually. AI, ironically, is often far less intrusive and much more accommodating of different learning styles.

What Rotella presents as “equipment for living” can easily feel like surveillance, control, and micromanagement. Inspecting a student’s annotations is more invasive than anything AI does. For many of today’s students, the idea of being graded on how you think, rather than what you think, is not rigorous — it’s suffocating.

Rotella may believe he’s preserving something noble about education. But to students who value autonomy, individuality, and intellectual privacy, his approach can feel less like guidance and more like being shaped in his image.

(2) Respectful but Strong Public Critique

Carlo Rotella’s intentions are good. He wants to preserve deep reading, genuine dialogue, and slow thinking at a time when AI makes it easy to outsource intellectual effort. That’s a worthy mission, and many professors share his concern.

But good intentions don’t shield an approach from scrutiny, and several aspects of his pedagogy deserve critique.

First, Rotella’s requirement that students submit scans of their annotated books crosses a boundary. Annotations are often personal — half-formed ideas, questions, confusions, emotional reactions. Asking students to reveal that inner mental landscape, to have it evaluated, creates pressure to perform a certain kind of “approved” intelligence. Instead of fostering authenticity, it subtly encourages conformity. Students quickly learn to underline the kinds of sentences he likes and write the kinds of notes he rewards.

Second, his insistence on mandatory, early speaking privileges extroverted, fluent, confident students and disadvantages everyone else. Speaking is not thinking; it is only one form of it. Many students — deep readers, reflective thinkers, ESL students, neurodivergent students — think best in writing, in private, or after time to process. A universal demand for quick verbal participation is pedagogically narrow. Furthermore, mandatory speaking is just that: speaking. It is not listening, contemplating, reconsidering, or coming to better informed thoughts. It is thinking about what to say so you get credit.

Third, Rotella’s broader philosophy implies that his preferred mode of learning — books, handwriting, chalkboard discourse — is the superior one. But in 2025, students are diverse, and so are their cognitive styles. Some truly need digital tools. Others use AI to scaffold language, comprehension, or organization. Rotella’s rejection of these tools risks excluding precisely the students for whom they are most beneficial.

And finally, there’s a paradox: the very professor who worries about AI being intrusive into the learning process has built an environment that is arguably more intrusive. AI doesn’t grade your marginalia. It doesn’t force you to speak. It doesn’t judge whether you underlined the “right” passage. Rotella’s analog methods, for all their charm, are forms of intellectual surveillance, not liberation.

Rotella’s classrooms may work beautifully for some students — the extroverted, the fluent, the traditionalists. But for many others, his methods feel restrictive, prescriptive, and overly controlling. Education should challenge students, yes — but not by constraining the way their minds naturally work.

My letter to the NY Times about Rotella’s article:

I’m in my mid-50s, so I went to school long before AI, cellphones with more powerful technology than what was used to put a man on the moon were in everyone’s pocket, or even computers.

I am a big proponent of AI, but probably because I was taught long division before I was given a calculator and developed critical thinking skills.

Carlo Rotella paints a rosy picture, something out of a feel-good Disney movie starring a bankable megastar and some very beautiful up-and-coming new talent.

As a student, I think I would have a serious problem with some of Carlo Rotella’s teaching techniques.

I would find them intrusive and controlling, under the guise of altruism and “teaching critical thinking.” I would feel like he was making sure I was thinking the way he wanted me to, that I was being made in his image, becoming another of his minions.

Tyler from the article seems like he might be feeling exactly how I would if I were a student of Carlo Rotella. Thankfully, Tyler handled the situation much more constructively than I would have:

“Can we talk sometime about how we can ask the questions on our own?” he said. “We always have you to ask the questions and set up how we’re going to discuss and analyze…”

Perhaps I have trust issues. Perhaps I am paranoid and should seek professional help. Or perhaps I am simply thinking critically and unable to accept Carlo Rotella’s implied claim that he is being altruistic, when he might in fact be a megalomaniac with control issues.

Conclusion:

For me, the article lands in the uncanny space where earnest pedagogy blends with an almost parental oversight—well-meaning, but suffocating in its assumption that students need their thinking supervised. My own reaction reflects a larger tension the article raises without fully admitting it: in an era when students can outsource half their mental workload to AI, Rotella responds by tightening human control rather than trusting students to grow independently. Ironically, the monitoring of students’ thoughts on paper feels far more intrusive than any algorithmic autocomplete. Where AI often gives freedom, Rotella’s approach seems to reclaim authority. Whether that’s noble or overbearing depends on your comfort level, your trust issues, and maybe how many times in your life a teacher has asked to see inside your book.

Appendix: At the time of posting, my comment in the NY Times had 5 Recommendations, and the comment that said “@George Perry Yes, you have trust issues.” had 3 Recommendations

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