School essays and actual essays aren't even the same thing.[0] It sounds like a more didactic use of these kids time would be arguing on forums about their favorite anime.
> School essays and actual essays aren't even the same thing.
Yes. And one interesting thing about ChatGPT is that, when asked to write an essay about a topic, it defaults to the standard introduction-body-conclusion organization of a school essay assignment [1]. Since its training data must have included texts organized in many other ways, I wonder if it was tweaked to default to the school-essay format.
[0]: http://paulgraham.com/essay.html