This Year, No Forklifts

Dear colleagues,

When I started leaning my teaching into AI literacy last year (that decision is explained in this talk I gave in May 2025), the analogy I used most often with my students was definitely the forklift one.

The forklift analogy, coined by Ted Chiang, goes like this:

Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.”

(Chiang's entire 2024 New Yorker article is here.)

The basic idea is, when you use generative AI to do the writing for you, you miss out on what writing is meant to do. But when students A) don't understand the point of writing and B) are overloaded with assignments, forklifts like ChatGPT are the most logical thing to use.

The Point of Writing

Earlier this summer I was invited to speak with the Lake Michigan Writing Project fellows. During our conversation, I found myself repeatedly pushing in to the themes I bring up in “Why We Write” (article, video). Those themes are fundamental to a strong apologetic for the work of learning in school:

• First of all, we don't ask students to write because we need more student writing. The world doesn't lack for student-written essays; no English teacher has ever assigned an essay on Fahrenheit 451 because they were lacking in such essays. The product of student writing assignments isn't the point. The byproducts are the point.
• What are the byproducts of writing? They are many. Writing produces clarity. It creates mental and volitional strength. It enables inner exploration. It builds knowledge. It makes the mind make meaning. And it does all these things with remarkable efficiency — there is no other learning mode that is like it.

And so, when a student asks ChatGPT to write an essay or a paragraph or short answer responses, the student is missing out on all the benefits of doing that work. Which is something we all know.

The beauty of the forklift analogy is that it helps our students to know what we know. Giving them this kind of knowledge helps them understand we're not assigning things for the sake of keeping them busy. We are assigning workouts for their minds, things meant to help them grow stronger and more capable and more knowledgable in this amazing world.

But Over-Assigning Creates Temptation

That said, when a student is drowning in assignments and homework, a forklift starts to grow in appeal. After all, forklifts were made to help human beings move more masses larger than human beings can carry. When there's too much stuff to move around in a factory, you can either break down the stuff to be moved into manageable sizes or you can use a forklift.

In a recent survey of 100 students, folks at Study.com found that 50% of surveyed students appreciated it when teachers focused more on teaching and explaining than on assigning more things.

So, two practical takeaways today:

1. Use the forklift analogy to help your students understand why we want them to stay away from generative AI when doing the work of writing in school, the purpose of which is developing the minds and hearts of students. If AI does that work, then the work doesn't work.
2. Be mindful of how much you're assigning students. Overloading them with work will make AI tools tempting, even for students who know the downsides of using AI to complete work.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR