Writing is thinking

Karl Kraus was dying when he learned that the Japanese had invaded Manchuria. "None of that would have happened," he exclaimed, "if we had been more strict in the use of commas." I won't go as far as to say, but I do believe there's no way to develop critical thinking by ignoring the use of conjunctions. I completely agree with Antoni Capmany: "Anyone who can't read and write never speaks about what they're thinking."

Reading has its defenders, even among those allergic to print. There is more reluctance toward writing, possibly because there is no intellectual activity more complex, demanding... and fruitful for those who want to think for themselves and resist following the orders of a machine (AI). We should not deprive our students, therefore, of such a valuable skill.

"Critical thinking" is not fueled by the impatience of my opinion, but by the relentless discipline of writing. We should be aware that writing is not something that happens after thinking. On the contrary: the act of writing is thinking in progress. Writing IS thinking. We often don't know what we really think until we write it down.

When we sit down to write, we think we know how we're going to develop an idea, but the writing process has a certain autonomy that continually suggests unexpected alternatives. When we write, we always find ourselves at crossroads. Writing is a phenomenal spur of ideas. We must take it seriously. As Schopenhauer said, to write negligently is to admit from the outset that we don't place great value on our own thoughts. No one allergic to writing should be admitted into the teaching profession.

Through writing, we better understand what we think about a topic, we discover new ideas and make them available to our minds, we progress by looking ahead (to anticipate what we will write) and back (to preserve the unity of our text). Each word is a buzzing insinuation that tempts us and often disconcerts us, because it opens us up to the unthinkable in our thoughts. Sometimes, giving in to temptation, we write a sentence that contradicts what we had stated in a preceding paragraph. This is the moment to stop and question our coherence. "Writing is the art of making people think," says Alberto Manguel.

Anyone who believes the goal of education is to develop human potential cannot lease their intellectual autonomy to AI. AI is never better than you at deciphering what you're really thinking. Students who, faced with a blank sheet of paper, don't know what to do are intellectually handicapped. The maturity of our inner voice is cultivated with the tip of a pencil every time it forces us to turn our soul inward.

Writing helps us develop the higher possibilities outlined in our spirit and become a little more complex. In this "little" lie the keys to discovery, the nuances of the world and the soul.

Technologies are anthropological prostheses that realize and amplify what we can become. They offer us admirable possibilities for developing our native capacities, but it is now evident to anyone with eyesight that effective learning requires a use of technological tools that supports internal knowledge, but does not replace it. Without interiority, there is no possibility of a personal encounter with reality. AI is a tool that can make us believe we have superpowers, but for that very reason, it can stimulate our metacognitive laziness. The school activities in which this laziness is most pronounced are those that have to do with the disciplinary exercise of self-correction.

The worst ignorance, said Socrates, is to believe we know what we don't know. But how do we achieve a reliable image of our ignorance? I fear that our ignorance is always unattainable, but if there is any area in which we can gain an idea, however vague, of our limits, it is in writing, which is an internalized dialogue with ourselves. In the process of this self-dialogue, we continually stumble upon our limits, but we do so without outside observers and, therefore, without needing to hide behind masks of feigned self-sufficiency.

I'll give the last word to Tom Waits: "The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. It cheapens and degrades the human experience, when it should inspire and uplift it."