American schools are woefully unprepared for the emergence of ChatGPT, particularly as it relates to writing instruction. We have detected the incoming bogey, but we’ve yet to scramble the fighters. The clock is ticking.

I warned in a recent interview with Fox News that artificial intelligence technologies will be so disruptive to writing instruction that educators will be forced to reimagine curriculum from the ground up. With each update to AI technology, teachers will be less able to detect original writing and thinking on the part of their students. The idea that plagiarism-detection programs will be able to outpace text-generating AI is laughable, especially when one considers who will be operating these tools. Children are always one step ahead of parents and schools when it comes to the latest technology. If students are determined to use programs like ChatGPT to write a summary of The Catcher in the Rye, they will find a way.

The ease of cheating in the AI era will impede students from deep learning in subjects that involve writing, such as literature and history. The process of planning and drafting an essay plays a crucial role in helping students organize and prioritize information. It is not simply busy work. Rather, the essay is the means by which students arrange ideas and values within a hierarchy. By cheating with ChatGPT and similar programs, students will only cheat themselves of the opportunity to strengthen their understanding of reality and become powerful thinkers.

To be certain, writing instruction is already the weakest link in the already-floundering chain of American education. According to the latest statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress , 73% of 8th and 12th graders already lack basic proficiency in writing. Let that sink in for a minute. A full three-quarters of American students are incapable of grade-level writing. These numbers will only continue to plunge as writing becomes easier to avoid, thanks to AI. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are in the process of producing an illiterate generation.

While this may seem dire — I’ve been accused of “fearmongering” and being a “doomsayer” by no less a public luminary than Jason Wingard, president of Temple University — I believe the emergence of ChatGPT and its competitors (Google has just released a similar program called “ Bard ”) presents educators with a tremendous opportunity: Now, at long last, educators will be forced to admit failure in writing instruction and reimagine the enterprise entirely.

A recent op-ed by Jeremy Tate in the Wall Street Journal acknowledges the challenges to writing instruction posed by ChatGPT (unlike Wingard’s op-ed in Forbes, which dismisses concerns about learning loss out of hand) but poses the untenable solution that we should return to the Socratic method of defending ideas orally in the classroom. While this may be a workable solution at small liberal arts colleges that boast superior faculty and favorable student-to-teacher ratios, such methods will be unworkable in English and History classrooms across America that often contain 30+ students.

A better solution would be to resurrect a different educational product from a bygone era: handwriting.

Despite being the go-to method of the digital age, typing has never been an optimal method for student writing because its speed discourages meaningful deliberation. Handwriting is much slower than typing, which is, counterintuitively to the modern mind, a great benefit for students, especially elementary school-aged students. We write to discriminate between ideas of different value; when the gears move too fast, we struggle to perform this crucial procedure. The multisensory process of handwriting slows the process down and pulls the student into a deeper level of concentration, which yields better thinking and deeper learning. It also fosters sustained concentration, which is perhaps the single most useful skill one could develop in this age of distraction.

Handwriting is also a potent counteroffensive to the emergence of auto-generated essays, particularly as it relates to in-class assignments. AI is indeed a powerful tool, but for students learning to think and write, the pen remains far mightier.

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner and founder of Crush the College Essay . His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, the National Catholic Register, and the American Spectator.