Pretexting in Medias Res
Source: Nick Potkalitsky Substack
Author: Nick Potkalitsky, Terry Underwood
Original source: https://nickpotkalitsky.substack.com/p/pretexting-in-medias-res
Published: 2026-02-08
Source type: essay
Private backup: the full article text is archived in the private repository at archives/articles/nickpotkalitsky-substack-com-pretexting-in-medias-res.source.md. It is not published on the public Quartz site.
Summary
Potkalitsky shares the introductory chapter of an unpublished manuscript co-authored with Terry Underwood that argues AI has exposed longstanding flaws in dominant writing instruction. The target is prompt-and-rubric pedagogy plus staged writing-process instruction, which the authors see as psychologically implausible because actual composing is recursive, parallel, and constraint-based. Since AI can satisfy prompts and rubrics without human composing, the system’s weakness becomes visible: it rewards surface compliance rather than meaningful writing practice. The alternative is a scenario-based, constraint-satisfaction model using REACT to analyze writing situations, CRAFT to cultivate writer capacities, and layered communities of practice to make writing socially meaningful.
Pull quotes
AI Exposed the Weakness
“The problem was not that AI had disrupted a sound pedagogical system. The problem was that AI had exposed weaknesses that had been there all along.”
Elegance Is Not Plausibility
“But elegance is not the same as psychological plausibility.”
A Simulation of Writing
“It is a simulation of writing—a set of surface performances that can be executed without the underlying cognitive activity that makes writing valuable as a mode of thinking and learning.”
From Compliance to Navigation
“The cognitive work shifts from compliance to navigation, from following procedures to satisfying constraints.”
Big ideas
- Students need to bring the purpose; AI should not supply it for them
- AI literacy has to be taught inside real subjects
- Learning still needs some struggle, even when AI can make things easier
- AI literacy should help people notice how AI changes what counts as knowing
Claims
- Prompt-and-rubric writing is especially vulnerable to AI shortcuts
- AI-assisted homework requires redesign, not just policing
- In an AI world, assessment should focus on watching students think
- Take-home essays are no longer reliable evidence by themselves
- AI-generated text can make finished writing less trustworthy as evidence
Key evidence and examples
- The article argues that AI appeared as a homework machine because it can produce texts that satisfy existing prompts and rubrics.
- It compares prompt-and-rubric pedagogy to transformational grammar: formally neat but psychologically implausible.
- Research references include Janet Emig, Flower and Hayes, Sondra Perl, and Nancy Sommers on recursive composing and revision.
- The alternative architecture uses writing scenarios, REACT constraints, CRAFT capacities, and layered communities of practice.
Education relevance
Very high for writing instruction, English/language arts, teacher preparation, AI-era assessment, academic integrity, composition pedagogy, and disciplinary literacy.
Durability note
The article is durable as a critique of assignment design because it treats AI as a stress test for older writing-instruction weaknesses rather than as the only cause of them.