Returning to the Blue Book

We have scrupulously reported the evidence: Johnny and Janey cannot read. They cannot write and they cannot count. They do not read books and do not write their papers, in high school or college. Apparently, something called Chat GPT does it for them.

You may believe that it does not much matter. Surely, college students do not want to be wasting their precious time reading and writing, honing their intelligence and their ability to think and to articulate. 

And yet, however, do you imagine that these serial cheaters will be able to do the jobs of tomorrow. It’s nice to think that public policy is going to bring industry home, but what if we do not have the human capital to run that industry effectively.

And we will not even bother with the simple fact that if you cannot articulate a thought coherently and cogently you will be at a loss when it comes to communicating with other people.

Reading is one of the best ways to absorb the most information in the shortest period of time. And writing is the best way to learn how to state clearly what you think, not to mention persuade someone else to take you seriously.

We are all aware of the fact that the young generation, Gen Z, has a bad attitude toward work. It is lazy and inefficient, lacking in the most elementary skills.  Could it be that these young people are simply overwhelmed by the requirement to do more reading and writing on the job, and that they believe that they can get away with not doing it, because they have learned mostly how to cheat.

Now, the professorial empire is striking back. The Wall Street Journal reports that professors have resorted to the good old blue book, that is, to in class exams, written by hand, without the aid of books or phones. 

The Wall Street Journal explains:

Students outsourcing their assignments to AI and cheating their way through college has become so rampant, so quickly, that it has created a market for a product that helps professors ChatGPT-proof school. As it turns out, that product already exists. In fact, you’ve probably used it. You might even dread it.

It’s called a blue book.

The mere thought of that exam booklet with a blue cover and blank pages is enough to make generations of college kids clam up—and make their hands cramp up.

But inexpensive pamphlets of stapled paper have become a surprisingly valuable tool for teachers at a time when they need all the help they can get.

Apparently, one company manufactures most of the blue books. Lately, business has been booming:

All of which explains how a paper company in Pennsylvania has unexpectedly found itself on the front lines of the classroom AI wars. 

Most blue books for sale in campus bookstores and on Amazon for 23 cents apiece are made by Roaring Spring Paper Products. The family-owned business was founded more than a century ago in Roaring Spring, a small borough outside Altoona that has become the blue-book capital of America. The company now sells a few million of these classic exam books every year and all of them are manufactured in the U.S., said Kristen Allen, its vice president of sales and marketing.

And yes, I asked her if everybody makes jokes about Dunder Mifflin when they find out she works for a paper company in Pennsylvania.

“Nobody,” she said. “It’s weird—and it’s sad. I love ‘The Office.’ ” ...

This new golden age of blue books is not something that anyone would have predicted a few years ago, when remote school put them on the verge of extinction. But after sales tanked in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, they have picked up in recent years because of AI cheating.

And then there is the problem of communication, or lack of same. If young people do not know how to communicate thoughts and feelings, not to mention, information, their relationships will necessarily suffer--

The ability to connect with other people, to develop and sustain relationships requires advanced verbal and cognitive skills. Lacking same, the nation will quickly descend into social chaos. And besides if you are invited to a dinner party and demonstrate that you have no table manners, or that you do not know how to speak intelligibly within a conversation, you will most likely not be invited back.