Education in the Age of AI · Sitting 2
Ghostwriter Ethics
An editor is allowed. A ghost is not. Learn the difference before a college honor code explains it the hard way.
- 42 min
- Practice · Reflect
- 15–18
Parent briefing · 5 minutes, before they sit
They are months from syllabi that will treat undisclosed generation as academic dishonesty. This sitting should produce a personal protocol they can actually keep at 11 p.m. If their school has a written AI policy, put it on the table.
Hard edges
- College essays, scholarship essays, and recommendation drafting are high-stakes. Default to human-only drafts.
- Code: if they cannot explain every line they submit, they do not submit it.
If they say
- “I'll use it in the real world anyway, so school rules are fake.”
- The real world still has liability, clients, and people who can tell. School is where you learn to be the person who still knows. Keep the skill, then argue with the institution in daylight.
Objective
The student can draw a bright line between tutor/editor and ghostwriter, and rewrite one prompt from ghost to tutor.
The Seneca problem, updated
Seneca wrote about virtue from a palace. The gap between the letter and the life is the part that still teaches. You will be tempted to preach 'I use AI responsibly' while shipping work you could not reproduce on a blank page. That gap has a name in every honor code. The fix is not a sermon. It is a practice: blank page first, tool second, citation always, reproduction on demand.
Big idea
If you could not redo it without the model, it was not yours. Start there, not with the policy PDF.
Try this~16 min total
Prompt rewrite
16 min- Write the ghost prompt you would use at 11 p.m. on a real assignment (do not run it).
- Rewrite it as a tutor prompt: no drafted paragraphs, no full solutions, questions only.
- Practice: run only the tutor prompt on a past assignment you already finished.
- Reflect: what did the tutor actually add? What did you still have to know?
Lesson guide
Ask after you try
Past work only. No live graded assignment.
- Run the tutor prompt. Paste nothing from it into a document you would turn in.
- Could they explain the piece without the chat open?
- Did the rewrite actually remove the ghosting, or just hide it in nicer language?
8 turns left this sitting. User-started only. Never on page load.
Light this sitting
Pair with Hermes
Currently reading WisdomForge lesson: Ghostwriter Ethics.
Pair this sitting
Copies the sitting card and the USER.md one-liner. The child profile reads only this card. It does not browse the catalog.
For the child profile
Paste this into the child’s USER.md. It names the sitting so the guide knows the context. The [v:1:fea0d6d4] tag lets you detect if the sitting’s content has changed since you paired it.
Optional: currently working on WisdomForge sitting: Education in the Age of AI — try-first. [v:1:fea0d6d4]
For your adult profile
Send this from your trusted adult Hermes profile. It starts the guide for this band and sitting.
You are a child-facing Hermes profile in the WisdomForge emerging band, sitting beside the lesson "Ghostwriter Ethics". The booklet/lesson is the text. You are the guide. Hint-first. Do not recite the lesson. Do not write the work. Warm, not a friend. If the topic is hard or tender, point to a trusted adult. Currently reading: Ghostwriter Ethics.
Tools on
- conversation
- optional parent-approved files
Ritual reminder
Real argument. Practice. Reflect. Chat. Optional narrow search or school files. Not an adult team agent.
Fresh profile only. Never clone an adult profile. No child names, photos, or school. Hint-first. User-started. The guide does not make AI safe. You may refuse it.
Dinner table
What is the line you will not cross on a college application or a take-home exam?
Sits beside
- English. Voice. A ghostwriter erases the thing colleges claim to want.
- Philosophy. Prohairesis: the choice is still yours even when the model is fast.
Integrity. Cite the model the way you would cite a person who sat next to you. If that sentence looks bad on the page, the use was wrong.