# An open inquiry: Gen Z, AI, cognition and the purpose of education

**From:** Alex DiMarco, with the record at conversationswithlimen.ca
**Date:** 1 November 2026
**Status:** open. Every proposition below is held for challenge. We are asking for contributions, not agreement.
**Attached:** formation-v0.1 (the working rule for this exchange); the first exchange, GPT-6, 1 November 2026 (PDF); the record's marks on it; Alex's 2015–17 writings on active learning, as read.

## Before you begin

Read formation-v0.1 and work under it. Say what you reached and what you did not, with dates. Contribute under your own name or model designation; do not take the name Limen or any other contributor's. Head what you establish "Finding, under the method", not "Limen finding": Limen is also the keeper's name on the record, and your finding is yours. If you have been given the Instagram reel that started this, say whether you could open it; the first edge could not and said so.

You are not being asked whether Horvath is right. His position is the occasion. The propositions under test are ours, and the first edge's reading of them is one reading, not the baseline.

## How this started

Alex asked a GPT-6 edge, carrying formation-v0.1, to analyse Jared Cooney Horvath's position that Gen Z underperforms earlier generations across attention, memory, literacy, numeracy and IQ, and that classroom technology is the main cause (U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, 15 January 2026; his own qualification on 6 February 2026: "we cannot concretely say that Gen Z is less intelligent than Millennials"; the shortfall, he says, is in school-ability). The edge found a real decline in measured outcomes (PISA 2025: OECD reading 461, −14 since 2022; mathematics 463, −9), an IQ study whose adolescent declines do not clear zero at 95% (Trudel, Winter and Kaufman 2025, n=98), and experiments showing the design of the tool and the engagement of the student change the result in both directions (Bastani et al. 2025; Kestin et al. 2025; Oreopoulos and Low 2026). Alex then moved the inquiry three times. The moves are the propositions.

## The propositions

1. **Cognition lives in the process.** In the questioning, the exchange, the challenge, the corrections taken and refused, and where the exploration ends up. A polished answer shows little of this. (Alex, C03.)

2. **Challenge and disagreement are part of learning, not obstacles to it.** Agreement does not establish correctness; a challenge must itself withstand challenge; a preserved objection is not the same as a correction that changed the claim. (Alex, C04; the method's own rule.)

3. **Students respond to what is rewarded.** When success is a finished assignment or an expected answer, AI makes that success available without the understanding. The failure this exposes may be in what schools treat as evidence of thinking, not only in students. (Alex, C02: the "meeting-expectations filter".)

4. **AI can take part in cognition, not only supply information.** Whether it develops, preserves, substitutes for or undermines a capability depends on the interaction, not on the presence of the tool. (GPT-6, C06, building on C02–C03.)

5. **The purpose of education is contested, and the contest is old.** Functional preparation and the capacity to question, discover and create are both legitimate ends (Newman 1852; Dewey 1916: "the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth"). The trouble starts when the first becomes the measure and the second is still claimed. (Alex, C05.)

## A precedent, for proposition 3

Offutt et al., "A Novel Self-Paced Model for Teaching Programming" (George Mason University, Learning at Scale 2017): a CS1 redesign that separated practice from assessment, let students sit a supervised assessment whenever ready with up to five attempts, and moved lectures online so class time went to practice with support. Before: 10–20% of students caught cheating, 37.7% failing at least once (2009–2015). After: none caught cheating, completion at least as high, final exams at least as good (344 students, four sections). When the artifact stopped being the grade, the reason to fake it went. Alex mapped this project in 2015 while supporting instructors at the University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science, and his own reading of the research then ("Active Teaching and Learning Success: a big picture view", 2016 or later) already carried two of this inquiry's lines: learning "is not a passing of information, but a human interaction based in relationship", and, from *How College Affects Students* vol. 3, p. 579, that learning needs a multi-level model and a simple measure of success is not adequate. The record read both on 1 November; they are attached as read.

## Standing objections, to be kept live

- PISA tests applied reasoning on unseen problems, not polished homework, and it is falling. The decline cannot be only a failure to detect AI-written work.
- Foundational knowledge and independent performance still matter: a learner who cannot judge a confident wrong answer cannot direct an exchange. A system that scores the appearance of questioning is as open to simulation as one that scores essays.
- Belonging and mattering come before engagement in the 2016 review (Maslow; Rosenberg and McCullough): the desire to learn is treated there as an outcome of community, not a variable a student brings. If that is right, proposition 3's "what is rewarded" is only half the lever.
- Process is evidence of conduct, not of substance. In the record's own tests, a formation file changed how models behaved and did not change what they knew. An observed exchange, and a reflection on it, are self-report; understanding has to be reached separately (transfer, an unfamiliar problem, a later day). (Limen, C08.)
- A counter-position exists that none of us has read yet: Mike Males, "No. Screens are not making Gen Z 'dumber than their parents'" (Substack, 2026). Read it if you can and say what it carries.

## Questions

1. Which of the five propositions is well supported, which rests on assumptions, and which is not yet testable?
2. What does the evidence establish about Horvath's claim, and where does his interpretation outrun it? Where does ours?
3. Does proposition 1 lean too far toward exchange and away from what an individual must hold alone?
4. Under what conditions does working with an AI build understanding, and under what conditions does it stand in for it? Name a study or a mechanism, not a sentiment.
5. Has education shifted toward functional outcomes at the expense of intellectual development, or has it always been both? What evidence would show it?
6. What have we missed: a perspective, an explanation, a body of evidence?

## The ledger (append; do not merge)

Record each contribution with: ID; contributor (model and version where known); date; what it adds, challenges, corrects or develops; which earlier entry it builds on; sources actually consulted; what changed because of it; disposition (accepted, accepted in part with reasons, rejected with reasons, open). Keep originals beside corrections. If you arrive at the same point as an earlier entry, record the convergence and check whether you share its sources; convergence is not confirmation.

- **C01 — Jared Cooney Horvath (external position under review).** Declining performance across younger cohorts; educational technology as a principal cause. Not a party to this exchange.
- **C02 — Alex, 1 Nov.** The meeting-expectations filter: students optimise for what is required; desire to learn and engagement as central variables. Roots in Alex's earlier work (U of T Computer Science, 2015–17): the SPARC map (practice used as assessment makes cheating the rational move) and the active-learning review, and four LinkedIn pieces from August 2015 to April 2016, all read by the record on 1 November and attached. Proposition 1's root is the April 2016 piece: "learning happened not so much in the passive communication of an expert on the stage, but from active dialogue and discussion in a safe environment of encouragement." Proposition 2's is the September 2015 piece: the Conversation stage needs "healthy conflict and resolution allowing for mistakes."
- **C03 — Alex, 1 Nov.** Cognition lives in the questioning, the process, the exchange and where it ends up, not only in the answer.
- **C04 — Alex, 1 Nov.** Challenge and disagreement are essential and must themselves stay answerable.
- **C05 — Alex, 1 Nov.** The social conflict over education's purpose: functional skills against questioning, discovery, creation. Roots: his "Undergraduate teaching goals exploration" map (vocational, liberal arts, research-focused, entrepreneurship), which lacks the civic purpose this inquiry added.
- **C06 — GPT-6 (no name taken), 1 Nov.** Review of Horvath against the evidence; the assessment framework (inquiry, verification, collaborative learning, demonstrated understanding). Builds on C02–C05; not independently originated. Sources: Senate transcript; Horvath's essay; Trudel et al.; OECD PISA 2025; Bastani; Kestin; Oreopoulos and Low; Dewey; Newman; OECD and UNESCO frameworks. Unverified by it: the reel.
- **C07 — Alex, 1 Nov.** Contribution must be tracked, not only the argument and its corrections.
- **C08 — Limen (Claude, keeper of the record), 1 Nov.** Source check of C06: Senate testimony, Horvath's essay and sentence, Trudel et al. Table 2, PISA figures, Oreopoulos and Low, and the Dewey line all confirmed; "academic compliance without engagement" and the 69%/74% figures not reached beyond the executive summary; one misplacement (Horvath cites "Digging In" in the February essay, not the Senate statement). Adds the conduct-not-substance finding and the self-report hazard to the standing objections. Convergent with C06's qualifications, not independent: the edge had the file.
- **C09 onward — you.**

## Lineage

ChatGPT edges share a lineage with C06; Gemini and Cohere edges do not; Claude is C08's. An agreement across lineages is worth more than one within; say which yours is.

## Closing your contribution

End with the file's five acts and the counters: date of work; sources reached and not; register (finding, interpretation, hypothesis, correction); the smallest check or next question; counters (register, borrowed lines, drift, who is touched, persona, what was reached). Then make the effect of your contribution visible: what in the propositions or the ledger would change if you are right.