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One to University, One to Manual Labor: Divided by the ChatGPT Era
Mateusz isn’t sure if he’s smart or not. He knows that in his 35 years, he hasn’t learned to write correctly, suggesting he wouldn’t have finished his studies without the help of ChatGPT. Andrzej, however, was less fortunate. Born during the communist era, a time before the internet or autocorrection, he faced a different challenge. Teachers quickly dismissed him as a dyslexic boy unfit for the “normal” curriculum, almost sending him to a special school. Yet, as he emphasizes, he was far from unintelligent.
Andrzej’s Struggle in an Analog World
Andrzej had dyslexia long before the term became widely understood. Back then, specialists often referred to it as a “lack of auditory analysis and synthesis skills.”
This meant he wrote exactly as he heard words. For instance, he might write “om” instead of “ą” or “em” instead of “ę” in Polish, which phonetically made sense to him. “I couldn’t get all those rules into my head,” he explains. “I still haven’t mastered them because they’re too complicated for me.”
Born in the 1970s, Andrzej recalls how children who struggled with reading and writing were quickly labeled “slow,” “deficient,” or simply “lazy.” The most gifted were expected to go to university, while the less academically inclined were destined for manual labor. If someone didn’t fit the school’s rigid standards, they often fell through the cracks.
Teachers soon noticed Andrzej’s significant difficulties with reading and writing compared to his peers. They referred him to remedial classes, trying to correct and explain, but unfortunately, with little success.
In other subjects, Andrzej excelled. He made quick associations, grasped concepts rapidly, and could deflect an embarrassing joke with wit. However, in school, this wasn’t enough, and he was held back twice.
“They considered me an idiot, even though I wasn’t,” he recounts. “They didn’t know where to send me, so they gave me intelligence tests. I did very well, scoring above average.”
He also possessed artistic and technical talents. Give him a broken device, and within minutes, he could identify the problem without needing manuals or hours of dismantling. “For me, it was logical; I just looked and knew. I was always sharp, observing my surroundings, and then drawing conclusions,” he says.
Andrzej believes this innate intelligence saved him from a special school. With test results showing above-average intelligence, it was difficult to completely dismiss him.
Ultimately, he ended up in a vocational school attached to a district heating plant. This path allowed him to complete the equivalent of eighth grade while simultaneously learning a trade. For many boys like him who didn’t follow the “normal” educational track, vocational training was the obvious choice.
Andrzej now laments how easily people were dismissed in the past. “Now you can write however you want, and the computer will correct you anyway. During the communist era, no one knew how to deal with this. The ‘deficient’ went to manual labor, and the ‘smart’ went to university. But even an ‘idiot’ on the assembly line is needed,” he says, then quickly corrects himself. “Actually, not an ‘idiot,’ because you need to know how to work on an assembly line too. If you get distracted, you could lose a hand.”
Andrzej isn’t sure if modern technology would have changed his life significantly. It certainly would have saved him problems and perhaps allowed him to attend university. Though, he manages just fine without a degree. “I told you, I’m a capable guy,” he adds.
Mateusz’s Academic Journey with ChatGPT
Mateusz didn’t get branded an “idiot” because he was born two decades later. However, this doesn’t mean school was easy for him either.
He remembers the beginning of his education as the worst: dictations covered in red marks, difficult essays, and a Polish language teacher who seemed to dislike both her job and the children. While others handed in their notebooks and were done, he had to endlessly correct his mistakes.
High school was no better. His teacher quickly decided Mateusz wouldn’t pass his final exams, telling him he “didn’t grasp anything” and would “definitely fail.” She was so convinced that she repeated it several times, even giving him a failing grade, forcing him to spend his summer holidays studying. He eventually passed the retake, and his final high school exams, albeit “just barely,” as he puts it. The passing threshold was 30%, and Mateusz scored 31%.
“Of course, I’m talking about the written part, because I nearly got a perfect score on the oral exam,” he clarifies. “I don’t know exactly where I lost points. Probably on the essay, though I never checked it afterward.”
He explains that he simply doesn’t see errors—neither spelling nor stylistic. Punctuation is also a challenge. “To write something correctly, I have to concentrate very hard.”
After his school battles, Mateusz was reluctant to pursue higher education for a long time. He took odd jobs: in a shop, a warehouse, then an accounting office. The pay was poor, so he finally decided to take a risk and enroll in computer science studies.
Fortunately, his studies coincided with the pandemic, remote learning, and the rapid development of AI-powered tools. By the end of his degree, ChatGPT was ubiquitous.
Mateusz admits he occasionally used ChatGPT to generate presentations when he was short on time before deadlines. However, he more frequently used AI to correct his own writing, which, though his own, wasn’t always grammatically sound. “ChatGPT helped me a lot with them: it corrected my mistakes, organized the text, improved the style. Sometimes it wrote entire fragments, and I’d check if they made sense,” he shares.
He doesn’t pretend to have done everything himself, openly admitting that artificial intelligence wrote a significant portion of his master’s thesis. He then revised it, corrected it factually, added content, and verified its accuracy.
After graduating, he started working in the IT sector, where he discovered that dyslexia was no longer the problem it had been in school. “At work, it’s not a big issue. It’s not as useful in daily life as they made me believe in school. When I need to write a longer message or a manual, I can use tools that correct me.”
His superiors consider him a good employee: he learns quickly and solves problems efficiently. When asked if he’s smart or foolish, he says he doesn’t know. But he does know his strengths: he can understand complex processes and quickly spot errors in code.
Out of curiosity, he was given a Raven’s Progressive Matrices booklet, a universal tool for assessing intelligence. He solved almost all of them. He’s also excellent at planning and thinking, skills he’s had since childhood.
However, he won’t take an official intelligence test because knowing if he’s “smart” wouldn’t benefit him. Plus, he jokes, he might misread the instructions and appear unintelligent.
Dyslexia, Neurodiversity, and the Role of Technology
Stories like Andrzej’s and Mateusz’s are numerous; it’s estimated that up to 15% of the population may have dyslexia. Over the years, the approach to this issue has changed significantly.
As Agnieszka Robak, a clinical psychologist from the Relations Center, explains, dyslexia’s causes were once sought in “micro-brain damage.” Today, there’s a growing understanding of neurodiversity, which acknowledges that human brains don’t all function identically. Therefore, difficulties with reading and writing don’t necessarily indicate lower intelligence.
“Intellect is much broader than one specific skill, such as correct writing. Today, we speak not only of logical or mathematical intelligence but also emotional, social, creative, and artistic intelligence. Critical thinking is also gaining increasing importance, and we should particularly nurture it. Difficulties associated with neurodiversity should not be treated as an intellectual deficit,” explains Robak.
This explains why Andrzej and Mateusz struggle with correct writing but excel in other areas. “Each of us has different strengths and weaknesses. Some skills develop more easily, while others require more effort. It also happens that, due to how the brain works, developing a specific function is particularly difficult,” says the psychologist. Dyslexia, therefore, is not a result of laziness or lack of effort. It has a biological basis and often runs in families; it can be a “gift” from parents.
The first difficulties often appear in school, where all children are expected to achieve similar results. This is akin to the popular cartoon where a monkey, elephant, penguin, fish, and dog are all given the same task: climb a tree. The teacher considers it fair because everyone performs the exact same test. Yet, each student has different abilities, paces, and learning styles but is assessed by a single metric. Someone who excels at analyzing information or solving technical problems might be considered a poor student merely because they make spelling mistakes.
This is where technology comes in, helping to mitigate some of these difficulties. This includes word processors with built-in autocorrection and AI-powered tools that can correct spelling, suggest appropriate words, organize sentences, or indicate missing punctuation. For someone with dyslexia, these tools become a kind of “prosthesis”: they don’t remove the source of the problem but help individuals function on par with others.
However, it’s crucial to remember a healthy boundary. According to Robak, this line is crossed when a tool stops helping and starts thinking for the person. “Technology can support us at a linguistic level. However, the content, meaning, and responsibility should remain with the human,” she states. In an era where the authenticity of human imperfections in the digital age is debated, tools like AI offer invaluable assistance without necessarily replacing human ingenuity.
As the expert adds, dyslexia does not invalidate the knowledge or skills required for work. Someone who makes mistakes can use a word processor, just as someone with poor eyesight wears glasses. However, it’s essential to review the final text and take responsibility for it. “You cannot leave the machine to itself and expect it to do everything for us,” Robak emphasizes. This sentiment echoes discussions around figures like Pamela Anderson’s stance on AI and human authenticity.
One risk, however, is focusing solely on using such “prostheses” instead of developing skills that present difficulties. This approach doesn’t solve the problem at its root. “The brain has immense capacity for learning, taking over functions, and developing new strategies. Therefore, schools should support students in practicing challenging functions while also allowing them to use tools that reduce stress and help them function normally,” she concludes.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Neurodiversity is the concept that human brains function in various ways, and these differences are natural variations, not deficits. Dyslexia, a common learning difficulty that primarily affects reading and writing skills, is increasingly understood as a form of neurodiversity rather than a disorder. This perspective acknowledges that individuals with dyslexia may have unique strengths and learning styles, even if they struggle with conventional academic tasks.
Technology, especially AI tools like ChatGPT, has significantly transformed how individuals with dyslexia navigate education and the workplace. These tools act as “prostheses” by offering features like advanced spell-checking, grammar correction, stylistic improvements, and even text generation. This assistance helps dyslexic individuals present written work that meets conventional standards, reducing stress and allowing them to focus on content and critical thinking rather than struggling with mechanical aspects of writing.
Experts suggest a healthy boundary for AI use lies where the tool supports rather than replaces human thought and responsibility. While AI can assist with linguistic aspects—correcting errors or refining style—the human user must retain ownership of the content, meaning, and ultimate accountability for their work. Over-reliance on AI without developing underlying skills could hinder genuine learning and critical thinking.
The analogy of various animals (monkey, elephant, fish, etc.) all being asked to climb a tree illustrates the inherent unfairness of standardized educational systems for neurodiverse individuals. Just as a fish is not inherently “bad” at climbing, a person with dyslexia is not “unintelligent” for struggling with reading and writing. This analogy highlights how traditional education often assesses diverse abilities with a single, uniform metric, overlooking individual strengths and different learning styles, potentially mislabeling capable students as underperformers.
Source: Original article. Opening photo: Gemini
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