Précis and Prompts

My son is currently working through a module on summary writing as prep for his IGCSEs. Takes me back to my school days where it was précis-writing or "the art of giving a concise and lucid summary of a lengthy passage of prose or poetry" (E. Derry Evans, A Handbook of Précis-Writing with Graduated Exercises). I absolutely loved it.

Whether summary or précis-writing, with the magical "Summarise" button ever so prevalent, I wonder if this is still a useful skill for school-going children? The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it's even more relevant now.

As Evans bluntly observes: "Most pupils are under the impression that it is sufficient to select at random a few detached sentences from the extract, and string these together without any attempt at continuity. Such results are useless". What's really important, especially in the age of AI, is the skill of selection - to judge what is important, what must stay, what is merely fluff. It is not only a writing skill but a listening skill (the ability to distil the essence of the discussion) and an instructing skill to guide AI agents with clarity.

Convoluted thinking only produces convoluted results. Be it instructing an LLM or writing code, if we can't discern the core point, no AI will fix this for us. Perhaps that's the real aim of précis- or summary-writing: not to produce a shorter version of the text, but training the mind to think clearly enough so that both humans and machines can follow.

Recommended sound track: Too Much Information (The Police)