School essays and actual essays aren't even the same thing.[0] It sounds like a more didactic use of these kids time would be arguing on forums about their favorite anime.
Yes. And one interesting thing about ChatGPT is that, when asked to write an essay about a topic, it defaults to the standard introduction-body-conclusion organization of a school essay assignment [1]. Since its training data must have included texts organized in many other ways, I wonder if it was tweaked to default to the school-essay format.
[1] https://www.gally.net/temp/202212chatgpt/defaultessay.html