I agree that students using LLMs to do work for them is akin to your example. However, what is described in the article shows thoughtful exercises on engaging the same critical thinking skills you mention, so I see no problem with this approach. Might not want to do that for every assignment, but it seems the author had a pretty skillful approach to developing well rounded students in the context that students will be dealing with outside the classroom.

It's engaging critical thinking around the use of AI tools. Which is not a super valuable place to be applying that critical thinking. I feel like this is the equivalent of asking students in the 60s and 70s to learn to use a complicated machine that made punch cards for programming, and to apply critical thinking to the operation of the punch machine. They should be focusing on the the end product itself (writing, or software development in my example) instead of AI tools (punch machines) that will be obsolete very soon.

I took it as the focus being on using LLMs to enhance critical thinking (like using calculators in higher math classes). That would be taking the output of these systems and use critical thinking in order to examine the material, feeding it rewrites, as well as using editorial skills to see what goes in the final assignment. I see no problem in that.

However, upon rereading the article, it does seem to say that the focus was on using the tool and prompt engineering rather than using it as a tool for extending students' own cognition.

I see two ways. Either let the students write school essays only in school while being supervised, or explicitly allow the use of ChatGPT and make them reflect the use of ChatGPT. Either way, this requires more effort by the teacher. I am sure that most schools will fail. Writing essays will seem quaint, annoying and superfluous. We as a society will need to find new ways to train.