Remember that a large part of the adtech ecosystem is school data. Every school app is full of adtech. Or sells on data. Same with your car data too Switching off cookies or using a private browser won’t save us when schools are selling us out

Call it woke indoctrination or whatever, who cares: the entire point of public education in a pluralistic multicultural democratic nation is to make sure we can live and work together without subjugating and killing each other. The alternative is what we're living through right now.

I wanted to avoid the obligatory “buffet of continents & cultures” approach when designing my new World Literature course, so planning has been intense for this semester. It’s a pretty ambitious framing for 11th & 12th graders, but I’m excited to see how it goes this week.

This is one of the reasons I'm opposed to so-called "science of reading" legislation: the state is not only telling you what to teach + when to teach it through mandates while also enforcing the way you teach it. The fact that so many on the left celebrate these bills is worrisome to me.

jack asked if i would sketch up a poster to tell people in nearby neighborhoods about the partnership between flock and ring, and this is what i came up with. it can be printed on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper.

Pretty much every article I read about "integrating" AI into the writing classroom brings me back to the conclusion I work through here: We should teach writing, not document production. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

All the understandably tense chatter about literacy is a waste of time if we don’t cap it with a really rousing explanation of what reading is for

"If you wanted to create a tool that would enable the destruction of institutions that prop up democratic life, you could not do better than artificial intelligence." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

GOP candidate for governor: "We need stronger legislation to hold the ed tech industry accountable. I will fight for kids + parents, not Silicon Valley." Legislative Dems: "LETRS."

The "reading wars" are just rebranded "culture wars." 👉 Book-banning. 👉 Dogmatic instructional practices enforced through state legislatures. 👉 Narrowing of curricular resources to an approved few by favored corporate vendors. 👉 Attempts to teacherproof + studentproof learning due to distrust.

Me looking for all of the Open Schoolers from 2020-2021 holding protests because St. Paul's Schools will be closed because of a federal occupation.

Is it bad when you can't fully tell the difference between a Democratic state senator + Tiffany Justice talking about literacy education? #PairedTexts

Chatgpt! Is! Not! Confidential! Do! Not! Do! This! For! Fuck's! Sake!

When I say that Democrats in "blue states" have helped create the literacy circus, this post from a Michigan Democratic Senator is my Exhibit A. Once you cut through the revisionist history lesson, her big solution is to give corporate giant Lexia another $50 million handout for LETRS.

You can't monetize nuance or market complexity, so the easiest solutions, most often backed by corporations, get the most run with decision makers. This is especially true in areas where there's minimal expertise at the policy level, like adolescent literacy.

Thanks for sharing this document, @rweingarten.bsky.social. I read it, and I believe it's inexcusably inadequate and will not prepare teachers or schools to confront the very real dangers of the "A.i." products pushed by your partners, including OpenAI. A few thoughts for your consideration...

Very excited to share this! The new special issue of @jitp.bsky.social is on Minimalist DH Pedagogy. Co-edited by @danicasavonick.bsky.social @palermog.bsky.social @veritas44.bsky.social Patricia Belen and me. LOTS of great stuff in here. cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/jit...

I’ve been posting about this, but worth re-iterating. Doing this ⤵️ has so many upsides. In addition to generating “HQIM”, teachers are recognized/compensated for their expertise, learn from each other, develop communities of practice across siloed schools, bridge build with district admin, etc etc.

One of the things that happened is that reformers + their allies shifted "HQIM" to include only materials produced by a corporate vendor. They don't believe teachers, students + communities can produce "HQIM" because they don't trust or believe in teachers, students + communities.

Who is college for? And what does college do? are two questions of increasing urgency because if those of us involved in these institutions don’t provide compelling answers then the tendency towards reducing it to glorified job training will destroy every meaningful part of the endeavor.

SCHOOLS: "You must adopt AI + defend decisions to use it. Our students, staff + school are already behind. New inequities are being created!" ALSO SCHOOLS: "Some aren't comfortable talking about equity + justice, so we have to wait + build consensus before taking action. We can't rock the boat!"

I had a school leader ask me why we should "waste time" teaching kids to write because AI will do it for them. They said "AI literacy" (whatever that means) is more important than investing in writers + teaching writing. If we think school should teach writing, now feels like an important moment.

Your "IM" aren't "HQ" if kids aren't reading books and writing real stuff, not this five paragraph, fill-in-the-blank, write-by-numbers nonsense.

SCHOOLS: "We don't have time to address concerns + build consensus about AI use. Everyone needs to be using it--and using it immediately." ALSO SCHOOLS: "Some people aren't ready to talk about equity + justice, so we'll have to take our time + wait until we can build more consensus + comfort."

As a noted "canon opposer," I think there's room for books, including YA books, about people, ideas + places historically silenced while also recognizing that there's immense value in teaching "classics," especially when taught in ways that don't reflexively uphold the dominant culture.

Educators and students should always be in solidarity against cop shit + GenAI is maybe the best example of cop shit.

I've been exposed to local "right wing" (AM) radio recently + education has been a hot topic. While there's hostility toward School as institution, they're able to articulate a vision of School that goes beyond vague notions of "economic mobility," in which books + inquiry are explicitly named.

what i love is that in 1990 judas priest got brought to trial over the claim that subliminal messages in the recording "better by you better than me" caused two suicides and now in 2025 openai seems to be generating a suicide a week with its superliminal messages and the US government is funding it

This is true of virtually every institution, from schools to the government.

Next in our Creatively Critical Tech virtual speaker series is Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social on "AI Grief Observed: On the Death of Education." Don't miss it on November 12, 2025, @ 6:30 pm CT! Register today at tinyurl.com/CreativelyCr...

Watching right wingers stand up for books, call out corporate publishers + think about education beyond job training while Democrats do little-to-nothing to offer an ambitious, progressive plan for public education is one of many disappointments right now. hollykorbey.substack.com/p/replay-stu...

I will give you $1 for every whole language district that you can find in Michigan. The implication that districts aren’t teaching phonics + phonemic awareness is not the reality. If anything, they’ve prioritized phonics over everything, including other literacy skills, science + social studies.

Putting words in dead people's mouths is one of the most disgusting uses of Generative AI, to me.

One of the LinkedIn AI evangelists posted today that those raising concerns about energy costs + environmental harms of AI data centers were using it as a front to prevent educational innovation because only the harm-inducing machines will save teaching + learning.

One of the issues here is that if you position education mostly about economic gain, then there's no leg to stand on when it comes to arguing for a more humanizing + socially democratic education. This makes it difficult for teachers, schools + kids who want something more than career readiness.

I remain convinced that any educational paradigm that stakes it’s legitimacy on “catching cheaters” has already fundamentally lost the plot on how to do education.

Unfortunately, education was the canary in the coal mine here yet again. Government officials have long pressed their corporate friends, especially those over at the College Board, who control curriculum + testing, to block, erase + manipulate content + ideas they find objectionable.

We are producing a generation unable and (somewhat) unwilling to think, read and write without relying on tech controlled by some of the most evil people on the planet to tell them what to think, read and write and they don’t seem to see the dangers of this dependency even if we point it out

The thing can't tell someone how to make a basic sauce but a bunch of people, including a bunch of educators, think we should let kids talk to the avatar of Anne Frank that it generates in history class.

Creating permission structures for AI refusal is an urgent, collective need, especially as its use becomes increasingly mandated by leaders + districts who staked economic, social + political capital on AI "working."

Live look at the @nytimes.com right now.

By dunking on public ed, you can manufacture consent to dismantle it, sell it off for parts + privatize the rest, which is what the NYT's neoliberal publishers, writers + readers have wanted for decades. It's a corporate, for-profit, technofascist fever dream. MacKenzie Price is the poster child.

The NYT has relentlessly attacked American schools + teachers for creating a crisis of rigor for not following "the science of learning." Platforming this vapid, uncritical, no-citation BS reveals the NYT never really cared about "the science" as much as they cared about dunking on public ed.