Pinned
Annie Abrams
@annieabrams.bsky.social
· May 28
This Year, We All Realized That Kids Aren’t Reading Books in School. Only the Right Is Offering a Solution.
Common Core and the College Board are my enemies. But the classical education movement is not my friend.
slate.com
Gift link to my argument in favor of teaching works of "serious literary value" in public schools: slate.com/life/2025/05...
and the teacher, in this model, is also a mimic
Meanwhile, students in a One Right Answer classroom learn to mimic the teacher, read the preferences of authority figures, and resist questioning. They deserve better. 8/
November 26, 2025 at 7:54 PM
and the teacher, in this model, is also a mimic
in fact, this is what ap exams incentivize these days, which is part of the reason i take issue with them
Proponents often portray their opposite numbers as loose-ethics libertines who let students reach any old conclusion higgledy piggledy. But I've never met a teacher who was that careless. 5/
November 26, 2025 at 7:05 PM
in fact, this is what ap exams incentivize these days, which is part of the reason i take issue with them
Reposted by Annie Abrams
This is an incredibly relevant thread for Texans, given that TEA is developing a state-mandated reading list. www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/tex...
November 26, 2025 at 5:24 PM
This is an incredibly relevant thread for Texans, given that TEA is developing a state-mandated reading list. www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/tex...
Reposted by Annie Abrams
This essay by @johannawinant.bsky.social is beautiful on what can happen in the classroom, and on the importance of *argument* to literary studies. I especially like how she writes about helping students to "believe in their own significance"
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review
Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.
www.bostonreview.net
November 26, 2025 at 4:47 PM
This essay by @johannawinant.bsky.social is beautiful on what can happen in the classroom, and on the importance of *argument* to literary studies. I especially like how she writes about helping students to "believe in their own significance"
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
the notion that english is a “skills-based” discipline leaves its “content”—its substance—vulnerable to bad faith actors
November 26, 2025 at 4:16 PM
the notion that english is a “skills-based” discipline leaves its “content”—its substance—vulnerable to bad faith actors
"I learned about close reading when I asked them to take their own thinking seriously—to take themselves seriously. Doing so, I found, forced me to take my job more seriously."
I wrote an essay for @bostonreview.bsky.social about what I learned about close reading when I taught at West Virginia University
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review
Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.
www.bostonreview.net
November 26, 2025 at 3:31 PM
"I learned about close reading when I asked them to take their own thinking seriously—to take themselves seriously. Doing so, I found, forced me to take my job more seriously."
Reposted by Annie Abrams
TODAY: Carrie Frye has some VERY good news about the archives of The Hairpin after a "horrifying zombie afterlife"!!!! flaminghydra.com/women-laughi...
Women Laughing Again On The Internet
Sometime last year the online archives of The Awl—the influential blog that ran from 2009-2018, and former home of many a Flaming Hydra contributor—went out, like a light switching off. Meanwhile, the...
flaminghydra.com
November 26, 2025 at 12:26 AM
TODAY: Carrie Frye has some VERY good news about the archives of The Hairpin after a "horrifying zombie afterlife"!!!! flaminghydra.com/women-laughi...
Reposted by Annie Abrams
unflinching earnestness
November 25, 2025 at 1:47 AM
unflinching earnestness
Reposted by Annie Abrams
What Melissa said! In plain terms: they collect data on student performance, specifically around reading, and to improve performance they monitor skills—and I don’t understand how serious adults don’t recognize the perils of that loop, especially when it’s not under the teacher’s control.
November 26, 2025 at 12:37 AM
What Melissa said! In plain terms: they collect data on student performance, specifically around reading, and to improve performance they monitor skills—and I don’t understand how serious adults don’t recognize the perils of that loop, especially when it’s not under the teacher’s control.
Reposted by Annie Abrams
Reading screeners for littles used to mean sitting down with an actual teacher who would see if you knew the alphabet and that you read from left to right.
Digital ones try and assess the same things but without a thinking person to notice “hey the kid got distracted”
Digital ones try and assess the same things but without a thinking person to notice “hey the kid got distracted”
November 26, 2025 at 12:20 AM
Reading screeners for littles used to mean sitting down with an actual teacher who would see if you knew the alphabet and that you read from left to right.
Digital ones try and assess the same things but without a thinking person to notice “hey the kid got distracted”
Digital ones try and assess the same things but without a thinking person to notice “hey the kid got distracted”
Reposted by Annie Abrams
Reposted by Annie Abrams
Related: I have elementary school teacher friends who’ve told me they’ve eliminated play in Kindergarten to make space for reading screeners. You know who those kids are—and we know why this is happening.
we shouldn’t (more fully) turn high schools into metric production mills
November 25, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Related: I have elementary school teacher friends who’ve told me they’ve eliminated play in Kindergarten to make space for reading screeners. You know who those kids are—and we know why this is happening.
we should have literature in schools, students should have a chance to think seriously about it
"my least woke opinion is---"
That's enough. We've had enough people indulging in the "thrill of a little conservatism", as a treat. Of considering reactionary thought to be a salacious and taboo in a world descending into reactionary mania.
Give me your MOST woke opinions. We're bringing it back.
That's enough. We've had enough people indulging in the "thrill of a little conservatism", as a treat. Of considering reactionary thought to be a salacious and taboo in a world descending into reactionary mania.
Give me your MOST woke opinions. We're bringing it back.
November 25, 2025 at 11:05 PM
we should have literature in schools, students should have a chance to think seriously about it
i understand why the stuff about standardized testing and admissions metrics might seem relatively benign compared to other parts of the “deals” universities are making but there are serious consequences for the ways students read and write in high school
November 25, 2025 at 10:37 PM
i understand why the stuff about standardized testing and admissions metrics might seem relatively benign compared to other parts of the “deals” universities are making but there are serious consequences for the ways students read and write in high school
Reposted by Annie Abrams
Ah, @pennpress.bsky.social has just announced their holiday sale! 40% off means that the paperback of my book on philosophy's encounter with "the public intellectual," Thinking in Public, is about $20.
100% of the historical analysis for 60% of the price.
www.pennpress.org/978081222434...
100% of the historical analysis for 60% of the price.
www.pennpress.org/978081222434...
Thinking in Public – Penn Press
Long before we began to speak of "public intellectuals," the ideas of "the public" and "the intellectual" raised consternation among many European philosophe...
www.pennpress.org
November 24, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Ah, @pennpress.bsky.social has just announced their holiday sale! 40% off means that the paperback of my book on philosophy's encounter with "the public intellectual," Thinking in Public, is about $20.
100% of the historical analysis for 60% of the price.
www.pennpress.org/978081222434...
100% of the historical analysis for 60% of the price.
www.pennpress.org/978081222434...
Reposted by Annie Abrams
I was feeling like "my job is pointless and no one cares" and then one of my students popped in to office hours just to ask for book recommendations
November 25, 2025 at 9:31 PM
I was feeling like "my job is pointless and no one cares" and then one of my students popped in to office hours just to ask for book recommendations
Reposted by Annie Abrams
it's seven pages long, adobe
November 25, 2025 at 4:25 AM
it's seven pages long, adobe
we should teach in schools about using your words
Everything about this might be the saddest thing I’ve ever seen
November 25, 2025 at 1:00 AM
we should teach in schools about using your words
every day i think about the midcentury plans for the advanced placement program
I think it’s pretty clear at this point that one of the main impacts of LLMs is to disrupt thinking: to make it so that far too many people never properly learn how to do it, and then to control the output so there are thoughts that people never learn how to think.
November 25, 2025 at 12:52 AM
every day i think about the midcentury plans for the advanced placement program
dewey wrote about the etymology of the word “expression”: it requires pressing
“At no point does the model ever give you friction,” he added. “It never pushes back. It’ll just yes and yes and yes. It’s just forever engaging.”
This is what we have unleashed in k12 schools.
This is what we have unleashed in k12 schools.
NEW: A Discord community with nearly 200 members serves as a support group for people whose minds and lives have been upended by episodes of AI delusion and psychosis.
In some cases, members say, the group has helped people climb out of their destructive AI "spirals."
futurism.com/artificial-i...
In some cases, members say, the group has helped people climb out of their destructive AI "spirals."
futurism.com/artificial-i...
November 24, 2025 at 9:54 PM
dewey wrote about the etymology of the word “expression”: it requires pressing
what a strange piece of writing this article is
I don't think I've ever disagreed and agreed more strongly with a piece, seesawing from one paragraph to the next.
Will come back to dissect.
#GiftLink #GiftArticle
Will come back to dissect.
#GiftLink #GiftArticle
America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?
www.nytimes.com
November 24, 2025 at 3:18 PM
what a strange piece of writing this article is
i mean it sounds absurd to say that college admissions is the rationale for a standardized testing regime that teaches writing as mad libs and fragmented excerpt reading
November 24, 2025 at 3:12 AM
i mean it sounds absurd to say that college admissions is the rationale for a standardized testing regime that teaches writing as mad libs and fragmented excerpt reading
Reposted by Annie Abrams
This morning, @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I, along with Robert LeBlanc, gave a workshop on close reading @ncte.org — and then got to hang out in person for a bit too!
November 22, 2025 at 8:40 PM
This morning, @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I, along with Robert LeBlanc, gave a workshop on close reading @ncte.org — and then got to hang out in person for a bit too!
"The lives of the Black artists who make up Black excellence were shaped by the institutions of the past century, which were rooted in a belief in a common public good and a deep appreciation for the history of artistic craft. We are living through the destruction of all that."
You all MUST READ this piece by Kaitlyn Greenidge about the power of art to “exist outside of a tech lord’s algorithm.”
www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-...
www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-...
The Artist Who Reminds Us that Another Way Is Possible
The late artist Abigail McGrath cultivated a creative life for herself filled with freedom, joy, and a commitment to beauty. In an age of authoritarianism and algorithms, it’s a kind of life worth pro...
www.harpersbazaar.com
November 23, 2025 at 10:25 PM
"The lives of the Black artists who make up Black excellence were shaped by the institutions of the past century, which were rooted in a belief in a common public good and a deep appreciation for the history of artistic craft. We are living through the destruction of all that."