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...
it’s actually really funny that the associated image is still whitman
November 20, 2025 at 1:15 AM
it’s actually really funny that the associated image is still whitman
Reposted by Annie Abrams
I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of the whale.
November 19, 2025 at 7:47 PM
I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of the whale.
scattered elementary school art teachers are american heroes
November 19, 2025 at 11:08 PM
scattered elementary school art teachers are american heroes
Reposted by Annie Abrams
Everybody loves the National Terrorism Advisory System, let’s make one for literary interpretation.
Threat level, significance.
Threat level, significance.
November 19, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Everybody loves the National Terrorism Advisory System, let’s make one for literary interpretation.
Threat level, significance.
Threat level, significance.
Reposted by Annie Abrams
John Holt, "How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading"
November 19, 2025 at 4:45 PM
John Holt, "How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading"
imagine having access to a research library
Harvard's prosecutorial culture was "miserable," says Jill Lepore. Even so, she stayed, but has since come to regret her silence. https://chroni.cl/4ihof9O
Why Jill Lepore Nearly Quit Harvard
The prosecutorial culture was “miserable.” She stayed, but has come to regret her silence at the time.
www.chronicle.com
November 19, 2025 at 9:13 PM
imagine having access to a research library
there are less patronizing forms of noblesse oblige
I'm so tired of these noblesse oblige shitheads like Haidt thinking they have all the answers and we're the ones who are stupid for thinking he's an incompetent, power-fluffing egomaniac. Yes, phones are bad, Jonathan! They're not turning kids trans!
November 19, 2025 at 9:00 PM
there are less patronizing forms of noblesse oblige
Henry James, 22-year-old hater, on Walt Whitman:
You must also be serious...Your personal qualities—the vigor of your temperament, the manly independence of your nature, the tenderness of your heart—these facts are impertinent. You must be possessed, and you must strive to possess your possession.
You must also be serious...Your personal qualities—the vigor of your temperament, the manly independence of your nature, the tenderness of your heart—these facts are impertinent. You must be possessed, and you must strive to possess your possession.
November 19, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Henry James, 22-year-old hater, on Walt Whitman:
You must also be serious...Your personal qualities—the vigor of your temperament, the manly independence of your nature, the tenderness of your heart—these facts are impertinent. You must be possessed, and you must strive to possess your possession.
You must also be serious...Your personal qualities—the vigor of your temperament, the manly independence of your nature, the tenderness of your heart—these facts are impertinent. You must be possessed, and you must strive to possess your possession.
Am working on an essay about high school English and thinking about @johannneem.bsky.social on Common Core, from a decade ago— hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-b...
The Common Core and Democratic Education
hedgehogreview.com
November 19, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Am working on an essay about high school English and thinking about @johannneem.bsky.social on Common Core, from a decade ago— hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-b...
We should not mandate AP exams.
If high schools and elite colleges are holding students and teachers accountable for AP test results, you have a strong incentive to fix this problem.
November 19, 2025 at 2:37 PM
We should not mandate AP exams.
"Philistinism implies not only a collection of stock ideas but also the use of set phrases, clichés, banalities expressed in faded words."
November 19, 2025 at 2:26 PM
"Philistinism implies not only a collection of stock ideas but also the use of set phrases, clichés, banalities expressed in faded words."
we should have art and it should be broadly accessible
in terms of well being and happiness imo). In the face of the most overt brutality it's easy to be like 'hard to get mad about access to art when people are being starved and bombed' which has a point but these things all come from the same basic social logic of indifferences to human flourishing.
November 19, 2025 at 12:10 AM
we should have art and it should be broadly accessible
Reposted by Annie Abrams
It’s actually okay if they seem bored in your class—give it a second
November 17, 2025 at 12:45 PM
It’s actually okay if they seem bored in your class—give it a second
Reposted by Annie Abrams
This.
This is one of my main problems with ED Hirsch’s Core Knowledge stuff—we don’t read books to get ahead, we read them because they mean things.
November 18, 2025 at 10:58 PM
This.
Reposted by Annie Abrams
That’s the right sense! That book in particular is just a really moving account of people reading and thinking because it makes us more free/vibrantly alive. But there is also of course a clear political valence.
November 18, 2025 at 10:51 PM
That’s the right sense! That book in particular is just a really moving account of people reading and thinking because it makes us more free/vibrantly alive. But there is also of course a clear political valence.
opposite, actually
all of those concessions have not safeguarded books in schools
November 18, 2025 at 10:45 PM
opposite, actually
Reposted by Annie Abrams
also kind of hard to answer 'why is this worth doing?' to someone who just doesn't care about going for a walk, except by going 'well people who take more walks are better office workers in the long term...' which actually concedes all the most important points unfortunately.
November 18, 2025 at 10:40 PM
also kind of hard to answer 'why is this worth doing?' to someone who just doesn't care about going for a walk, except by going 'well people who take more walks are better office workers in the long term...' which actually concedes all the most important points unfortunately.
Reposted by Annie Abrams
It may seem ironic but my very conservative Christian upbringing taught me to revere certain texts and that understanding them was good for my soul. I read Shakespeare to experience that, not get ahead. I had no idea what “getting ahead” meant back then.
November 18, 2025 at 10:34 PM
It may seem ironic but my very conservative Christian upbringing taught me to revere certain texts and that understanding them was good for my soul. I read Shakespeare to experience that, not get ahead. I had no idea what “getting ahead” meant back then.
would read a long form essay about philistinism
hard agree, as a working class kid who wound up a historian. also a friend who also has a phd said recently one of the major shocks for them on going to grad school was realizing a significant number of faculty at elite universities are philistines. that made a lot of my experiences newly make sense
November 18, 2025 at 10:12 PM
would read a long form essay about philistinism
Reposted by Annie Abrams
This is totally weird and underscores another reason why 'academic' and 'intellectual' should not be treated as synonyms.
It’s weird when humanities professors at well-resourced universities say that books don’t matter anymore.
“The elites are ecstatic about imagining a vast, uneducated, and unproductive population forced to pay companies like OpenAI to access the written word and to approximate thought.”
Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
November 18, 2025 at 10:08 PM
This is totally weird and underscores another reason why 'academic' and 'intellectual' should not be treated as synonyms.
SEEMS RIGHT TO ME
Think I just would be very surprised if a kid from a working class background would then be okay with the de-bookification of poor kids’ schooling, so maybe we should make sure all the kids get the kind of ed that could let them see working in the humanities as an option
November 18, 2025 at 9:50 PM
SEEMS RIGHT TO ME
Reposted by Annie Abrams
(There are other obvious barriers to that path in life but “not reading books in school” strikes me as fairly big one)
November 18, 2025 at 8:49 PM
(There are other obvious barriers to that path in life but “not reading books in school” strikes me as fairly big one)