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...

If Karen Vaites is outflanking you on reading books + raising questions about the limits of reading-as-decoding practice, this should make you question many things about yourself if you're a Democrat.

Sorry, this a phonics-only space. All decoding all the time.

Relatedly…

thebaffler.com/outbursts/un...

You mean you didn’t get your PhD in annotation or finding the main idea or reading a passage and answering some questions about it or filling out an evidence log?

But if you think English is just a “contentless content area,” than any AI slop will do! We’re not doing anything anyway per the “contentless content area” crew!

Annie, I’m telling you that every day of my professional life I have to remind people that English is not a “contentless content area” and that Literature is indeed “content.”

This is why our corporate overlords + their friends love AI: it can churn out endless depoliticized “neutral” content that can be delivered through virtual platforms that require no human contact, further teacherproofing the system. It doesn’t matter if it’s slop, it’s keeping everyone docile.

Right. Not much is these days, really.

What's kind of funny is that "literate across content areas" is something most people can get behind! It's literally an SAT rallying cry, so even the biggest test-pilled person you know probably agrees with it. As an on-the-record SAT hater, I think disciplinary literacy is a very worthy goal!

Based on an interaction I had with a famous literacy journalist recently, I'll say that they do not.