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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 6d

Relatedly…

thebaffler.com/outbursts/un...

Uniform Policy | Jennifer C. Berkshire

Democrats must come up with a defense of public schools that goes beyond bloodless workforce preparation

thebaffler.com

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 6d

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?

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 6d

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!

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 6d

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.”

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 6d

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.

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 6d

so the US government just forced a tech company to delete an app it doesn’t like, which is totally normal stuff

www.404media.co/iceblock-own...

ICEBlock Owner After Apple Removes App: ‘We Are Determined to Fight This’

Apple removed ICEBlock reportedly after direct pressure from Department of Justice officials. “I am incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never t...

www.404media.co

Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 6d

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.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 11d

Right. Not much is these days, really.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 11d

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!

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 13d

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

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Reposted by Jeffrey Austin

Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 16d

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

Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 16d

I cannot tell you how grim the AI in higher ed situation is. Many of the students have completely surrendered to letting AI do their homework, badly, I might add. How do you fix this? Truly, what the hell do we do, beyond what grading can address, which isn't a solution?

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 21d

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.

Shacknews @shacknews.com · 21d

LiveAI demo fails on the first prompt at Meta Connect 2025. #Meta #AI #LiveAI

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · Sep 6

I agree! I was lambasted by some teachers for suggesting this a while ago, but I think this is an existential threat to robust, equitable public education + requires our attention.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · Sep 6

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."

Tom Mullaney @tommullaney.bsky.social · Sep 4

School districts need to create policies protecting students and teachers who refuse to use generative AI. Teachers unions need to lead the charge. #EduSky

refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/08/29/a...

A Student’s Right to Refuse Generative AI

Elizabeth Palumbo, Syracuse University Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com I’m sitting at a desk in a college classroom in Upstate New York. It’s nearing the end of the fall semester of my seni…

refusinggenai.wordpress.com

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · Sep 5

Live look at the @nytimes.com right now.

Distracted boyfriend meme: The boyfriend (New York Times) is holding the hands of a woman ("Lucy Calkins is the Devil)" while looking at another woman ("AI Schools will save American education")

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · Sep 5

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.

Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · Sep 5

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.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · Sep 5

A.I. is changing classrooms. We spoke to the co-founder of Alpha Schools about how her private K-12 schools are using A.I. to generate personalized lesson plans and enabling teachers to spend their time motivating rather than teaching students. nyti.ms/3JHIZub

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · Sep 5

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.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · Sep 5

A.I. is changing classrooms. We spoke to the co-founder of Alpha Schools about how her private K-12 schools are using A.I. to generate personalized lesson plans and enabling teachers to spend their time motivating rather than teaching students. nyti.ms/3JHIZub

$MackKenzie Price, co-founder of Alpha Schools, in a dark blue shirt and orange pants sits on a wooden desk in front of a window, smiling slightly at the camera. Quote reads: "Our kids are crushing their academics, and they're doing it in a fraction of the time."$

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Reposted by Jeffrey Austin

Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · Sep 5

TIL that Moms for America, Moms for Liberty, and Parents Defending Education have signed the White House's pledge to America's youth to invest in AI education, which further clarifies how this AI education initiative is a political project and whose vision of education is being prioritized.

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Reposted by Jeffrey Austin

Grist @grist.org · Aug 23

In the wake of destructive floods, #Wisconsin youth sue state utility regulator over failure to consider climate change.

The case is part of a growing movement to force climate action through the courts, led in part by Indigenous youth.

grist.org/justice/in-t...

#Floods #Indigenous #Youth #WI

In the wake of destructive floods, Wisconsin youth sue state utility regulator over failure to consider climate change

The case is part of a growing movement to force climate action through the courts, led in part by Indigenous youth.

grist.org

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · Sep 4

Big tech has never had better friends than the corporate reformers who run so much of American education, which is a huge part of the reason we are where we are today.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · Sep 4

“The business commitments include things like cash prizes for students and teachers who use AI in educational ways, and cheap or free access to the companies' AI tools, trainings and certifications.”

Big tech signs on to White House plan for AI education in US schools

The White House hosted several tech and AI leaders at an event today centered on teaching artificial intelligence in US schools.

www.engadget.com

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Reposted by Jeffrey Austin

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · Sep 3

“The technology is producing a generation of eternal novices, unable to think or perform for themselves.”

I’m a High Schooler. AI Is Demolishing My Education.

The end of critical thinking in the classroom

www.theatlantic.com

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Reposted by Jeffrey Austin

Nick Covington @covingtonedu.bsky.social · Sep 3

The fascist use of GenAI goes beyond aesthetics. It's a tool to reify revisionist history & implant false nostalgia, especially through who they decide "humanize".

It's a choice to bring John Adams "to life" & not, say, the enslaved people that built the White House.

www.npr.org/2025/09/03/n...

'Founders Museum' from White House and PragerU blurs history, AI-generated fiction

Historians say it's good to highlight America's founders, but the project takes too narrow a view of history.

www.npr.org

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · Aug 30

Riparbelli sounds like the many educational leaders who are wholly invested in corporate schooling run by tech billionaires. Their belief in kids + teachers is so little that they believe the future is boxed curriculum + skill-and-drill surveillance ed tech. The call is coming from inside the house!

NPR @npr.org · Aug 29

Technologist Victor Riparbelli sees a future where students interact with AI avatars rather than read and write. We ask teachers and kids what they think and how they're using AI right now.

Will AI avatars eventually teach our kids?

Technologist Victor Riparbelli sees a future where students interact with AI avatars rather than read and write. We ask teachers and kids what they think and how they're using AI right now.

n.pr

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · Aug 27

The best feedback from all the back-to-school PDs is about my simple slide letting participants know I haven't used AI to create any part of the presentation + asking them not to use AI while we're learning together.

Simple, informal steps toward #AIRefusal can have powerful impacts.

This session is AI-free.

I'm committed to a space that's truly humanizing, a space that's for humans and by humans. I have not used AI to create any part of today's learning, and I ask that you abstain from AI use during our time together. You matter, your voice matters, your experience matters, and your ideas matter. I need you!

A badge from Clive Thompson on the right reading "All Human, 100% AI-Free."

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Reposted by Jeffrey Austin

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · Aug 23

You can add up all the enjoyable pursuits of LLMs and the work productivity hacks and none of them, separately or together, will be more important than AI’s ecological costs or political disruption.

“We” is more important here.

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Reposted by Jeffrey Austin

Nick Covington @covingtonedu.bsky.social · Aug 19

It's interesting to talk with school leaders & districts about the sort of terminal condition of school data today. Ironically, they have more data than they've ever had before but lack the processes & resources to make sense of it in ways that are timely, actionable, AND meaningful...

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