Trevor Aleo
@mraleosays.bsky.social
teacher | scholar | ENG & EDU lecturer | literary, critical, & postdigital #literacies
Also, if you have no money, academic zoom talks are still 💯 *invited talks* and that looks great on people's CVs! 💫 Many people will accept talks if you cover the costs, or even for free if it's online! People may do it for a parking pass and a sandwich lunch!
Only a few pages into @aarthivadde.bsky.social’s “We the Platform” & I’m excited it’s going to deepen my belief that we need alternate histories (both recent and distant) to rethink the present & chart a new future for the literary humanities. E.g. I loved how The Teaching Archive recast the
With the spate of new trade books about data politics & too late capitalism, I fear this one might be getting lost in the shuffle. As important as Big Tech & Silicon Valley VCs are, you can’t understand the present without attention to the restructuring of capital around fund managers after 2008.
Really enjoyed doing this interview w/@learnovate.bsky.social - we got into my approach to teaching comics as always hands-on & emphasizing play, drawing as thinking, my crankiness about gen-Ai, the importance of constraints to creativity, the necessity of struggle, tennis, & the DJ-movie Scratch!
Nick Sousanis: Why Drawing Is Thinking (and What AI Leaves Out)
YouTube video by Learnovate
youtube.com
In addition to the testing regimes causing this, the skill-i-fication of education offered us a way to rationalize it. The assumption being there are generic “writing skills that students strengthen like a muscle through use regardless of form/context” helped justify artificial forms of writing.
John Downes-Angus@johndownesangus.bsky.social · 3d ago“Better to emphasize the quality of their arguments rather than the mechanics of sentences” started off as a neat idea and then bowdlerized writing instruction entirely
i think it was a really big mistake for some of the more moderate classical ed folks to cozy up to republican politicians
I can already see the Ed Reform forces marshaling. Stay tuned for more scripted curriculum based on The Science of Learning™️ & Long-Term-Memory-Maxxing™️ being pitched as The Solution®️ to all our educational problems. It’ll even come in progressive AND reactionary flavors!
Natalie Weiner@natalieweiner.bsky.social · 5d ago“Education should be about exploration,” the letter reads. “We want to go to school to connect with people, discover things, and learn....We can’t now, because of the rigidity of the new lesson plans and rules makes it almost impossible to explore new ideas...”
watch out for the second season of sold a story, about direct instruction
Trevor Aleo@mraleosays.bsky.social · 7d agoAEI is also making inroads in K-12 education by resurrecting the zombified ed-reform corpse for the 800th time. This time they’ll go straight to struggling schools & sell them on traditional “common sense” pedagogy that’s aligned with their reactionary vision for HE. www.aei.org/the-practice...
AEI is also making inroads in K-12 education by resurrecting the zombified ed-reform corpse for the 800th time. This time they’ll go straight to struggling schools & sell them on traditional “common sense” pedagogy that’s aligned with their reactionary vision for HE. www.aei.org/the-practice...
aei.org
Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · 7d agoThat all of these universities producing reports on what the future of higher ed should be are collaborating with the American Enterprise Institute is a tell that they see this moment of higher ed "reform" as an opportunity to entrench reactionary policies and undermine the humanities further.
This episode is doing big numbers &, so far as the feedback I'm getting, for precisely the reason I recruited Lauren Goodlad (@criticalai-journal.bsky.social) & @jeffjarvis.bsky.social: They are both able, in their own ways, to situate the AI boom as more continuity than disruption. They draw...
Critical AI & The End of Mass Media (Vandal Live @ Elmira College)
with Lauren M.E. Goodlad and Jeff Jarvis
theamericanvandal.com
Stuff like this has been happening a little too often on here lately. Piling on someone who is clearly an expert operating in good faith with a history of critical engagement of the topic under discussion is not the move. Can we not turn this site into a circular firing squad, please?
Zeb Larson@zeblarson.bsky.social · 7d agoReading the responses to this just make me despair. If on this text-based microblogging site people can’t be counted on to read beyond the strictly literal, I don’t know what to say. Josh’s point is clearly not an endorsement of AI but some people clearly just needed to post 3 more times today.
I think a lot of people jumping on this don’t know Josh’s area of expertise or background, this post is not about devaluing your critiques, or a “you participate in society” thing, it’s about how insidious ai is, it’s in so much of our tech that it’s becoming embedded in our information systems.
Students are starting their “Digging into Discourse Communities” project & have to pick a community to research, engage with, & produce writing for. Today one of my students said he wants to swap his business major for history. I did my best to play it cool. Might have let out a quiet “Hell yeah.”
Robert Redford as Jeremiah Johnson Nodding Yes
ALT: Robert Redford as Jeremiah Johnson Nodding Yes
static.klipy.com
A couple people tagged me here. Thank you. Following the money is definitely a precept of my EdTech research. When it comes to Alpha, the trail is both obvious, & deceptively complex. The obvious part leads to Joe Liemandt, his software company (Trilogy) & investment firm (ESW Capital).
All Our Kids Will Go To Alpha School
On the plans to hyperscale Alpha School’s “AI” tutoring software to “a billion kids.”
theamericanvandal.com
Greg Pak@gregpak.net · 2w agoi’d love to see someone follow the money on this one
💯 💯💯 The crisis is how we define the crisis. The crisis is how we solve the crisis. The crisis is in the profit motive for us to be in a constant state of crisis.
Rebecca@wordyanchorite.bsky.social · 2w agoIf there's no crisis, you can't get rich selling the product to solve the crisis, therefore we must always be in a crisis
I’m tired, ya’ll. We’re really about to do this whole thing again aren’t we? We’re really about to get sold another story aren’t we? This is seriously some hauntology, capitalist realism level stuff: “It is easier to envision the end of the world than the end of the literacy wars.” 🫠
Trevor Aleo@mraleosays.bsky.social · 2w agoHaven’t people spent the last 5 years melting down about how we spent billions of dollars on a dated literacy program with scant supporting evidence that was owned & operated by an EduGuru & run like a cult of personality? Is it because this one has #Science on the box? time.com/article/2026...
The thing about SaS's breathless innuendo about the evil publishing company pushing a flawed product, the cultish devotion to a set of scholars invested in a particular way of understanding education, and widespread underdelivering is — that’s just what ed reform looks like. For decades.
Trevor Aleo@mraleosays.bsky.social · 2w agoHaven’t people spent the last 5 years melting down about how we spent billions of dollars on a dated literacy program with scant supporting evidence that was owned & operated by an EduGuru & run like a cult of personality? Is it because this one has #Science on the box? time.com/article/2026...
“The goal was to destabilize U.S. educational infrastructure and carve out a large space for reactionary indoctrination within it.” When you don’t have a teacher—a thinking person—in a classroom, endless ideological reproduction is easier.
Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · 2w ago“It’s putting a mind virus into a kid’s head, which is what education is. And it’s being done by a teacher you trust.”
I’m tired, ya’ll. We’re really about to do this whole thing again aren’t we? We’re really about to get sold another story aren’t we? This is seriously some hauntology, capitalist realism level stuff: “It is easier to envision the end of the world than the end of the literacy wars.” 🫠
Trevor Aleo@mraleosays.bsky.social · 2w agoHaven’t people spent the last 5 years melting down about how we spent billions of dollars on a dated literacy program with scant supporting evidence that was owned & operated by an EduGuru & run like a cult of personality? Is it because this one has #Science on the box? time.com/article/2026...
Haven’t people spent the last 5 years melting down about how we spent billions of dollars on a dated literacy program with scant supporting evidence that was owned & operated by an EduGuru & run like a cult of personality? Is it because this one has #Science on the box? time.com/article/2026...
The Woman Winning the Reading Wars
Louisa Moats’ teacher-training program is painstaking, pricey, and decades old. It’s also the hot new thing
time.com
There are many reasons to take issue with the NYT article making the rounds, but one of them is the fact it treats incredibly complex, abstract, & contested methods/approaches that require specialized training, implementation, etc. & treat them like they’re an app you install to make scores go 📈.
Jeffrey Austin@jaustinedu.bsky.social · 2w agoThe "Science of Reading" is so cost-effective that Michigan will spend over $100 million on the unproven, 100+ hour LETRS training for all elementary teachers in addition to providing tens of millions more for districts to buy dyslexia screeners and "SoR-aligned" curriculum from an approved list.
My point, ultimately, is that focusing on a "fix" is misguided. It isn't ill-intended. It just won't work.
The Chronicle Against Higher Education gives the Vanderbilt report endless publicity while not running a single story on the World Humanities Report, which shows that the disciplines slandered in the Vanderbilt report are actually making vital contributions to the world. worldhumanitiesreport.org
Home - The World Humanities Report
The World Humanities Report Demonstrating the vitality of the humanities throughout the world
worldhumanitiesreport.org
Chronicle of Higher Education@chronicle.com · 2w agoWhen Joseph Henrich agreed to study whether anthropology is overly politicized, he said he knew he “wasn’t going to make everyone happy." Correct. https://chroni.cl/4jrembV
I don't disagree. But, as I wrote back to these reporters, I am most optimistic about projects that respond to the expressed concerns of students and teachers. These are the people who spend 180 days inside schools each year, and they're the key actors in the process of teaching and learning. 1/n
Matthew A Kraft@matthewakraft.com · 2w agoNew @nytimes.com piece ranks 30 education interventions on both effectiveness & costs. For me, the key takeaway is NOT about what academics (including myself) rated as most effective or least costly. It is about the decision making process districts use. 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/u...
“30 Ideas for Raising Standardized Test Scores As Cheaply As Possible” Fixed the title.
Matthew A Kraft@matthewakraft.com · 2w agoNew @nytimes.com piece ranks 30 education interventions on both effectiveness & costs. For me, the key takeaway is NOT about what academics (including myself) rated as most effective or least costly. It is about the decision making process districts use. 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/u...
