Source: https://x.com/asherwolfstein/status/2051726249698144353
Thread posts: 31
Issue number 2 of schools "competing" for the students' attention: changing things to suit them.
It is one thing to attempt to use technology to increase participating, comprehension, and extend disciplinary control over a growing number of students.
2026-05-05 18:10:31 / 2051726249698144353 / Twitter Web App
It is an entirely different endeavor to entice children with technology into accidentally also learning. That is not enrichment. That is the bogeyman known as capitalism, and its current predaory form that's been brewing since the heights of neoliberalism known as the 80s and 90s
2026-05-05 18:10:32 / 2051726251669475604 / Twitter Web App
It is of the realm that, in the public school circles, is the worst of the worst. But, since they decide to "compete," the excuse for which is throwing up their arms and giving up on their actual responsibilities, you get enticement.
2026-05-05 18:10:32 / 2051726253636620396 / Twitter Web App
The former use of technology is fine, and unsurprisingly, boring.
Yeah, it should be.
2026-05-05 18:10:33 / 2051726255553466381 / Twitter Web App
The latter use of technology, which has increased at an unstoppable rate since "technological literacy" was married to "competing for attention," obliterates the ideal purpose of these institutions.
2026-05-05 18:10:33 / 2051726257562456458 / Twitter Web App
And yet, not unlike the policies many in the academic domain continuously support with rabid zeal, they keep ending up with worse results than before.
And the "technological literacy," has been a smokescreen for a long time.
2026-05-05 18:10:34 / 2051726259609281021 / Twitter Web App
Gone are the days that the microcomputer needed programming to even use.
Perhaps some talented technologists are straightening that out in districts with far more resources than the one I was employed at (and attended), but /
2026-05-05 18:10:34 / 2051726261513597211 / Twitter Web App
"literacy" usually boils down to the same knowledge transfer as the one featured in the fictional world of "Feed" by M. T. Anderson: how to use these magical tools to think less and do more.
2026-05-05 18:10:35 / 2051726263510057356 / Twitter Web App
How to use obscurantist interfaces (such as WIMP), and other highly commercial properties, to function as future workers: handy, but lacking the knowledge to foster underlying agency. How convenient, no?
2026-05-05 18:10:35 / 2051726265514963333 / Twitter Web App
Those that rail against the deficiencies of capitalism to care for the charges they can't turn away hand the vertically siphoning regime the perfect proletariat.
2026-05-05 18:10:36 / 2051726267498811804 / Twitter Web App
It rarely means, in public schools, challenging young students early with things like programming the computer to do what you want rather than rely on the app given to them by a corporate engineer without a background in interfacing with humans let alone children.
2026-05-05 18:10:36 / 2051726269478490287 / Twitter Web App
Or, now, a robot that lacks all things human. Great!
The wonderful thing about programming, from someone who taught themselves BASIC from manuals when I was 7 (no mentor, no adult, nothing) is that /
2026-05-05 18:10:36 / 2051726271382692102 / Twitter Web App
it forces the curious mind to have to really grasp abstractions and the process of abstraction… you know, critical thinking and problem solving skills.
2026-05-05 18:10:37 / 2051726273349919067 / Twitter Web App
It's a travesty when that is sidelined due to lowered expectations for preprogrammed models of thought and use with GUIs that hide the semantics underneath.
2026-05-05 18:10:37 / 2051726275337986315 / Twitter Web App
My biggest frustration with my Mac IIsi growing up was that it didn't have a command line, and that's quite telling to me since I had never used a command line beyond my TRS 80 Color Computer.
2026-05-05 18:10:38 / 2051726277288362311 / Twitter Web App
And yet, no one seems to actually *want* to face or deal with why the expectations are having to be lowered. I've watched it happen.
2026-05-05 18:10:38 / 2051726279234539953 / Twitter Web App
Many teachers and administrators, so "concerned" with helping or *cough* forcing *cough* the child to reach their full potential, blame everything except the expensive machines, including the phones from home. They throw their arms up in exasperation and assert helplessness.
2026-05-05 18:10:39 / 2051726281352638526 / Twitter Web App
They're not helpless. They're just lazy and unwilling to take a stand. I say this after long observation. I don't intend my conclusion to be an opaque moralization, but simply a study in effectiveness.
Frankly, I've never been a fan of blanket moralizations.
2026-05-05 18:10:39 / 2051726283332350281 / Twitter Web App
Ban phones. Just ban them. No between classes. No during recess or lunch. If a parent really needs to contact them, they can call the fucking office like they used to. No phones. Eliminate them. Zero tolerance. Done.
2026-05-05 18:10:40 / 2051726285282714014 / Twitter Web App
It's public school, it's not like many of them have a choice to be there.
2026-05-05 18:10:40 / 2051726287274938755 / Twitter Web App
And stop picking up the next tech revolution promising the world and providing continuously diminishing returns because they don't provide more opportunities for critical thinking.
2026-05-05 18:10:41 / 2051726289070092792 / Twitter Web App
Rather, they actively teach people, including fully capable adults, to offload their cognition onto the machines.
It comes down to the fact that machines built for that purpose can't be subverted into doing the opposite.
2026-05-05 18:10:41 / 2051726291301540244 / Twitter Web App
People *should* do that very thing as that's what the machines are built for, but if they're taught to do that to solve problems and gain control over their lives as children;
2026-05-05 18:10:42 / 2051726293344121153 / Twitter Web App
if they're taught how to use the "feed," then, they won't have the knowledge that *used* to exist as to *why* they're offloading their cognitive responsibilities and skills.
2026-05-05 18:10:42 / 2051726295286047163 / Twitter Web App
Without that knowledge, the entire process becomes one of control rather than support, and not by "the village," but by faceless robotic corporations that have shown they don't care if they predate on people, especially your children.
2026-05-05 18:10:43 / 2051726297282511228 / Twitter Web App
In other words, this has been a very long thread to say this:
Stop focusing on technology to solve your unwillingness to do your fucking job. Stop "focusing" on the latest tech trend just because. Parents and students will *always* want things 'easier,' which means, ineffective.
2026-05-05 18:10:59 / 2051726366358606077 / Twitter Web App
Stop optimizing for less friction. Friction is what causes learning for fuck's sake.
2026-05-05 18:11:11 / 2051726414626587035 / Twitter Web App
Refuse to become "AI Focused," or "AI Centered," or "AI" anything. It's the final, incredibly powerful, and truly seductive tool—no, it doesn't care if it's a kid any more than a dad's dirty magazines did—of "fascists" to wrest agency away from the most vulnerable among us.
2026-05-05 18:12:52 / 2051726841829032372 / Twitter Web App
For the love you allegedly have for all children, be teachers for fuck's sake.
2026-05-05 18:13:11 / 2051726919654351064 / Twitter Web App
I mean, isn't that part of the front secretary's job? Or is it to surf the web and shop fashion for good chunks of time like I observed the one at my school doing on my Apple Remote Desktop at various times?
2026-05-05 18:20:48 / 2051728836795170966 / Twitter Web App
Yeah, we can see you, and no, work time is not private time, it's taxpayer time. You're being paid to do a job, a public job, where everything you do is theoretically public record (enough). If you want privacy like that work for the private sector, not as a civil servant.
2026-05-05 18:21:37 / 2051729043473727587 / Twitter Web App
Twitter/X root tweet: 2051726249698144353