The Age of Aliteracy

What’s the point of enduring?

Verena

Apr 28, 2025

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Testing season has commenced in Nevada. Children across the state are sitting for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium’s criterion-referenced examinations in English language arts/literacy and mathematics. When the results return, sometime over the summer, schools will find out their Nevada School Performance Framework star ratings. Every year, the ceremony of state test taking repeats itself leaving a wake of winners and losers. But is this a true indication of how well students have mastered standards? Did they learn anything other than how to endure the pomp and circumstance?

The other day, I asked a public librarian “do young people still read books?” She said, “Yes not as many but they are still around… We have books that get purchased that go unread. I think society as a whole is reading less for a variety of reasons.”

A variety of reasons?

In the school setting, we often recite the mantra of becoming a lifelong learner and fantasize about the love of reading. Unfortunately, that zest for the written word doesn’t manifest for everyone.

I have a vivid memory of learning about osmosis and permeable membranes and laughing as my classmates all held their textbooks to their heads hoping the pages of definitions and diagrams would diffuse into their brains. I too wished there was an easier way to ‘learn’ the information without having to actually read it. Back in the 1900s our options were limited. You could listen to a book on tape, but those were few and far between, or you could be lucky enough to find Cliff’s Notes—thank you Mr. and Mrs. Hillegass you saved my ass a time or two. Bottomline, most of the time you actually had to read the book. This feeling of having to read made me an adversarial reader. I could read, I read often, but I almost never read for pleasure.

Today, we have access to podcasts, text-to-speech apps, AI summaries, YouTube explainers, TikTok recaps, Reddit threads, Infographics, etc. The desire for a shortcut hasn’t changed but the scale, speed, and stealth has. Endurance and stamina have been replaced with instantaneous efficiency so much so that this year’s state assessment has been slashed in half. An abbreviated test for abbreviated learning?

In 2006, a hilarious movie came out that poked fun at the idea of what happens when a society becomes dominated by consumerism, anti-intellectualism, and instant gratification. To this day, I chuckle to myself when I pass Smart water at the grocery store, because *it has electrolytes.* In 2025, it’s beginning to feel less like fiction and more like a documentary.

So sure, there are a lot of ways to get information other than books. What about the things you really should read, like employment contracts, loan terms, tax documents, safety manuals, or prescription information? My neighbor didn’t read and understand a lease agreement and is now on the hook for thousands of dollars in ‘financial responsibility.’ Shoot, we have people fighting over the US Constitution who have never read it and politicians using chatbots to calculate tariffs.

The Center for Humane Technology recently published a piece titled, “Teaching My Son to "Cheat" with AI: A Parenting Confession in the Age of ChatGPT.” Herein the author laments about the age old struggle of having a kid who waited til the very last minute to begin a school project. We’ve all been there. I recall begging my mom to run out to the store at 8:00 pm for another jar of rubber cement. Young people with their underdeveloped brains tend to have poor time management skills.

The author goes on to say, “I looked at the long list of tasks on the assignment sheet and thought…. um... NO THANKS. So I taught him how to prompt ChatGPT for a summary of each topic.” She continues by sharing her son’s worry about using GPT for his project and encourages him to “add a dash of personal color and throw in some grammatical and spelling mistakes to cover up his venal cheating ways.” Huh? Okay? Why, though?

Whether or not the assignment was meaningful and relevant misses the point about integrity, “You gotta know the rules to break the rules, Fam,” I am often reminded. At 11 years old, does this act of ‘enhancing productivity’ serve as the beginning of a journey into critical exploration of digital tools or mark a trajectory of never again having to sift through source materials?

The President of the United States issued an executive order titled, “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education For American Youth.” Stating, “It is the policy of the United States to promote AI literacy and proficiency among Americans by promoting the appropriate integration of AI into education, providing comprehensive AI training for educators, and fostering early exposure to AI concepts and technology to develop an AI-ready workforce and the next generation of American AI innovators.” I can imagine a lot of people from both sides of the aisle are very happy about this. This order calls out several areas of funding and even a Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge for students and educators.

All this despite the release of an annual study that identifies: therapy/companionship, organize my life, and find purpose as the top three most common use cases for genAI.

Here we find ourselves in a bit of a quandary between what we want to happen and what is happening. This is probably a good time to put on something comfy, prepare a bowl of your favorite snack (bonus if it has electrolytes), and sit down for a viewing of Idiocracy. Then think of what a frictionless future might look like.

PS - Watch the whole movie, not the YouTube recap.