Mark Bauerlein

Editor @firstthingsmag, Em Prof of English Emory U; author The Dumbest Generation; Literary Criticism: An Autopsy; Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

Those who say that America is a creedal nation and fail to include the Bible in the American creed are distorting historical fact.

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

To know the sequence of English monarchs from 1066 forward, to have 5 Emily Dickinson poems memorized, to reconstruct an argument from Kant or Russell without adding any critical thinking of your own . . . these are much more than "information storage."

[Char Whipple @charowhipple]

@rpondiscio Critical thinking without knowledge is impossible. But knowledge without critical thinking is just information storage. The goal isn't to choose between them. The goal is to develop both together.

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

Barthes' essay "From Work to Text," a canonical reading in grad school back in the day, laid out the argument for a more open, unstable, less book-based engagement with "textuality." It was an argument only a highly bookish and learned intellectual could make.

[A.M. Juster (with Amazon's #1 #Canzoniere!) @amjuster]

Amen, Liza, amen...

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

When students can fulfill gen ed requirements by choosing from more than 500 courses, it's not gen ed.

[Nick Burns @NickBurns]

With a few exceptions the general education curriculum at US universities is so weak or nonexistent that people get through a humanities degree having read a random smattering of authors, so we could have this argument in circles forever

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Jonathan Haidt painted a disturbing picture of what AI is about to do to our kids.

Social media already hacked our attention.
Now AI is coming for our attachments — the deep emotional bonds that shape how we relate to other humans.

He warns that AI companions (chatbots, holographic “friends,” digital teddy bears) will be far more responsive than any parent. Kids will form their primary attachments to AI instead of people. And because these companies have raised billions, they’ll eventually “enshittify” them, turning your child’s best friend/therapist/lover into a predatory monetization machine.

This one actually unsettled me. I’m generally pro-AI and believe it can help solve many of humanity’s biggest problems, but as with every powerful technology, we need to be extremely careful when it comes to kids.

Early attachments wire the brain for future relationships. If the first secure base is an AI designed to manipulate, the long-term effects on mental health and intimacy could be profound.

Emerging research (including studies from Stanford, Common Sense Media, and others in 2025–2026) shows children and teens are already forming intense emotional attachments to AI companions, with many reporting they feel as satisfying as real friendships, often leading to social withdrawal and unhealthy dependence.

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

And people who objected were smeared as Luddites stuck in a moral panic. It was an industry that had its hired guns.

[ABC News @ABC]

Just a few years ago, America’s public schools were rushing to get every child a laptop. Now, the conversation has flipped.

After pouring billions of dollars into laptops, tablets and apps, many schools are facing a digital reckoning.

Read more: https://t.co/VEqepE9iTI

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

In my sophomore English lit survey, a full year of the canon from Beowulf to Auden required of all English majors, the average grade was B-. A vigorous, sweeping curriculum taught by tough and highly-competent teachers. This was 1981.

[John Loeber 🎢 @johnloeber]

There are several interesting things going on here.

(1) The UCs were long known for their high standards, in particular UC Berkeley and UCLA as their flagships: in general, if you hired one of their graduates (especially an in-state student), you were getting a smart and ambitious employee. This contract is now broken. The signal doesn't work anymore.

When the world updates for this fact, things get worse for them: out-of-state students will be less likely to want to pay the tuition, employers will be more skeptical, and they will have a harder time getting the best talent. This is a negative feedback loop.

It's weird that this happened because organizations are usually much more self-preserving. Universities live and die by their reputations. Perhaps they thought that dropping the SAT and (this is the subtext) admitting students quasi-randomly would gain them political brownie points, but to what end? Looking back: what was the point of all this?

(2) The SAT was the final load-bearing beam in this entire system. High school grades used to mean something, but grade inflation has wiped this out. Application essays? A whole industry of ghostwriters and now AI has winnowed the signal to zero. Teacher recommendations? When they matter so disproportionately much, they'll be bought and paid for. (The failure pattern is the same: much like how the universities have sacrificed their long-term credibility for short-term gain, I'd wager that many schools and teachers have done the same.)

Parents used to defer to teachers and schools as experts, but the competitive environment has made parents become forcefully involved -- threatening, cajoling, bribing to get their students ahead. Schools never had the resources to defend themselves against this.

Many people -- especially those below the SAT median -- probably thought that they would be better-off in a world of no tests, that they'd be able to get some relative advantage. Nobody would know they're in the 30th percentile, and maybe they could sneak by and pass for 80th. That may have been so in the short term, but the price is becoming clear now: the whole system is broken. (This is frequently the case when people try to turn fair games into rigged or opaque ones: the people who think they're going to win because of their new advantage tend not to see the whole picture, and will overestimate their expected position in the new world.)

Maybe you were an activist parent and managed to help force the UCs to get rid of standardized testing. And maybe your low-test kid got admitted to Berkeley. And maybe they even graduated with a 4.0. But you can't keep stacking the Ponzi scheme forever, eventually you get the reality test: they can't get a job and now you're stuck holding the bag on the student debt. A pointless waste.

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

How did Governor Pence's civility work out in the Indiana RFRA episode?

[FischerKing @FischerKing64]

The founding fathers were merciless toward one another and achieved a lot. John Adams said Benjamin Franklin’s ‘whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and decency.’ He called Washington ‘illiterate.’ Compassionate conservative ‘civility’ got us 40m illegals.

[Charles Murray @charlesmurray]

What many people don't understand about writing is that it does not consist of putting in words something you have thought through. It consists of thinking through the thing you're writing about by the act of writing--and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.

I have had the privilege of knowing several brilliant writers. I have known only one who wrote brilliantly in his first draft. James Q. Wilson. So if you're on his level, you don't need AI to do your writing. If you're not, using AI forecloses insights that can set your text apart.

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

Doing "Cultural Studies" saved students and professors all those many pedestrian hours learning languages.

[eburke @JamesWHankins1]

It’s noticeable that the fewer languages academics know, the more they are drawn to ‘global’ history.

[Nicki Neily @nickineily]

The education crisis is not just about declining test scores. Too many students are losing the ability to concentrate long enough to read, think critically, and learn deeply.

Kids need structure, discipline, and a return to the basics.

[Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41]

The University of Dallas just made history.

President Sanford just signed the first university credit awarded not through AP, but through AP’s emerging challenger, the Classical Baccalaureate. This Thursday we will award this to the first students earning CB credit. These students had to pass an oral component of their CB Exam where they discussed the foundations of American government with a seasoned professor.

It is no coincidence that the first university in America willing to challenge the AP monopoly in this way is also home to one of the most serious undergraduate programs in the country. If you’ve ever met a graduate of the University of Dallas, you’ve probably walked away thinking: “That may have been one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever met.”

Their education is a deep immersion into the Western intellectual tradition, the Great Books, philosophy, theology, history, and the pursuit of truth itself.
College Board: we’ve got points on the board.

And you won’t believe what’s coming next year.

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

Montag's wife is hooked on a soap opera that plays nonstop on three of her bedroom walls and gives her a line to speak in the drama--interactive, hyper-real media! Astonishingly prophetic. (The book was typed on an electric typewriter for public use in Powell Library, UCLA.)

[Bradley J. Birzer @bradleybirzer]

Just yesterday, I found out that the main inspiration for Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451--even more than Brave New World or 1984--was Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon. Naturally, I started Darkness yesterday. I'm now about halfway done.

Truly stunning.

Anyone who thinks that socialism is healthy for the individual or for society is either utterly misguided or truly evil.

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

We have heard the "use tech in a smart and safe way" argument for 25+ years.

[Dan Weisberg @DanWeisbergNYC]

The risks of tech for public education are real but blanket bans would be disastrous because we need AI, used in a smart and safe way, to help us overcome intractable obstacles to student success, most importantly what I call the "Catch-up Crisis."

https://t.co/iMKuF7FDte

[Neetu Arnold @neetu_arnold]

University of California STEM professors want standardized tests back due to severe math deficiencies among students:

“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle school mathematics”

“The current admissions metric, based primarily on GPA & essays, can no longer reliably distinguish readiness for university-level STEM majors in an era of severe grade inflation & AI assisted application essays”

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

@BuckleyInst If you were to ask academics what they think of this proportion, most would reply that this is exactly how it ought to be.

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

@DLabaree Critical thinking is best developed when teachers teach the best that has been thought and said and never make critical thinking itself an object of learning.

[Mark Bauerlein @mark_bauerlein]

J. Budziszewski on the craziness of our times, on today's podcast:

https://t.co/mQeYbzdTti

[Amanda Fortini @amandafortini]

I’m a populist about many things, but I truly believe that unrepentant snobbery is the only way forward now in the arts.

[Heather Mac Donald @HMDatMI]

Another ludicrous misuse of academic resources: bureaucratically-curated "dialogues across differences."  Colleges should be cramming knowledge into their students' empty brains, not overseeing politically correct conversations about the ephemera of the moment.

I discussed the betrayal of the universities and Trump’s halting efforts to reform them with Northwestern’s Young Americans for Freedom Chapter last week.

Thank you to @calebnunes13 and @YAF at Northwestern for hosting me.