Category: Uncategorized

Artificial intelligence is no longer simply a tool; it is a theology. Its rapid deployment across education has taken on messianic urgency, promising salvation through optimization, personalization, and scalability. Its apostles – venture capitalists, platform architects, billionaires with philanthropic gloss – offer not mere solutions, but eschatologies. AI will remake learning. AI will fix inequity. AI will replace teachers. AI will displace the human.

These are not neutral propositions. The forces driving AI transformation in education serve markets, not communities. Their logic is extractive, their models disruptive in the Silicon Valley sense: disruption as demolition of precedent, not enhancement of wisdom. To remain in traditional education today is to place oneself in the devil’s path – standing against the full weight of transformation. To enter tech’s inner sanctum, to design for or profit from the system, is to join the devil’s right hand: powerful, paid, and compromised.

This essay defines that devil, excavates the terrain, and traces the ethical fracture at the heart of modern schooling: whether education will be a public covenant or a private commodity.

The Devil We Face: Techbro AI and Billionaire-Funded Reform

The devil is not AI itself. The devil is the regime governing its deployment: billionaire-funded, platform-led, and obsessed with market logic.

Consider the collapse of AltSchool, a heavily hyped personalized learning experiment backed by Mark Zuckerberg, Laurene Powell Jobs, and other tech elites. Despite raising $174 million, it failed to scale or sustain its vision, closing its schools and quietly pivoting to software. AltSchool wasn’t merely a failed startup – it was a case study in hubris: data-first pedagogy built by technologists who neither trusted nor understood teachers.

AltSchool is emblematic of the broader movement to privatize education through AI-enhanced platforms. A 2024 report from Senator Bernie Sanders reveals a coordinated billionaire effort to defund public schools and expand voucher programs. The goal: erode civic education and replace it with market-driven alternatives – charters, micro-schools, software subscriptions.

The underlying ideology is clear: students are products, teachers are liabilities, and learning is a business model.

This AI-industrial complex operates with the same extractive principles as Uber or Facebook. It does not serve learning. It serves surveillance, scale, and speculative return.

Traditional Education as Resistance

Remaining within traditional public or independent education now requires deliberate resistance. It is no longer neutral. It is oppositional.

Schools, when rightly oriented, are not delivery systems for curriculum. They are moral communities. They form citizens, not just workers. They convene pluralism, not personalization. Traditional schools still carry the burden of these commitments, even as they are battered by funding cuts and media delegitimization.

This does not mean AI must be excluded. It means AI must never come first. OECD guidelines warn that AI in education must be human-centered, teacher-led, and equity-grounded. When integrated well – under the authority of educators – it can augment formative feedback, identify instructional gaps, and support multilingual access.

But integration is not leadership. AI cannot set the curriculum. AI cannot mediate values. AI cannot form conscience.

We already see what happens when it does. In Houston ISD, under a state takeover, AI-driven curriculum platforms produced plagiarized and inaccurate lessons, demoralizing teachers and sparking mass resignations. This is not modernization. It is institutional sabotage.

To remain in the path of the devil is to absorb his blows while defending education as a civic trust. The work is grueling. The cost is real. But so is the mandate.

The Right Hand: Serving the Devil to Build Safe Havens

Others choose to work from inside the regime – joining the platforms, taking the capital, building counter-models with the proceeds. This is the position of the devil’s right hand: powerful, well-funded, and often well-intentioned. But deeply entangled.

This is precisely what many billionaire reformers have done. Laurene Powell Jobs now funds XQ Super Schools, elite public-private hybrids with selective admission and tech-forward pedagogy. Elon Musk built Ad Astra for his own children, outside state oversight. Peter Thiel pays young people to drop out of school altogether.

These figures destabilize public systems while creating gated academies for their own. It is a pattern of elite exodus disguised as innovation.

Educators who join the AI-industrial complex – by writing prompts, building apps, or training models – often do so to gain financial security. Some use those resources to build safe-harbor schools of their own. But this strategy is not clean.

To build on techbro spoils is to risk importing their ideology. Without structural guardrails, even counter-models replicate the very inequities they claim to resist. Selective admissions. Algorithmic sorting. Over-surveillance. Privatized success.

The question is not whether you can build something better from inside. The question is whether you can do so without becoming the very thing you sought to replace.

AI as Tool, Not Master: A Necessary Clarification

AI has a place in education. But it must be a peripheral place. It must be a servant, not a sovereign.

AI literacy is critical: teachers and students must understand what AI is, how it works, where it fails, and what biases it encodes. Tools must be explainable, auditable, and transparent. Not just functional.

Research from Stanford and OECD confirms: AI used without pedagogical design undermines trust, displaces human insight, and reinforces inequality.

Generative AI may accelerate writing, summarizing, or grading – but it does not teach. Studies reveal that overreliance leads to surface-level thinking, intellectual passivity, and substitution of synthesis with sampling. It creates speed, not depth.

Worse, it encodes existing injustice. Data-driven learning systems often reproduce systemic bias – tracking students by proxy variables like zip code, device usage, or lexicon. Without intervention, AI doesn’t fix inequity. It hardens it.

The only ethical use of AI in schools is one that is teacher-driven, community-accountable, and structurally transparent. Anything else is extraction disguised as personalization.

Implications: Stratification, Commodification, and Collapse

The implications of AI-first schooling are already visible.

Stratification is accelerating. Affluent families use AI to supplement tutors, consultants, enrichment platforms. Poorer districts receive stripped-down platforms with minimal human contact. The result is a two-tier system: creative autonomy for the rich, automation for the rest. As Business Insider notes, AI reveals and widens existing cracks.

Commodification is rampant. Learning becomes engagement metrics. Curriculum becomes content. The student becomes the product. Scholar Kenneth Saltman calls this the “alienation of fact”: knowledge detached from purpose, reduced to data point.

Collapse follows. AI-first platforms repeatedly fail to deliver pedagogical value. AltSchool collapsed. Summit Learning has faced backlash over its depersonalized, screen-heavy models. Even the most capitalized projects stumble when they treat teachers as obsolete.

This is not an accident. It is a design failure rooted in ideology. When pedagogy is treated as product design, and learning as UX flow, the human heart of education dies.

Ethic of Use

Strategic Orientation: What to Do

The question is not whether to use AI. It is how, and under what terms.

For those staying in the path:

• Protect teacher autonomy.
• Advocate for human-first pedagogy.
• Refuse AI-centered curriculum design.
• Build AI literacy among students as a civic skill, not a shortcut.

For those in the right hand:

• Use capital to build transparent, democratic academies.
• Design governance models with community voice, not just founders.
• Center admissions on equity, not exclusivity.
• Use AI minimally, with human review, and open documentation.

For both:

• Establish school-level AI ethics boards.
• Require transparent disclosure of AI-generated content.
• Train all staff in the limitations and affordances of algorithmic tools.
• Ensure that culturally responsive pedagogy is not displaced by AI neutrality.

This is not a rejection of AI. It is a rejection of its dominion.

The AI-industrial complex seeks to rewire education in its own image: fast, efficient, scalable, and empty. It promises personalization but delivers surveillance. It promises equity but delivers tracking. It promises wisdom but delivers speed.

If schools surrender to this theology, they will cease to be places of human formation. They will become nodes in a data economy.

Those who stay in the path do so with bloodied hands but clean hearts. Those who join the right hand must tread carefully, extracting without becoming extractive.

Education is not a market. It is a covenant. And the devil keeps no covenants.

References:

1. AltSchool collapse and tech billionaire funding:
   https://www.insidehook.com/culture/tech-billionaires-wasted-millions-on-failed-education-startup-altschool
2. Sanders 2024 report on billionaire privatization of education:
   https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-new-report-on-the-coordinated-effort-by-billionaires-to-dismantle-the-american-public-school-system
3. XQ Super Schools and billionaire influence:
   https://truthout.org/articles/billionaires-who-aim-to-disrupt-education-may-get-a-chance-even-if-trump-loses
4. Elon Musk’s Ad Astra school and tech privatization:
   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/altschools-disrupted-education
5. Houston ISD AI-plagiarized curriculum and teacher exodus:
   https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/hisd-state-takeover-mike-miles-ai-prof-jim-20359937.php
6. OECD guidelines on equity-focused AI in education:
   https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/the-potential-impact-of-artificial-intelligence-on-equity-and-inclusion-in-education_15df715b-en.html
7. Stanford discussion of AI trust, literacy, and pedagogy:
   https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/09/educating-ai
8. FT analysis of AI’s impact on critical thinking:
   https://www.ft.com/content/adb559da-1bdf-4645-aa3b-e179962171a1
9. Business Insider on AI and educational system fragility:
   https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-reveals-how-broken-our-education-system-is-economist-says-2025-7
10. Kenneth Saltman on commodification and “alienation of fact”:
    https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1297432.pdf
11. Critique of Summit Learning model:
    https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-06-25-as-demand-for-personalized-learning-grows-summit-learning-expands
12. AI literacy overview (Wikipedia):
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_literacy
13. Research on data-driven education bias (arXiv):
    https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.01602

Memorial Day is always so complicated for me. I both love, respect, and miss the family I have (and lost) who have served. I also can see, as a firsthand, how their sacrifices led to a better world for the future of their children, and, in turn me, the children of their children.

I can also attest that the world I lived in, which was riotous and confusing compared to the world they came from, as well as how I was shaped by that world (ending up very very far from where they were, on almost every major axiom aside, perhaps from ethics and belief in the core tenets of democracy) led to great divides. My grandmother’s lasting legacy was showing me how love can supersede even the diametric opposition of viewpoints.

As a parent, I am left with this pit of anger and grief. I don’t believe the world my children will inherit and inhabit will be better off than mine, which seemed unlikely two decades ago, but almost a certainty now.

The republic’s founding covenant—life purchased through voluntary sacrifice for collective liberty—faces systematic dissolution through institutional capture and societal atomization. Memorial Day’s commemorative function exposes this degradation: the dead secured constitutional governance while contemporary power structures operate through regulatory complexity, financial extraction, and democratic theater.

The American Dream’s death manifests in structural terms: median wage stagnation against asset inflation, regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship, and credentialing systems that substitute institutional loyalty for productive capacity. These mechanisms concentrate wealth while distributing debt, creating permanent economic subjugation disguised as meritocracy.

Technological capability now exists to eliminate material scarcity through automation, distributed manufacturing, and information systems. However, implementation requires constitutional restoration and economic restructuring away from rent-seeking toward value creation. Current institutions profit from artificial scarcity and will resist technological disruption of their revenue models.

The pathway forward demands jurisprudential enforcement of constitutional constraints alongside popular recognition that individual prosperity depends on collective institutional health. This requires abandoning the false choice between capitalism and socialism for a third path: constitutional republicanism with technological abundance, and universal rights and privileges for all the citizenry. This is not a failing, it is an aspiration, and, frankly, should be the lowest bar.

The critical transition involves citizens understanding that their individual economic security depends on dismantling systems designed to extract value from productive activity. Technology becomes liberating only when deployed within governance structures that prevent its capture by existing power concentrations.

The fallen died for constitutional principles that can still govern technological implementation. Their sacrifice becomes meaningful through institutional restoration, not merely through memorial observance.

Can enough of the populace get through the “me” generation thinking to change it?

This is why I never sleep anymore.

At its core, Two Princes dramatizes a rivalry between two suitors vying for the affections of a single woman. The speaker—one of the two contenders—positions himself as the better choice, contrasting his sincerity and love with the material wealth of the other. This dramatic tension mirrors the romantic dilemmas found in Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies alike, as well as in Pyramus and Thisbe, a tale of forbidden love that Shakespeare adapts into A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Shakespearean drama often foregrounds romantic competition, particularly in plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night. Two Princes employs a similar structure, where love is not merely a matter of individual choice but is complicated by external pressures—specifically, the dichotomy between wealth and genuine affection. The song’s speaker, much like Shakespearean lovers such as Orlando (As You Like It) or Bassanio (The Merchant of Venice), argues that his love should be valued over material prosperity. The song’s line “If you want to call me baby, just go ahead now” evokes the kind of direct appeals often found in Shakespeare’s romantic dialogues, in which lovers entreat their beloveds to choose passion over pragmatic concerns (Shakespeare, Much Ado 2.1.180-190).

Ovidian Tragedy and the Problem of Status

The contrast between the two suitors also recalls the class-based barriers in Pyramus and Thisbe, a tale recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In Ovid’s narrative, the lovers are separated by their parents, who disapprove of their union. Although the song does not explicitly mention parental interference, it implicitly invokes societal pressures through the opposition of the rich prince versus the sincere but impoverished lover. The speaker’s plea suggests an awareness that love is often dictated by social constraints—a theme pervasive in both Pyramus and Thisbe and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which directly adapts the Ovidian source material (Romeo and Juliet 1.5.92-109).

Furthermore, Pyramus and Thisbe is famously adapted as a play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where its exaggerated tragedy is used to satirize the conventions of dramatic romance. In this light, Two Princes can be read as similarly playful; it employs hyperbolic romantic rhetoric but ultimately resists tragic resolution. Instead of death, as in Pyramus and Thisbe, the stakes in Two Princes remain within the realm of emotional rather than existential drama, aligning it more with Shakespeare’s comedies than his tragedies.

Repetition and Theatrical Persuasion

A notable feature of Two Princes is its repetitive lyrical structure, particularly the refrain “Just go ahead now”, which functions as a rhetorical strategy akin to persuasive monologues in Shakespearean drama. The speaker’s insistence and direct address to the woman resemble the way Shakespeare’s characters, particularly in soliloquies, attempt to assert control over their fate through language. In Richard III, for example, Richard woos Lady Anne despite having killed her husband, employing relentless verbal manipulation (Richard III 1.2.225-250). Similarly, in Two Princes, the repeated invitation for the woman to choose mirrors these rhetorical strategies.

The lyrics also contain an almost comic self-awareness, akin to Benedick and Beatrice’s witty repartee in Much Ado About Nothing (Much Ado 5.2.35-50). The speaker’s awareness that he is competing with a wealthy rival but still framing himself as the ideal choice adds a dramatic irony reminiscent of Shakespeare’s more comedic love scenes.

1. “One, two princes kneel before you” – This lyric establishes the competing suitors, reminiscent of Helena and Hermia’s rival lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2.2.125-135), where Lysander and Demetrius both suddenly proclaim their devotion to Helena.
2. “That ain’t what I said now” – This phrase echoes misunderstandings and comedic miscommunication often found in Shakespearean dialogue, particularly in Twelfth Night (2.2.20-35), where Viola (as Cesario) protests her unintended wooing of Olivia.
3. “Marry him or marry me” – The direct appeal resembles Orlando’s passionate declarations in As You Like It (3.2.320-330), where he inscribes poetry to Rosalind and insists on his unwavering devotion.
4. “I know what a prince and lover ought to be” – This statement encapsulates the speaker’s belief in romantic idealism, similar to Bassanio’s reasoning in The Merchant of Venice (3.2.10-24), where he gambles everything for Portia’s love.

Subversion of the Love Triangle

In both Shakespearean and Ovidian traditions, love triangles frequently result in either comedic resolution (as in Much Ado About Nothing) or tragic demise (as in Romeo and Juliet). Two Princes, however, refuses to provide a resolution. The song ends without revealing whether the woman chooses either suitor, leaving the question of love open-ended. This ambiguity subverts traditional romantic narratives, in which love is either consummated or doomed, and instead offers a modern, postmodern meditation on choice, agency, and the performance of romantic appeal.

Ultimately, Two Princes serves as an unintentional but rich intertextual dialogue with the history of romantic storytelling. By engaging with tropes of wealth versus sincerity, persuasion through repetition, and the love-triangle structure, the song taps into a literary lineage stretching from Ovid to Shakespeare, repackaged within the idiom of 1990s alternative rock.

Works Cited

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by A.D. Melville, Oxford UP, 1986.

Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. The Arden Shakespeare, edited by Claire McEachern, Bloomsbury, 2016.

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Arden Shakespeare, edited by Harold F. Brooks, Bloomsbury, 2007.

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. The Arden Shakespeare, edited by René Weis, Bloomsbury, 2012.

Shakespeare, William. Richard III. The Arden Shakespeare, edited by James R. Siemon, Bloomsbury, 2009.

About two months ago, I started working on content for Toworia.com. I am going to really make a go at it. We will see how much I get done before life intervenes, but I’ve done more than I thought I would when I started.

professional writing is rarely a burden, though i do a lot of it. between recent gradschool obligations and the impending policyageddon about to hit NYC schools, i am finding my brain stretched quite thin. in order to make sure i didn’t go over an assignment limit last week, i installed a word counter widget, which i then promptly forgot was running. this was last thursday.

tonight i realized the widget was running, and checked it. it clocked me at over 47k.

there are times i can’t get that far in nano in a month.

no wonder my brain feels like it is slowly leaking out of my ears, and onto my keyboard…

In answer to my past self, more than a month in, and it feels like it has been a year. I haven’t worked hours like the ones I am pulling since I started writing online, several lifetimes ago.

People are healthy, overall. My grandmother turned 99. We tore up a big chunk of backyard to start a garden. I aced my first semester of gradschool, pandemic included.

I have about four weeks to read everything for next semester, while I don’t have coursework. Unfortunately, in that time, we have to string together the logistics for a virtual gala, three end of year celebrations, an online art show, an online music night, and a graduation. In some ways, I think the end of the year is going to be harder virtually than analog, at least on resources taxed on my team.

Part of my brain lives 60-90 days in the future. I am trying to plan logistics for times with so many external variables – it makes it insanely complicated, given the huge number of unknowns COVID-19 has introduced to supply chains and labor allocation.

I just hope everything stays buckled down for the forseeable.

@staci_larson_animation

Here comes Mr. StealYoGirl—— #lol #boredathome #plaguedoctor #earthchan

♬ Interior Crocodile Alligator – Chip Tha Ripper

Happy St. Patrick’s day!

If only I had some sense of the outer bounds of the new normal, it would be less stressful. I cannot fathom how this is only the second day, and feels like it is already a month in. What is it going to feel like in a month?

If there is any truth to the pithy truths of parables and fortune cookies, it is the absolutism with which some people will believe or deny the contents of distilled experience in the form of advice. I have always found it surprising to me who gets advice from whom, about what, and why. Who asks for help or guidance, as opposed to those who might be more inclined to solve a problem for themselves and perhaps make a mistake, but do so privately.

I am at a crossroads of life. I need to make more than one decision within the next year, and have multiple internal and external pressures weighing on the pathways and outcomes.

I hope I choose wisely, as the old crusader offering advice once warned.