This is the opening to my essay on the the value of knowledge and the place of AI, published in the Observer on 3 August 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. In 1940, the translator and educator AJ Jenkins organised a survey of the reading habits of working-class children. The study, mostly of students who would leave school to enter the workforce at 14, looked at what they had read outside the school curriculum in the previous month. Jenkins worried […]

Categories: Academia, Britain, Culture & Books, Science & Technology • Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, books, browne report, classics, creativity, critical thinking, generative ai, jonathan rose, knowledge, marketisation of universities, reading habits, robbins report, universities, working class autodidacts, working class culture