Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
"Six weeks into the term, I assigned my rhetoric and writing students a 20-page article. It was the same length I had assigned for five years and the same length I had read without complaint as an undergraduate a decade ago. Not one student finished it.
When I asked why, a student answered honestly: It was too long, and she kept losing track of what the paper was about. This was not a remedial class: These were students who had cleared the admissions process and written essays good enough to get them here. Yet a routine academic reading assignment had defeated them.
Every generation of professors has complained that their students cannot read. The lament is usually overblown, but data have caught up to anecdote, and what I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch. There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.
In February 2024, Adam Kotsko, who teaches in the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College, wrote in Slate that students who once handled 30 pages of reading per class meeting now seem “intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding.” Crucially, he added that this is “not a matter of laziness on the part of the students” but of underlying skills they were never given a chance to build.
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s 2024 investigation found the same pattern across institutions as different as the Stevens Institute of Technology and Wellesley College, where the average SAT exceeds 1400. Nicholaus Gutierrez, an assistant professor at Wellesley, told The Chronicle that the baseline for what students consider a reasonable amount of work has dropped so noticeably that he has cut his readings accordingly; a 750-word essay now strikes many students as long. At Stevens, the science and technology studies associate professor Theresa MacPhail described following the mantra of “meet your students where they are” for so long that she has begun to feel “like a cruise director organizing games of shuffleboard.”
Worse, the national data tell the same story in colder language. On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing assessment, which is the most recent comprehensive writing benchmark, only 24 percent of 12th graders reached the Proficient level, and just 3 percent reached Advanced; another 21 percent scored below Basic. The reading side of the ledger is worse, and getting worse fast: The 2024 NAEP results released in September 2025 show 12th-grade reading scores at the lowest level recorded since the assessment began in 1992. Thirty-two percent of 12th graders now score below NAEP Basic in reading, meaning that, in the assessment’s own language, they likely “cannot draw general conclusions based on concepts presented explicitly in a text.” And yet more than half of these same seniors reported being accepted to a four-year college. That last sentence is the whole problem in one line: We are admitting a cohort that cannot read at a college level and are pretending otherwise.
Why is this happening? One reason, of course, is smartphones.
I came into teaching as a skeptic of the anti-smartphone argument: I had a phone in my pocket throughout high school and college in the 2010s, and I read long books anyway. I now think I was wrong, because the neuroscience has caught up. In a 2017 paper, Adrian F. Ward and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business showed that the mere presence of a participant’s smartphone — whether that be face down, powered off, untouched, or across the desk out of vision — measurably reduces available working memory and fluid intelligence on cognitive tests, with the largest effects on the most phone-dependent users. A 2022 study by Motoyasu Honma and colleagues at Japan’s Showa University used near-infrared spectroscopy to compare reading on a smartphone with reading the same passage on paper, and found that smartphone reading produced overactivity in the prefrontal cortex, suppressed sigh generation, and led to general lower comprehension scores; the authors argued that the sigh inhibition and prefrontal overload were causally linked to the comprehension decline.
So when a student tells me they “kept losing track” of a 20-page article, I have to acknowledge that they may be describing a measurable neurological condition. The neural pathways that support sustained attention are built by use, and they atrophy without it. Your body is a use-it-or-lose-it system, and the brain is no exception.
Another reason for the decline in student reading capability is increasing reliance on generative AI. In June 2025, Nataliya Kosmyna and colleagues at the MIT Media Lab released a preprint titled “Your Brain on ChatGPT.” They divided 54 participants into three groups writing SAT-style essays — one using ChatGPT, the second group using a search engine, the last group using nothing — and monitored brain activity with a 32-channel EEG. The ChatGPT group showed the lowest neural connectivity of the three, with up to 55 percent reduced connectivity compared with the brain-only group, and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.” Eighty-three percent of LLM users could not quote a single line from essays they had written minutes earlier. When the LLM group was forced to write without AI in a follow-up session, their brain activity did not bounce back to baseline; the researchers coined the term “cognitive debt” for the lingering deficit.
This is the first neurophysiological evidence that early reliance on LLMs measurably alters the brain’s engagement with writing tasks, and it is consistent with what those of us in front of classrooms are watching happen in real time. When I assign analysis, I am not trying to extract a polished product; I am trying to put the student’s mind through resistance in order to make it stronger. Offloading the struggle to a chatbot does not “free students up for higher-order work.” It deprives them of building the strength to do any substantial cognitive work at all.
There is a final factor that is contributing to this decline in reading skills, and that is that the students arriving in my classroom today are the first cohort to have experienced Common Core-influenced reading instruction across the entirety of their K–12 schooling. Whatever the standards’ original intent, the on-the-ground implementation in many districts replaced sustained reading with the practice of pulling “evidence” from disconnected short passages, the same format used on the standardized tests that increasingly determine school funding. The education scholar Natalie Wexler, among others, has documented this pivot in detail: Students drilled on “finding the main idea” in two-paragraph excerpts never build the stamina or background knowledge that longform reading requires. The pandemic then added fuel to a fire that was already burning. NAEP scores for 13-year-olds dropped sharply in 2022 and have not recovered. A 2023 EdWeek survey found that 24 percent of secondary-school administrators described pandemic learning loss in English and language arts as “severe or very severe.”
In July 2025, the journalist Mary Harrington argued in The New York Times that “thinking is becoming a luxury good.” The ability to read deeply and reason at length is fragmenting along class lines as ultra-processed digital media replaces text in everyday life, much as ultra-processed food has replaced cooking. Her longer treatment of the subject in First Things makes the more provocative case that we are witnessing the end of print culture itself, and with it the end of the cognitive substrate on which modern liberal democracy was built.
I see this stratification in the classroom and on the page every week. My students from districts that protected sustained reading through small class sizes, strict phone policies, and faculty who refused to teach to the test all arrive with their attention relatively intact. My students from districts that surrendered to devices and standardized testing arrive cognitively winded. A democracy that requires a literate electorate is now training one fraction of that electorate out of literacy while marketing to the other a “deep work” lifestyle as a luxury good. The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.
I do what I can in my own classroom to address the problems. I break 20-page articles into two halves and assign the first half with explicit analytical tasks. I require exploratory writing before formal drafts. I model (visibly, on the board) how to track an argument across pages or distinguish a source’s claim from my own analysis. I make structured peer review explicit, because the workshop format I used to take for granted now collapses into “this is good” and “maybe add more details” the moment I step back.
But I want to be plain about the limits of what an individual instructor can do, and all of these solutions have costs. Scaffolding a 20-page article into halves compromises the integrity of the argument I am asking students to engage, just as modeling note-taking in a credit-bearing rhetoric course is using a college slot to teach a middle-school skill. None of the syllabi I teach are designed to deliver this type of cognitive rehabilitation, and pretending otherwise has produced credential inflation. We cannot keep conferring degrees on students who cannot do what the degree is supposed to certify.
I’m afraid I don’t have answers. I do, however, have some questions that may point us in the right direction. If higher education is going to respond to the reading crisis as a structural problem rather than a private burden carried by composition instructors and adjuncts, it has to stop avoiding the following questions: If a majority of incoming students cannot read at a level the curriculum requires, are we admitting students we cannot serve, or offering a curriculum we cannot provide?
Why are first-year writing and reading-intensive general-education courses still the most adjunctified, lowest-paid, highest-load corner of the university, at the precise moment when their work has become the most important work the institution does? What is the responsible institutional response for AI usage: Is it a syllabus statement, or a sequencing principle that requires students to demonstrate the cognitive work themselves before AI assistance is permitted?
Why are most college classrooms still phone-permissive by default? K–12 districts from Florida to California are now banning phones bell to bell; higher education has somehow lagged behind the public schools. Universities benefit from a pipeline they did not build and refuse to repair. What would it mean for a university system to invest seriously in the reading instruction happening in the high schools that feed it, rather than treating remediation as something to be quietly outsourced to first-year composition instructors?
The thing I am no longer willing to do is pretend this is a temporary adjustment period, or that “students will adapt.” They will not adapt on their own. The conditions that produced this collapse are still in place: the phones, the algorithmic feeds, the test-prep excerpts, staffing models that load the reading-intensive work onto the most precarious faculty, and now the chatbots that finish students’ sentences before they’ve even begun to think of them. If we want literate citizens, we will have to rebuild the conditions for literacy deliberately, against the grain of every incentive currently pointed the other way. I know the academy has the will to do that. It also has the obligation."
— Tyler Jagt, 1 June 2026, "My Students Can’t Read"
The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
I want to be very clear on this: it is not just dependence on smartphones and phones causing mental atrophy. It's that for decades we have taught Three Cueing System as a way to read, and while we are now beginning to correct, it is catching up with us. The reliance on smartphones and short form video are in part a result of illiteracy, not necessarily a cause of it, because we have failed to give students the tools to actually read but also paired it with the belief that they can read. They do not seek remedial reading help but blame the materials for being unclear or too difficult, when the fundamental problem is that the more complex the text, the less functional the three cueing system is. They are often quite literally guessing what the text says by searching for words they recognize (or think they recognize but cannot verify) and texts rapidly become impenetrable nonsense. Of course people will reach for their phones when 90% of the text they encounter in their daily lives and schooling is not accessible to them!
The storytelling format for spoken charms is one of my favorite elements of the cunningcraft I learned from my grandmother. Sometimes known as a narrative charm, this is a method of charm delivery in which the magical directions are given in the form of a brief story. The stories come in many shapes, but one that is common in healing magic in particular is the format that I refer to as a “Two Maids Came Walking” Charm. This was the first charm of this kind that I was taught to use, and has been the basis of my personal study of the mechanisms and applications of narrative charms.
Narrative charms can be spoken directly over a wound or patient, as is the case in charms to staunch blood and to remove fevers. They can also be used to bless poultices, compresses and other supplies for healing work, imbuing the articles with the same healing spirits and powers that are wielded by administering the charm directly. To provide distance healing, they can be administered over pictures of the target or over items intended to be consumed or used by a healer’s target.
The stories contained in narrative charms are not typical in the sense that we think of structured narratives. They do not contain a beginning, middle or end. There is no rising action or resolution. Rather, these stories depict a single moment, a single action. They are containers of symbol and instruction in the same way that prayers and petitions are containers of our desires. Speaking the charms over a patient or supplies is a coded command that is designed not to petition aid from a deity or spirit, but to directly cause the desired effect or action to take place. To stop or slow bleeding, to break a fever, to heal the sick, and so on.
Although many of the traditional examples we have of these types of charms describe scenes involving maids, the colors of their dresses, the items they carry in their hands, etc., there are also numerous examples which depict folkloric, mythological and even Biblical figures and motifs in the same manner. The methods associated with writing and performing narrative charms can be used by anyone to create narrative charms that fit within their own magical framework, symbol set, religious practice, etc. The figures that appear in the narratives used in these charms, the colors that are featured, the items they bring, the landscape, and so on can all be drawn from one’s own background, belief set, practice, and interests. And all of these can be used as functional tools for carrying out the charm’s magic.
Narrative Subject
The subject of a narrative charm is the figure that is featured in the charm. In the example of the Two Maids Came Walking charm, the subject is the two maids. In the well-known Nine Herbs Charm, the subject is Woden. In variations that deal with saints carrying out various actions, the subject is the saint. In charms that describe two figures meeting—for example, a farmer and the Devil—it can be more difficult to determine which is the narrative’s actual subject, but we will talk more about that in a moment.
From the perspective of the writer, the subject of any narrative should be the person, animal, spirit, or object that is participating in or facilitating the events around them (or otherwise interacting with their environment). If three maids come carrying three herbs in a charm for empowering medicine, they are the subjects of the narrative. If a fox shakes the snow from his fur to banish a chill, the fox is the subject. If a flower blooms to return vitality, the flower is the subject. If Woden is battling a snake or Christ is wrestling with Satan, Woden or Christ would be the subject. No matter how many figures are presented in a narrative charm, the subject will always be the person, animal or other figure that represents direct action.
From the perspective of the practitioner, the subject of the narrative charm functions in the same way as a wand does within some systems of magic. The subject is both an extension of the practitioner themselves and a tool for directing and manipulating spirit, energy and circumstance. Their place within the narrative is parallel to the practitioner’s place within the spell; the subject’s desires, actions, and predicaments mirror our own through allegory. The subject of a narrative charm can be anyone—maid, saint, Devil, animal, or farmer—or anything that represents the practitioner’s role in the charm we are working.
The narrative subject’s identity, how we refer to them, the features we focus on operate as symbols for who we are and where we stand in the working. The maid, for example, can be a symbol of purity and earnest desire. Different saints can be invoked through narrative charms to call on traits demonstrated in their associated myths. A farmer can represent the everyman. A fox can be a sign of cleverness and wile.
Who is the Subject—the Farmer or the Devil? When we’re modifying, syncretizing or creating a narrative charm, understanding the subject is an important part of assembling the machinery of the spell. So, how do we identify the subject of a narrative charm that contains two or more interactive characters? We look at the function and identity of each figure in relation to the practitioner’s role in the magic. A common form that multi-subject narrative charms can take is the meeting of two figures, such as a farmer and the Devil or a young woman and one of the Hidden People. It can be easy to assume that the folkloric, mythic, Biblical, etc. figure is the subject because we tend to think of them as being the “main character”. But that’s not always the case.
Often, the primary subject in such charms takes on the role of the petitioner, meeting with a folkloric, mythic, or divine figure to ask for intercession or to acquire the necessary tools to complete a task. The Hidden People provide the maid water from a blessed spring, yet the maid is the subject because she is the facilitator of the charm. Her journey to visit the Hidden People to acquire the water represents the practitioner’s earnest petition for aid in healing. The Devil appears at the crossroads and provides the farmer with a golden whistle that he can use to call any wandering cow back home. But the farmer is the subject, and his rendezvous with the Devil represents the practitioner’s petition for protection for their cattle.
Even though the folkloric, mythic and divine figures in these charms may supply the tools for the subjects to carry out their magic, they are acting as secondary subjects. They are present in the charm because the practitioner is petitioning them for aid or intercession, because they are asking for their help to empower the charm. The Hidden People are not administering the healing; they are merely providing the supplies. The Devil is neither missing cattle nor blowing the whistle; his role in the charm is simply to provide the means of magical action.
Narrative Setting
The setting of a narrative charm is not always mentioned. There are many such charms that mention nothing at all about the setting apart from noting that two maids sat spinning, or Woden went riding. When a particular setting is mentioned, it is generally done in vague terms, without any specifics or description. Nevertheless, when a setting does appear in a storyteller’s charm, it plays an important role in building the spell’s coded command.
The setting can help us to hone our charm onto very specific targets. A stream, for example, may appear in charms related to the flow of blood (i.e. bringing about menstruation, ridding the blood of infection, or dealing with any number of ailments that would have been thought to come from some form of bad blood). It can also be used to help practitioners to get very specific about what kinds of spirits, if any, they are calling for help from or what kinds of energies they are calling into the working. A young girl coming over a valley invokes a very different energy than does an old woman coming from the forest; and a figure that approaches from the east can bring a different kind of aid than one who comes from the west.
A setting can describe something as specific as a stream flowing through a valley or something as ambiguous as mentioning snow. And, just as the narrative subject is allegorical for the practitioner and their desired actions, the setting is representative of the realm in which the practitioner is working or the internal landscape they are navigating. The stream represents the blood. The road represents transition and movement. Whether a setting is a necessary part of a narrative charm depends upon whether the writer feels that the charm is specific enough to address their exact target, their exact realm of concern without it.
Curios in Narrative Charms
When we think about narrative charms, we may not always think of magical curios in the typical sense. Part of the joy of narrative charms is that the story, the spoken charm can help to mitigate the “necessity” of tools. The subjects of spoken charms do not generally arrive with daggers and wands. They do not typically come with candles and poultices of their own. Although they may—almost anything is possible with narrative charms—such instances are atypical examples of how curios appears in these magical stories.
Curios in narrative charms typically appear in the form of symbolic elements carried, used, worn, or otherwise interacted with by the subject of the charm. In the example I have previously used of the “Two Maids Came Walking” format, the maids are often described as carrying flowers, branches from powerful trees, candles, pearls, fish, and any number of symbols that can lend themselves to magic.
Sometimes, however, the curios are subtler. It can be found in the description of a subject wearing a red dress or a blue sash. One of the first charms I remember learning started out with the lines: Three maids came to the river; the first wore red, the second wore white, the third wore blue. This example was a charm used to stop the flow of blood (either from a wound or from prolonged menstruation or other gynecologic issues). In this instance, the three maids in their dresses represent the flowing blood (red), dressings or gauze (white), and the return to a healed, “pure” state (which, in our tradition, can be represented by the color blue).
When curios are described, it can be either overt or abstruse. It can be an object that is used or a flower that is simply present. It can be something that the practitioner has on hand, that they are incorporating into the physical element of the working; or it can be something that is rare and hard to acquire, but so significant to one’s lore and practice that the practitioner wishes to include it, even if it is only through the spoken charm.
Writing a Narrative Charm
The important thing to remember when writing your own narrative charm (or modifying an existing one) is that the purpose of the charm is to work magic, not to tell a story. They are not to add flair to a working by having something to say. Narrative charms are functional magical tools. They are commands for directing magic and for shaping outcome. Although, it may be tempting to make these charms beautiful and poetic, they don’t need to be. They don’t need to be flowery. They don’t need to rhyme. They don’t even need to describe a “pretty” scene. All they need to do is work.
I always advise that, to make these types of charms work and work well, they should be written in as direct a way as possible. No frills. No fluff. This might seem like silly or even counterintuitive advice to give in regards to storytelling charms. But what it boils down to is that whatever subjects, settings, curios and other elements you put into your own narrative charms should be necessary. Whether it is a stream, a tree, a red dress or a little mouse, every element should be functional. Every element should be part of the magical command you are issuing or it should be left out.
Historical Examples of Narrative Charms
I walked through a green forest,
There I find three wells, cool and cold;
The first is called, Kind,
The second is called, Good,
And the third is called, Stop the Blood.
This example from The Long Lost Friend (Hohman) is a Pennsylvania Dutch verbal charm for staunching blood as if from a wound. The forest mentioned here can represent the danger and uncertainty of bleeding that will not stop, while the color green can be a symbol of growth and life (especially to an agricultural community like the ones that might have developed this charm). The wells can be similar to the stream I mentioned in an earlier example, where the flow of water under the ground may represent the flow of blood. Wells are sometimes also incorporated into Christian folk charms as a symbol of Christ’s blood, which is often invoked in healing magic of this kind. This charm contains no outright curios, but instead invokes simple virtues in its working to dispel any “evil” that might be causing the bleeding and to support the final command to stop the blood.
Mary, God's Mother, traversed the land,
Holding three worms close in her hand;
One was White; the other was Black; the third was Red;
Now all the worms are dead.
This is another example from The Long Lost Friend, which is intended to rid livestock of intestinal worms. This charm does not mention a setting. It calls on the Virgin Mary, who is often invoked for healing, blessing and protective magic. It also employs the use of color magic. In Hexology and Pennsylvania Dutch magic, white may be used for blessings, black can be included for protection and banishing evil, and red can be a symbol of strong desire or vitality. These three colors are used together as a coded command to protect the cattle from the withering effects of worms, to protect uninfected cattle against their spread, and to return the livestock to their healthy state.
S. George, S. George, our ladies knight,
He walkt by daie, so did he by night;
Untill such time as he hir found,
He hir beat and he hir bound,
Untill hir troth she to him plight,
She would not come to hir that night.
This charm is an example of how narrative charms mention only what is useful to the spell, sometimes requiring prior knowledge of folklore and legend to truly understand the story it refers to. This English folk magic example is recorded in The Discoverie of Witchcraft (Scot), where it is mentioned as a charm against nightmares and other evils of the night. In this charm, the subject is Saint George. The language is archaic, but it details Saint George journeying through day and night until he came upon the dragon he is famous for slaying. In the story, the dragon has been terrorizing a village to the point that they have begun using a lottery system to select human sacrifices to sate the dragon’s hunger. When Saint George enters the story, a young princess (the lady referred to in the charm) has been selected as the next sacrifice. Saint George beats and subdues the dragon by binding it with the princess’s belt or girdle. In the legend, Saint George and the princess lead the dragon back to the village, using the girdle as a leash; there, Saint George vows to slay the dragon and save the village only if they will convert to Christianity. In the charm, however, Saint George appears to bind the dragon until the creature swears that it will not do harm during the night.
This is a wonderful example of how folklore and legend can be utilized in narrative charms as symbols. These charms can invoke a story—calling on its themes, figures, and morals as magical tools—without following the myth exactly. It is not adherence to the folklore in its exact form that lends power to the practitioner’s command; it is the knowledge and understanding of the symbols within the story and the practitioner’s use of its parts to direct magic.
Petter was Laying and his head upon a marrable ston weping and Christ Came by and said what else thou Petter Petter answered and sad Lord god my twoth Raise thou Petter and bee healed and whosoever shall carry these Lines in my name shall never feel the twothick.
This charm is one of the many in the collection of National Museums Scotland ("Charm"). It is a written charm, rather than a spoken one. It was written by a service practitioner by the name of Kate “Kett” M’Aulay in 1855. It was kept in a silk pouch and worn around the neck as a cure for toothache.
In this charm, the narrative is used to enchant the paper that the charm itself is written on. It tells a story of Peter who sits upon a marble stone and weeps in pain because of a toothache. The stone here is likely symbolic of the tooth itself. Christ approaches and asks what is troubling him and Peter answers. Through Christ’s healing of Peter’s toothache, the paper is charged and the magical healing command encoded upon it.
Works Cited
Hohman, Johann George. The Long Lost Friend. T.F. Scheffer, 1856.
Scot, Reginald, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Dover Publications, Inc., New York: 1972. ISBN 0-486-26030-5.
“Charm." National Museums Scotland, Museum Reference no. H.NO 18. National Museums Scotland.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
i'm not the best at singing. but i'm gonna sing anyway dude. i'm not the best at painting. but i'm still going to paint. my dancing will never see a stage. but it's perfect for early mornings in my bedroom and late nights with people i love. so what does this mean? it means that people are designed to do. not to be the best. just to do. if you're doing what you enjoy, then you don't have to be the best. you just have to enjoy it. you have to live.
An amazing way to worship a deity is to embrace how complex they are. Research why that is their domain, why they achieved that epithet, that title. Tap into the unknown parts of the deity, open them up more. Look into what makes them whole, grasp the fragments and piece them together. Take advantage of knowledge and grow closer with them by knowing them.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Grandmas were so right about puzzles and knitting and crocheting and solitaire and reading slow and slippers and baking and watching deer in the backyard send post
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
also i think underrated part about the knives out movies is that each one is so thematically and cinematically different. like they each work sooo well as standalone films. at the same time you get tidbits of benoit blanc's life scattered throughout each film and its like foraging for rare collectibles
Aiaia @celestially-cthonic - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook
izzy806
origamiaround
ellievsbear
turnnoffyourmind
