Scholastification

Learned Vol. 8, Issue 25

The book fair was easily the best day of second grade. I had money. They had books. Shelves of them, all marked by that little red ribbon in the bottom corner. I loved that little red ribbon. It meant that I was going to be able to escape into a world where things made sense.

It’s been 43 years since second grade and I’m still going to book fairs. Sometimes I even buy books I can barely read because a bargain is a bargain!

But, of course, the book fair wasn’t just books. Posters, pencils, trapper keepers, stickers, lots of stuff. And, yeah, it was school-related stuff, mostly. You might have to squint a little to figure out how my Concorde poster related to school, but, sure, scholastic.

Since then, Scholastic has become scholastic in that it no longer makes me think of a brand name but rather a bunch of dusty academics crowded into mildewing libraries debating the pragmatics of whether scholarly and scholastic are proper synonyms. But capitalized or not, the dark secret is that modern scholarship too often comes down to money.

Common collocations - achievement, performance, success, integrity - sound great. But as study after study has shown, the amount of funding and resources a given school has noticeably impacts how students do. So, in other words, money drastically affects academia which means academia, like everything else, is becoming enshittified at an alarming rate.

Enshittification¹ is a great word. As far as I know, Cory Doctorow made it up several years ago to describe the way things fall apart in the modern world: a company makes a great product to attract customers -> customers add value to the company -> the value attracts investors -> investors become shareholders -> shareholders demand profit -> profit demands more ‘innovation’ at the cost of the product consumers knew and loved -> product becomes shitty -> customers abandon the product -> the company is sold for parts -> investors profit regardless -> consumers lose a valued and beloved product to the whims of modern capitalism. Enshitification.

That route highlights the hidden power of money behind everything. So let’s look at scholarship. We know where the money is in academia, right? It’s in the funding and grants that drive universities, it’s in the allocations and budgets that go to public schools. But it’s also in the tools we’re building to teach ourselves.

Let me give you an example. Millions of us have tried Duolingo for learning a language. Why? Because it’s fun. Because we like learning. Now, whether Duolingo’s method is the best way of learning is up for debate, but the point remains - we try it because we like learning. As I write this, in October of 2025, my TikTok feed is bombarded by ads for ’smart’ versions of TikTok that promise to replace doomscrolling with learning. Nice work if you can get it, I guess.

A lot of these services are free. Only not really, right? Because if an app is free in this day and age it’s because the app is not the product, we are. In the enshittification flow-chart I put up above, an app like Duolingo is smack dab in the middle, in the process of adding features users don’t want in an attempt to bring in new users and therefore generate more revenue for their shareholders. Cycle, meet Vicious.

So what do we do about it?

Of course, sometimes, we have to learn things the hard way. Which is how I know this photo is just a bad idea in the making. Hell of a lot of fun learning that though.

In this current series in Learned, where I’ve been poking at the words that define academia with a cattle prod, hoping to stir the behemoth into enough life that it affects change within itself, I’ve talked about the value in developing one’s one teaching and learning styles (Issue 8.7 Possessive Pedagogy). I’ve talked about how everyone should take ownership of their curiosity and use to bring light and knowledge into the world (Issue 8.14 Doctor Thyself). And now I’m saying that doing so is one of the strongest tools we have in fighting against, well, you know.

And because we need a name for this taking back of knowledge and self-directed learning, I propose scholastification². Scholastification isn’t just autodidacticism³; it’s the willful, deliberate rejection of the monetization of learning in favor of staying curious in a system that wants curiosity to be profitable. And it’s a defiant reminder that learning is fun.

Scholastic means related to school. We know that. But back in the original Greek, scholastēs meant live as you please⁴. And part of doing that meant learning shit just because you want to and because you can. It wasn’t until the clergy brought the word into Latin and from there to French and English that it acquired its modern meaning. But forget the modern meaning. Let’s take scholastic back to its roots - learning something because it’s fun, just because you can.

Because that’s what we need now. The Internet has a thousand ways to learn things. From Masterclass to Wikihow to some random dudes TikTok where he shows you how to change the oil in your car, learning on the internet is easy. And yet we’re in danger of losing that because it doesn’t turn a profit. Because it doesn’t ‘contribute’ to the economy except for the very limited number of creators who can get the eyeballs to squeeze money from the service providers.

At the end of the day, though, we’re just humans. We are, as Terry Pratchett framed it, the falling angel meeting the rising ape. And we are so damned inquisitive and so damned curious about this reality we inhabit and it’s we have to protect that at all costs. We are merely human and we love learning⁵. Just because it’s fucking fun.

So here’s my proposal - every time you learn something just because you want to, just because it tickles your noggin’, call it a scholastic act. Not something you did because someone assigned it or because you got internet points for it. Every act of learning is scholastic curiosity. Scholastic joy. Scholastic fervor. Scholastification.

Stay curious,

Joel

1. Cory’s new book is called Enshittification; presumably, he’s going to expand on the phenomenon I described above. I’m very much looking forward to reading it, but I exist at the whims of the Japanese inter-library loan department. Fortunately, their service is not owned by shareholders and is thus mostly immune to enshittification. But I still gotta wait.

2. For the word nerds among you, by which I mean all of you, yes, scholastification was already a word, but it meant to make something more academic. I am following the tried and true rules of English and making shit mean what I want it to mean, damn the torpedoes.

3. Also, for the really pedantic among you, yes, autodidacticism means to learn something just because you want to. I’m adding nuance and flavor by specifying that this learning stuff is a fun thing to do. Not only because we can, but because it’s fun!

4. Technically, this is not the earliest root - that would be the Greek word skholē which meant, uhm, leisure.

5. Admittedly, the modern educational system has failed some of you so badly it is hard to see it, but trust me you still love learning. If you didn’t you wouldn’t be reading this.