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This article makes far reaching societal claims with essentially no evidence. The evidence presented is in the form of "feelings" of various writers concerned o

This article makes far reaching societal claims with essentially no evidence. The evidence presented is in the form of "feelings" of various writers concerned of their own decline in literaryfocus. An unvoiced assumption that people were historically more literate pervades the entire article. As a former lit. major I used to buy into this kind of thing. But I now think this belief is the product of profound selection bias. Literature and history libraries are full of the very best diaries and letters of the very best diary and letter writers because those are enjoyable to read and being more detailed are more useful. History is not written by the victors but by the literate. People of letters that write this kind of article are obviously inclined towards letters and therefore inclined to sample history through literate means and therefore greatly overestimate the literacy of the past. But let us pair anecdote to anecdote. There is a podcast network called "The New Books Network". It examines weekly the release of new academic works. It began as "New Books in History" covering one new history book each week. Now it features dozens of podcasts each covering a new book every week. Engage these podcasts for six months and at the end, tell where your biases lie. You will probably suddenly believe we live in the most literate age of all.

wirrbel 6y ago
Key bias is that when you read old stuff and people seem to be well read it appears that way also because canons have shifted so it appears as if they read „more than the literature canon“
keiferski 6y ago
The issue isn't whether there are abundant "literate" resources (podcasts, in your example) but whether the average member of a democratic society is literate. More importantly, whether the elites are deeply literate. I don't know about you, but when I look at the popular media and at political leaders, they seem highly illiterate compared to those from just a century ago. Even the "literate elite" media, e.g. The New Yorker, has dropped in quality from a few decades ago. Just read some old issues to see what I mean. Regardless, this article is hardly the first or only study of this problem. Allan Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind in 1987. Harold Bloom and John Simon wrote a few books on the topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mi...
- kiba 6y ago
  So, it 'seems'. Is there a systematic study measuring the 'literacy' quality of thoughts over time in media?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    The article itself is about such studies in relation to the brain. A simple google search brings dozens of related results. https://all4ed.org/articles/a-decade-of-decline-survey-finds-a-decline-in-literacy-skills-among-college-graduates/ https://all4ed.org/articles/a-decade-of-decline-survey-finds... https://theweek.com/articles/875253/unsurprising-decline-childhood-literacy-america https://theweek.com/articles/875253/unsurprising-decline-chi... https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1996/05/15/34roch.h15.html https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1996/05/15/34roch.h15.htm... https://ivyreads.com/blog/academic-literacy-is-declining https://ivyreads.com/blog/academic-literacy-is-declining https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247760981_Literacy_in_Decline_Untangling_the_Evidence https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247760981_Literacy_... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/us/reading-scores-national-exam.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/us/reading-scores-nationa... Furthermore, if your only metric of determining truth is a social science study, I think you're perhaps missing the forest for the trees.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- giovannibonetti 6y ago
  Journalism was a very coveted field 50 years ago. Lots of bright people wanted to work there. Nowadays there are many interesting and rewarding jobs for people with good education, and the news industry is losing resources to social networks and online classified sites. A similar analysis can be applied to explain the decline in the quality of school teachers. Women used to have very few work opportunities in the past, and many of the brightest ones would end up teaching. That's not the case anymore, there are many more rewarding paths nowadays, like getting a law degree. So, please don't assume the quality of journalism has dropped because the literacy level of society has fallen.
- 6y ago
karaterobot 6y ago
You're focused on reading as a way of ingesting ideas and culture. The author focused most of his article on the process of reading, and its long term neurological and physiological effects on the reader. In other words, he's not so much saying that people don't know enough, it's that they've lost the ability to focus for long periods of time. It's an attention deficit argument, not an illiteracy argument. (I think the article is poorly argued and doesn't support itself well; I also think it's probably observing something that is worth continued study)
bem94 6y ago
> This article makes far reaching societal claims with essentially no evidence. The evidence presented is in the form of "feelings" of various writers concerned of their own decline in literaryfocus. From quite far down in the article, under "Concrete Thinking": > As it is, we now have greater levels of at least superficial participation in political discourse, if not in politics itself, thanks in part to social-media technologies. Vast numbers of people contribute scantily supported opinions about things they don't really understand, validating the old saw that a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  You'll have to forgive me but I can still remember when millions of people listened to, called into and cranked each other up on late night radio. The existence of a conspiracy touting ignor-mob-us is hardly concrete evidence of informational decline. It is possible that social media has intensified this problem. Perhaps more cranks can crank harder together now than before or perhaps not. But "just look at all the people on Facebook" isn't material comparative evidence.
314 6y ago
Your ability to distill and refute the points in the article seem to be a result of deep literacy. Is this itself not the thrust of his main thesis?
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  Literature is beautiful and deep and fascinating. But it is also dangerous in its power to convey credibility where it may not be due. It is very easy to weave oneself into a net with reason and bind the net fast with literary pomp. How unassailable is my argument once I quote Voltaire!
  - 314 6y ago
    Which implies that somebody responding to you in an argument would also need deep literacy to be able to dismiss such claims. But there is no argument that would progress better if one of the participants was less literate. Which does back up the original claim in the article...

wirrbel 6y ago

Key bias is that when you read old stuff and people seem to be well read it appears that way also because canons have shifted so it appears as if they read „more than the literature canon“

keiferski 6y ago

The issue isn't whether there are abundant "literate" resources (podcasts, in your example) but whether the average member of a democratic society is literate. More importantly, whether the elites are deeply literate. I don't know about you, but when I look at the popular media and at political leaders, they seem highly illiterate compared to those from just a century ago. Even the "literate elite" media, e.g. The New Yorker, has dropped in quality from a few decades ago. Just read some old issues to see what I mean. Regardless, this article is hardly the first or only study of this problem. Allan Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind in 1987. Harold Bloom and John Simon wrote a few books on the topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mi...

kiba 6y ago
So, it 'seems'. Is there a systematic study measuring the 'literacy' quality of thoughts over time in media?
- keiferski 6y ago
  The article itself is about such studies in relation to the brain. A simple google search brings dozens of related results. https://all4ed.org/articles/a-decade-of-decline-survey-finds-a-decline-in-literacy-skills-among-college-graduates/ https://all4ed.org/articles/a-decade-of-decline-survey-finds... https://theweek.com/articles/875253/unsurprising-decline-childhood-literacy-america https://theweek.com/articles/875253/unsurprising-decline-chi... https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1996/05/15/34roch.h15.html https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1996/05/15/34roch.h15.htm... https://ivyreads.com/blog/academic-literacy-is-declining https://ivyreads.com/blog/academic-literacy-is-declining https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247760981_Literacy_in_Decline_Untangling_the_Evidence https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247760981_Literacy_... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/us/reading-scores-national-exam.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/us/reading-scores-nationa... Furthermore, if your only metric of determining truth is a social science study, I think you're perhaps missing the forest for the trees.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
giovannibonetti 6y ago
Journalism was a very coveted field 50 years ago. Lots of bright people wanted to work there. Nowadays there are many interesting and rewarding jobs for people with good education, and the news industry is losing resources to social networks and online classified sites. A similar analysis can be applied to explain the decline in the quality of school teachers. Women used to have very few work opportunities in the past, and many of the brightest ones would end up teaching. That's not the case anymore, there are many more rewarding paths nowadays, like getting a law degree. So, please don't assume the quality of journalism has dropped because the literacy level of society has fallen.
6y ago

karaterobot 6y ago

You're focused on reading as a way of ingesting ideas and culture. The author focused most of his article on the process of reading, and its long term neurological and physiological effects on the reader. In other words, he's not so much saying that people don't know enough, it's that they've lost the ability to focus for long periods of time. It's an attention deficit argument, not an illiteracy argument. (I think the article is poorly argued and doesn't support itself well; I also think it's probably observing something that is worth continued study)

bem94 6y ago

> This article makes far reaching societal claims with essentially no evidence. The evidence presented is in the form of "feelings" of various writers concerned of their own decline in literaryfocus. From quite far down in the article, under "Concrete Thinking": > As it is, we now have greater levels of at least superficial participation in political discourse, if not in politics itself, thanks in part to social-media technologies. Vast numbers of people contribute scantily supported opinions about things they don't really understand, validating the old saw that a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

DubiousPusher 6y ago
You'll have to forgive me but I can still remember when millions of people listened to, called into and cranked each other up on late night radio. The existence of a conspiracy touting ignor-mob-us is hardly concrete evidence of informational decline. It is possible that social media has intensified this problem. Perhaps more cranks can crank harder together now than before or perhaps not. But "just look at all the people on Facebook" isn't material comparative evidence.

314 6y ago

Your ability to distill and refute the points in the article seem to be a result of deep literacy. Is this itself not the thrust of his main thesis?

DubiousPusher 6y ago
Literature is beautiful and deep and fascinating. But it is also dangerous in its power to convey credibility where it may not be due. It is very easy to weave oneself into a net with reason and bind the net fast with literary pomp. How unassailable is my argument once I quote Voltaire!
- 314 6y ago
  Which implies that somebody responding to you in an argument would also need deep literacy to be able to dismiss such claims. But there is no argument that would progress better if one of the participants was less literate. Which does back up the original claim in the article...