Well, sure, I agree that it depends on both the age and the student, and of course as you say your location. I think in this case it's important to remember th

Well, sure, I agree that it depends on both the age and the student, and of course as you say your location. I think in this case it's important to remember that nearly everyone on this forum was a top 5-10% student. The "general literacy crisis" is not falling on commenters on HN or their children, but rather the children of the rest of society. What I believe we're seeing is a widening bifurcation between the intellectual "elite" and everyone else. As an example, I would be surprised if more than 50% of American adults can put all the major wars America has engaged in in order and to within a decade of their occurrence on a timeline. This makes me less confident in the modern approach of "book reviews transitioning into stylistic deep dives". I don't think continuing to hold onto that model will spark a general return to literacy among the American public. My education was patterned similarly to yours: in middle school we could review any book that we wanted, and then in high school we did more deep dives and stylistic studies. I found this to be outrageously boring, and in retrospect I think it was a bad approach. As I see it, the problem is that although you can read whatever you want (at least in middle school), the style in which you respond is mandated to take on a certain "academic" style, and the dialogue is one-way between you and the teacher, who then assigns you a highly partial grade that doesn't actually communicate anything about your writing ability. In adult society, especially in arenas where writing and publishing essays is common (like internet forums or archaic amateur discussion and study groups), you can write whatever you want, and your work is evaluated based on its merit and how well it delivers its point in a way that pleases or challenges the audience, rather than how well it adheres to a sterile model outlined by a central academic bureaucracy. I think this model is what the approach to writing education should be patterned around. Here are two interesting essays about this exact topic: https://paulgraham.com/lesson.html https://paulgraham.com/lesson.html https://paulgraham.com/essay.html https://paulgraham.com/essay.html