4 ms·

Three Theses on the Literacy Crisis

55 points by samclemens 2mo ago

AhCoonu7 2mo ago
My personal theory is main reason is that we don't practice reading as much in this era. Some claim it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at skill. Dumping that many hours alone doesn't get you there though. Just like a weight lifter you need to keep pushing your limit by adding a bit of weight to the bar from time to time to gain muscle rather the just retain what you currently have. Between Steam, Netflix, and your pick of social media there are no end of ways to keep yourself busy in more immediately gratifying ways. Getting in the hours and stretching that mental muscle a bit in book form no longer happens naturally. To be as literate as the generation before you you almost have to consciously choose to put in an equal effort since boredom is not as plentiful as it once was. That said there are is no lack of other contributing factors as well, but reduced experience as the reason in my opinion seems to best explain why the average dips without the the whole curve dipping.
- songhonglei1985 2mo ago
  This resonates but I think there's a framing issue. From building educational coding tools for kids, what I've observed is that the volume of textual engagement hasn't necessarily dropped — it's migrated to different forms. An 11-year-old debugging a Python script is doing intense, sustained reading. Parsing error messages, reading documentation, tracing logic through nested conditionals. A kid building in Roblox Studio is reading and writing Lua. These are literacy acts — just not the kind that show up on NAEP scores or novel-reading surveys. The real gap isn't hours logged. It's transfer. The kid who can read 200 lines of GDScript to debug why their character won't jump doesn't automatically transfer that stamina to reading a history textbook. The cognitive muscles are being built, but they're specialized. From what I've seen, when you meet kids where they are — letting them read and write code to solve problems they care about — they'll happily put in hours of focused textual work. The appetite is there. We're measuring the wrong meal.
  - annzabelle 2mo ago
    Have you interacted with a typical class of 30 children lately? Maybe 1 or 2 of them are doing what you described, but 15 of them don't understand how to navigate a basic filesystem because they haven't used anything more advanced that a Chromebook in their lives and they have no desire to do anything more complicated with a computer. Also, I fundamentally disagree that reading code and error messages stretches the same muscle as long form prose, and I believe that sustained attention on long pieces of writing is how a lot of sustained cultural values are transmitted, where reading 3,000 lines of python does none of that.
- sandworm101 2mo ago
  Reading a book doesnt necessarily exercise the mind. The vast majority of books are total junk. And, unlike weights, it is possible to become dumber by reading the wrong books. Spend four hours a day reading vanity press tripe and you would be better off spending those hours with netflix. I have had students ask me how to improve thier english, how to sound smart. I tell them to stop watching american TV. Watch blackadder or upstart crow. Listen to people who are masters of the spoken word. Want to improve your writing? Stick to the classics. Dont touch JK Rowling until you are done with plato and shakespeare. (Ive been watching a zew zealand series lately, learning all sorts of slang i didnt know.)
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - derektank 2mo ago
    Setting aside the unnecessary digs at American TV, you’re kind of missing the point. While the informational content of many books is bad, reading any book is almost inherently an exercise in literacy. A flimsy, conspiracy-laden pop history book will have new vocabulary. A badly written book will challenge the reader to understand a poorly articulated argument or explanation and figure out what they meant to say. Reading Shakespeare is probably inherently a better exercise in literacy (assuming you can actually get through it; a good analogy might be trying to lift heavy with improper form, or pushing yourself too hard and too fast at the gym that you get injured) but it’s not completely necessary. Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1414/ https://xkcd.com/1414/
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - fasterik 2mo ago
    I'm all for reading the classics, but if you take all of the fun out of reading, nobody is going to do it. If someone had forced me to read Plato instead of Harry Potter as a kid, I wouldn't have done nearly as much reading as I did, which prepared me for tackling more difficult texts as I matured. Re: American TV, Deadwood is widely considered some of the best Shakespearean writing of the modern age.
- obscurette 2mo ago
  This. And I blame schools. People like to rage about kids reading a lot more books in the past, but I don't think that's was the main contributor. I went to school in seventies and if I look at my pupils now, there is no huge difference. Most of my classmates didn't like to read books either, let the others summarize books they had to read etc. But there is a huge gap in everyday reading – none of my classmates couldn't get away without opening textbooks. Almost all learning no matter of course (history, geography etc) followed a recipe "read 2-4 pages from textbook, then we'll discuss it in classroom etc". There is no such thing nowadays – almost all learning is "slides, videos, interactive animations" and textbooks are almost extinct.
  - dr_dshiv 2mo ago
    ChatGPT. Just saying. It’s truly a lot of reading. I must read about twice as much text as ever before.
- yorwba 2mo ago
  Alternatively, the real problem is that articles like this one don't come with a short summary like "There is no crisis in the ability to read, nor is there a crisis in the practice of reading books, but there is a crisis in the status of Modernist literary studies." so that you have to read all the way through to the end to find out what it's trying to say and also click a bunch of links to learn statistics like "75% of U.S. adults say they have read all or part of at least one book in the past 12 months" https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/09/americans-still-opt-for-print-books-over-digital-or-audio-versions-few-are-in-book-clubs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/09/americans... In any case, as far as the crisis of Modernist literary studies is concerned, to be as adept at it as literature profs demand, students would have to get really into famous works of the nineteenth century, which was not that unreasonable to expect ca. 1950 but maybe a bit of a tough sell now. So the crisis will likely continue unabated until it is replaced by the crisis of post-modernist literary studies instead. (I guess it was preceded by the crisis of Classical literary studies, as the ability to read Latin and Greek did in fact decline.)
  - watwut 2mo ago
    Except that moral panic around it has nothing to do with what actual profs in general say or think. Fairly often, it is panic about profs doing changes to courses non-professors find objectionable.
    - yorwba 2mo ago
      At least this article is a reaction to other articles about a supposed decline in literacy that of late like to reference this study https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922346 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922346 conducted in 2015 but published 2024 where students were asked to read from Charles Dickens' Bleak House https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1023/pg1023-images.html#c1 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1023/pg1023-images.html... and explain the meaning as they went.
- ofalkaed 2mo ago
  Of coarse they are going to pick Steam and Netflix and social media just like 20 years ago they picked reading Harry Potter, majority of people want to use their time alone towards connecting with people and they put that time towards things which will help them connect with people. At least 99% of the books I have read I have not gotten to discuss with someone on a meaningful level, even if I met someone who has read the book I just read and loved there is a fair chance they read it years ago and can't say much about it, there are just too many books. I wish things were different but the logistics of it are not in my favor. If I were to sit down after work and watch the baseball game, I would know that millions of other people are doing the exact same thing and I will be able to discuss it at work tomorrow. You can't do that with books, not even with current best sellers, which do offer better odds but even with those you are not sharing the moment with millions of people who are also just as alone as you are. I was 17 before I met someone with who there was a real bond through literature, and they went on to family and work and all that. But that is fine even if that relationship has never been replaced because my interest in literature has never been about socializing, it has been about literature.
- gabriel666smith 2mo ago
  “In book form” is a really important part of what you’re saying. I’d bet that people, on average, read more words per day in 2026 than at any other point in history (unless it peaked slightly pre-TikTok and other video content becoming more primary). This is a different type of reading, as you say. Its reward pattern is different. I do think that, relative to how much ‘reading less longform prose’ is bemoaned, there is not enough attention being paid to: 1. How can we post in a more valuable way? The mediums are necessarily different, but have we been too defeatist thus far about the difference in potential value? It’s difficult to innovate on a new form of writing - is that a question we’re avoiding? What would the Modernists do? I don’t have an answer, but at least this is an area where each individual might have an impact on other humans’ feeds. 2. Relatedly, when bemoaning ‘reading less longform prose’, are we fundamentally misunderstanding a new and valuable mode of information transfer? Are we living in the old world? How meaningfully relevant is a dead or dying form? 3. Can books themselves take on any qualities of ‘the feed’ that meaningfully improve the way they convey information, either in writing or presentation? When you have people (maybe) reading more, these feel like potentially more pragmatic and perhaps more optimistic framings, or questions to ask - without denigrating the value of the traditional medium.
- kristjank 2mo ago
  There is also very little societal norms promoting traditional culture (literature, music, theater, cinema, not to mention other arts). In school, children and teens are often being ostracized for not caring about sports, while not caring about culture is much less stigmatizing, if not outright encouraged.
- _glass 2mo ago
  The original study explicitly argued for deliberate practice. Musicians who didn't do that could not become experts.
Ozzie-D 2mo ago
[flagged]
firasd 2mo ago
When it comes to undergrads I doubt people (let's say from the 1980s onwards) were ever doing all the reading assigned in the syllabus anyway. Who the heck is reading The Republic word for word in their dorm in between all the other classes and activities and the other stuff assigned by the same Prof
- gregdaniels421 2mo ago
  > Who the heck is reading The Republic word for word in their dorm in between all the other classes and activities and the other stuff assigned by the same Prof I think this comment says more about you than actual students who care. I did all the readings, even the extra ones. So did all the people in my study group for the class. Maybe select for more studious friends.
  - popalchemist 2mo ago
    It's not an isolated incident, he is describing an increasingly common attitude which is utilitarian/"realist" at best and a grotesque materialist corruption of the liberal arts education ideal at worst. Education is generally no longer seen as an end in and of itself, but as a means to more money; insofar as one accepts that view, learning the material is aside the point; getting the grade that gets you the paper that gets you the job that gets you the money is the point, for them.
    - jruohonen 2mo ago
      > getting the grade that gets you the paper that gets you the job that gets you the money is the point, for them. But then there still is a lever, I suppose, including for reading.
    - majormajor 2mo ago
      > getting the grade that gets you the paper that gets you the job that gets you the money is the point, for them. If there's a revolution in work due to AI the first jobs to fall are going to be the ones that don't require any originality or critical thinking. Any number of paper-pushing middleman jobs. These have already been tightly squeezed by automation - see the rise of the bachelors-having-barista trope who can't find a job despite their degree. Question is, how long would it take for the idea that if you don't train yourself to put some creative effort in, the machine is gonna replace you to propagate through the world enough to change how high-schoolers and college students behave? Whether that means pushing them into tangible hands-on fields, or into more original-creation as the robots replace manual labor too... Or if we get some sort of UBI first instead? Or Skynet?
pcf 2mo ago
Even the headline is difficult to understand for the affected group. Perhaps, soon, it will be necessary to phrase it "Zoolander" style. Maybe something like "Top 3 Shocking Reasons Why You Can't Read Good No More!"
- the_af 2mo ago
  Who do you think the intended audience of the article is? The answer might (genuinely) surprise you, judging by your joke.
  - raincole 2mo ago
    The audience of the article is people like the parent commenter.
tonymet 2mo ago
I’m more worried about the lack of writing . Far too much time is spent reading other people’s ideas. And very little of what has been published in the past 15 years has been worthwhile. Better to encourage more people to solidify & advocate for their own ideas, opinions, beliefs rather than regurgitating someone else’s.
- nottorp 2mo ago
  > And very little of what has been published in the past 15 years has been worthwhile. I'd say that's survivor bias. Take any 15 year time period and 98% of what has been published in any form will be crap. We just remember only the 2%. I might agree that the shift from art and entertainment to content creation has reduced that 2% to 1-1.5% though.
  - devilbunny 2mo ago
    One major shift has been the death of newspapers. When that was the primary way to get information about the world around you, it wasn’t just readers who benefited - it created a steady stream of capable, workmanlike writers. They weren’t literary geniuses, but they were capable of stringing together a few paragraphs of readable prose on a deadline. And they got paid for it; how many people can make a living off their Substack?
    - tonymet 2mo ago
      Even peasant Civil War soldiers penned more expressive letters than Ivy League graduated journalists do today, so the source was even more broadly experienced. But you’re right about this one aspect.
      - nottorp 2mo ago
        Unrelated to the topic, but maybe that was because they couldn't read or write and paid someone to do it for them?
  - tonymet 2mo ago
joe_the_user 2mo ago
So, you have "Thesis #3: The real threat is the war against the infrastructures and institutions that make all forms of literacy possible". So they're saying things are bad, deeply bad. But they toss darts at everyone with shallower takes along the way. OK but what some darts at those not worrying and some credit to those worrying in a less sophisticated way.
photios 2mo ago
Literacy and reading used to be cool and kids read because successful people around them did. I remember that being the case as recently as the 80s and 90s in my small post-Communist country. Then culture changed [1]. Now we have different role models with mumble rap and songs about "muh pu*y". Is it a surprise kids don't read anymore? All the issues with schools, infrastructure and technology are secondary. The spark is gone. [1] Well, it didn't change all by itself and people that changed it have names and addresses, but that's not a HN post.
kristjank 2mo ago
I really like the points this post makes about different categories of literacy, but I always let out an enormous sigh every single time I read an article or blog post that rewrites a well-referenced social phenomenon into a different one. I hate that we have to establish different categories to refer to "The Artist Formerly Know As The Literacy Crisis." It feels very scarcely useful. I really like how the schism between basic literacy, literary culture and the study of literature is examined, though. I was always under the impression, as an engineer, that being able to retrieve needed information from a printed text was tremendously important, until I trained myself in this skill to the point where I have trouble reading linear pieces of fiction (Not to mention nonlinear ones. I am trying to chug through Tropic of Cancer with English being my second language. I'm failing at a consistent and periodic pace). I imagine that now, grammar-school me would be consistently able to out-read me in an "English literature class" kind of way, while I would beat him at engineering-focused knowledge retrieval even without ChatGPT. > When commentators lament that students “can’t read,” what they often mean (though never specify) is that students are not engaging in texts in ways that resemble the interpretive practices valued within literary studies. That’s why we should ask whether they are literate in a particular discourse instead of asking if they are literate full stop. This why I find the article insightful. I appreciate how this severance between studying literature and being literate appears to contain the issue to a specific sub-field of The Artist Formerly Know As The Literacy Crisis, but I really am not sure how this is useful to anyone looking to improve the state of things. Even the author himself says that while "[even if he thinks] histrionic op-ed writers in The Atlantic misdiagnose an erosion of literary culture as mass illiteracy doesn’t mean I’m okay with it." I find this somewhat hollow still, because redirecting overarching societal shifts into the context of a very specific sub-field of a science usually just works to sweep it under the carpet. I have experienced a bunch of well-trained and passionate teachers, which resulted in me obtaining a decent grasp at literature in secondary school. Conversely, a lot of my peers did not and most of the graduates after them did not as well. They all exhibit signs of declining basic literacy (to the point of not being able to read washing machine instructions without LLM assistance). I think that bad grades in literary studies are a decent predictor of bad basic literacy, especially 5 years down the line. And, we have seen a lot of old teachers retiring where I live, with their replacements being just plain dumber, if not stupid outright. I suppose the reason is that undergrads enrolling in paedagogic courses here are mostly people that couldn't get in literally anywhere else (and immigrants seeking fraudulent student visas to work as delivery drivers). Fixing the infrastructure as the conclusion suggests would do well to maintain the already-reading and curious-to-read students, but would do little to get them interested in it. We desperately need teachers that imprint a sense of nobility or worthiness to the practice of literary culture/study and only then the infrastructure will prove itself useful once the coming generations realize there must be some wealth in making use of it, get them influenced, so to speak.
BrenBarn 2mo ago
Whether or not the decline of literacy is a pearl-clutching myth, I don't think anything is gained by laying on a bunch of academic mumbo-jumbo about "literacies" and "problematizing" things and contextualization and how everything is more complex and nuanced than we realize. That kind of theorizing takes us further from knowing about reality rather than closer. In particular, trying to repurpose words like "literacy" from their typical usage into some kind of broad and encompassing notion is a classic and classically frustrating maneuver of a certain kind of academic. It leads us to a world where we have a bunch of words that are all supposed to mean "a complex interplay between the individual, society, technology, and whatever else I feel like tossing in", and then we can argue about the differences between them. I'd rather skip that. Saying that "literacy" includes everything people need to do to navigate in society is like saying that "music" includes making armpit noises. Yes, maybe you can stretch it to include that, but that's not what people use it to mean and it's not what people are talking about when they say literacy is declining. No one is going go "Oh gosh, you're right, people are now learning about 'navigating a social media platform' and 'producing a video essay' so I guess there's no literacy crisis at all!" People know that's happening, they just don't consider it literacy, and trying to redefine literacy to include it is just sophistry.
- everybodyknows 2mo ago
  > trying to redefine literacy to include it is just sophistry. Or an angle toward one's doctoral dissertation in some "social science" or other.
littlekey 2mo ago
I read the first thesis and saw this section on modern civic engagement: "Consider the nested and divergent forms of literacy required for a 19-year-old trying to participate in the democratic process as an informed citizen today ... they cross-reference short-form video analysis, parse hyperlinked primary sources, evaluate the credibility and rhetorical posture of algorithmic feeds, and weigh the consensus within a comment section" which seems like a huge stretch. This may be "literacy" in the sense of being "computer literate" but I see very little connection here to actual literacy as in being able to read. First of all short form video is not reading, full stop. "Parsing hyperlinked primary sources" COULD be, but is that really happening? Most of these feeds are just full of talking heads reacting to other talking heads. The only reading going on is the last point about comment sections, and I think the comparison of that to reading a book only makes the impression more depressing, not less.

55 points by samclemens 2mo ago

My personal theory is main reason is that we don't practice reading as much in this era. Some claim it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at skill. Dumping that many hours alone doesn't get you there though. Just like a weight lifter you need to keep pushing your limit by adding a bit of weight to the bar from time to time to gain muscle rather the just retain what you currently have. Between Steam, Netflix, and your pick of social media there are no end of ways to keep yourself busy in more immediately gratifying ways. Getting in the hours and stretching that mental muscle a bit in book form no longer happens naturally. To be as literate as the generation before you you almost have to consciously choose to put in an equal effort since boredom is not as plentiful as it once was. That said there are is no lack of other contributing factors as well, but reduced experience as the reason in my opinion seems to best explain why the average dips without the the whole curve dipping.

songhonglei1985 2mo ago
This resonates but I think there's a framing issue. From building educational coding tools for kids, what I've observed is that the volume of textual engagement hasn't necessarily dropped — it's migrated to different forms. An 11-year-old debugging a Python script is doing intense, sustained reading. Parsing error messages, reading documentation, tracing logic through nested conditionals. A kid building in Roblox Studio is reading and writing Lua. These are literacy acts — just not the kind that show up on NAEP scores or novel-reading surveys. The real gap isn't hours logged. It's transfer. The kid who can read 200 lines of GDScript to debug why their character won't jump doesn't automatically transfer that stamina to reading a history textbook. The cognitive muscles are being built, but they're specialized. From what I've seen, when you meet kids where they are — letting them read and write code to solve problems they care about — they'll happily put in hours of focused textual work. The appetite is there. We're measuring the wrong meal.
- annzabelle 2mo ago
  Have you interacted with a typical class of 30 children lately? Maybe 1 or 2 of them are doing what you described, but 15 of them don't understand how to navigate a basic filesystem because they haven't used anything more advanced that a Chromebook in their lives and they have no desire to do anything more complicated with a computer. Also, I fundamentally disagree that reading code and error messages stretches the same muscle as long form prose, and I believe that sustained attention on long pieces of writing is how a lot of sustained cultural values are transmitted, where reading 3,000 lines of python does none of that.
sandworm101 2mo ago
Reading a book doesnt necessarily exercise the mind. The vast majority of books are total junk. And, unlike weights, it is possible to become dumber by reading the wrong books. Spend four hours a day reading vanity press tripe and you would be better off spending those hours with netflix. I have had students ask me how to improve thier english, how to sound smart. I tell them to stop watching american TV. Watch blackadder or upstart crow. Listen to people who are masters of the spoken word. Want to improve your writing? Stick to the classics. Dont touch JK Rowling until you are done with plato and shakespeare. (Ive been watching a zew zealand series lately, learning all sorts of slang i didnt know.)
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- derektank 2mo ago
  Setting aside the unnecessary digs at American TV, you’re kind of missing the point. While the informational content of many books is bad, reading any book is almost inherently an exercise in literacy. A flimsy, conspiracy-laden pop history book will have new vocabulary. A badly written book will challenge the reader to understand a poorly articulated argument or explanation and figure out what they meant to say. Reading Shakespeare is probably inherently a better exercise in literacy (assuming you can actually get through it; a good analogy might be trying to lift heavy with improper form, or pushing yourself too hard and too fast at the gym that you get injured) but it’s not completely necessary. Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1414/ https://xkcd.com/1414/
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- fasterik 2mo ago
  I'm all for reading the classics, but if you take all of the fun out of reading, nobody is going to do it. If someone had forced me to read Plato instead of Harry Potter as a kid, I wouldn't have done nearly as much reading as I did, which prepared me for tackling more difficult texts as I matured. Re: American TV, Deadwood is widely considered some of the best Shakespearean writing of the modern age.
obscurette 2mo ago
This. And I blame schools. People like to rage about kids reading a lot more books in the past, but I don't think that's was the main contributor. I went to school in seventies and if I look at my pupils now, there is no huge difference. Most of my classmates didn't like to read books either, let the others summarize books they had to read etc. But there is a huge gap in everyday reading – none of my classmates couldn't get away without opening textbooks. Almost all learning no matter of course (history, geography etc) followed a recipe "read 2-4 pages from textbook, then we'll discuss it in classroom etc". There is no such thing nowadays – almost all learning is "slides, videos, interactive animations" and textbooks are almost extinct.
- dr_dshiv 2mo ago
  ChatGPT. Just saying. It’s truly a lot of reading. I must read about twice as much text as ever before.
yorwba 2mo ago
Alternatively, the real problem is that articles like this one don't come with a short summary like "There is no crisis in the ability to read, nor is there a crisis in the practice of reading books, but there is a crisis in the status of Modernist literary studies." so that you have to read all the way through to the end to find out what it's trying to say and also click a bunch of links to learn statistics like "75% of U.S. adults say they have read all or part of at least one book in the past 12 months" https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/09/americans-still-opt-for-print-books-over-digital-or-audio-versions-few-are-in-book-clubs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/09/americans... In any case, as far as the crisis of Modernist literary studies is concerned, to be as adept at it as literature profs demand, students would have to get really into famous works of the nineteenth century, which was not that unreasonable to expect ca. 1950 but maybe a bit of a tough sell now. So the crisis will likely continue unabated until it is replaced by the crisis of post-modernist literary studies instead. (I guess it was preceded by the crisis of Classical literary studies, as the ability to read Latin and Greek did in fact decline.)
- watwut 2mo ago
  Except that moral panic around it has nothing to do with what actual profs in general say or think. Fairly often, it is panic about profs doing changes to courses non-professors find objectionable.
  - yorwba 2mo ago
    At least this article is a reaction to other articles about a supposed decline in literacy that of late like to reference this study https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922346 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922346 conducted in 2015 but published 2024 where students were asked to read from Charles Dickens' Bleak House https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1023/pg1023-images.html#c1 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1023/pg1023-images.html... and explain the meaning as they went.
ofalkaed 2mo ago
Of coarse they are going to pick Steam and Netflix and social media just like 20 years ago they picked reading Harry Potter, majority of people want to use their time alone towards connecting with people and they put that time towards things which will help them connect with people. At least 99% of the books I have read I have not gotten to discuss with someone on a meaningful level, even if I met someone who has read the book I just read and loved there is a fair chance they read it years ago and can't say much about it, there are just too many books. I wish things were different but the logistics of it are not in my favor. If I were to sit down after work and watch the baseball game, I would know that millions of other people are doing the exact same thing and I will be able to discuss it at work tomorrow. You can't do that with books, not even with current best sellers, which do offer better odds but even with those you are not sharing the moment with millions of people who are also just as alone as you are. I was 17 before I met someone with who there was a real bond through literature, and they went on to family and work and all that. But that is fine even if that relationship has never been replaced because my interest in literature has never been about socializing, it has been about literature.
gabriel666smith 2mo ago
“In book form” is a really important part of what you’re saying. I’d bet that people, on average, read more words per day in 2026 than at any other point in history (unless it peaked slightly pre-TikTok and other video content becoming more primary). This is a different type of reading, as you say. Its reward pattern is different. I do think that, relative to how much ‘reading less longform prose’ is bemoaned, there is not enough attention being paid to: 1. How can we post in a more valuable way? The mediums are necessarily different, but have we been too defeatist thus far about the difference in potential value? It’s difficult to innovate on a new form of writing - is that a question we’re avoiding? What would the Modernists do? I don’t have an answer, but at least this is an area where each individual might have an impact on other humans’ feeds. 2. Relatedly, when bemoaning ‘reading less longform prose’, are we fundamentally misunderstanding a new and valuable mode of information transfer? Are we living in the old world? How meaningfully relevant is a dead or dying form? 3. Can books themselves take on any qualities of ‘the feed’ that meaningfully improve the way they convey information, either in writing or presentation? When you have people (maybe) reading more, these feel like potentially more pragmatic and perhaps more optimistic framings, or questions to ask - without denigrating the value of the traditional medium.
kristjank 2mo ago
There is also very little societal norms promoting traditional culture (literature, music, theater, cinema, not to mention other arts). In school, children and teens are often being ostracized for not caring about sports, while not caring about culture is much less stigmatizing, if not outright encouraged.
_glass 2mo ago
The original study explicitly argued for deliberate practice. Musicians who didn't do that could not become experts.

Ozzie-D 2mo ago

[flagged]

firasd 2mo ago

When it comes to undergrads I doubt people (let's say from the 1980s onwards) were ever doing all the reading assigned in the syllabus anyway. Who the heck is reading The Republic word for word in their dorm in between all the other classes and activities and the other stuff assigned by the same Prof

gregdaniels421 2mo ago
> Who the heck is reading The Republic word for word in their dorm in between all the other classes and activities and the other stuff assigned by the same Prof I think this comment says more about you than actual students who care. I did all the readings, even the extra ones. So did all the people in my study group for the class. Maybe select for more studious friends.
- popalchemist 2mo ago
  It's not an isolated incident, he is describing an increasingly common attitude which is utilitarian/"realist" at best and a grotesque materialist corruption of the liberal arts education ideal at worst. Education is generally no longer seen as an end in and of itself, but as a means to more money; insofar as one accepts that view, learning the material is aside the point; getting the grade that gets you the paper that gets you the job that gets you the money is the point, for them.
  - jruohonen 2mo ago
    > getting the grade that gets you the paper that gets you the job that gets you the money is the point, for them. But then there still is a lever, I suppose, including for reading.
  - majormajor 2mo ago
    > getting the grade that gets you the paper that gets you the job that gets you the money is the point, for them. If there's a revolution in work due to AI the first jobs to fall are going to be the ones that don't require any originality or critical thinking. Any number of paper-pushing middleman jobs. These have already been tightly squeezed by automation - see the rise of the bachelors-having-barista trope who can't find a job despite their degree. Question is, how long would it take for the idea that if you don't train yourself to put some creative effort in, the machine is gonna replace you to propagate through the world enough to change how high-schoolers and college students behave? Whether that means pushing them into tangible hands-on fields, or into more original-creation as the robots replace manual labor too... Or if we get some sort of UBI first instead? Or Skynet?

pcf 2mo ago

Even the headline is difficult to understand for the affected group. Perhaps, soon, it will be necessary to phrase it "Zoolander" style. Maybe something like "Top 3 Shocking Reasons Why You Can't Read Good No More!"

the_af 2mo ago
Who do you think the intended audience of the article is? The answer might (genuinely) surprise you, judging by your joke.
- raincole 2mo ago
  The audience of the article is people like the parent commenter.

tonymet 2mo ago

I’m more worried about the lack of writing . Far too much time is spent reading other people’s ideas. And very little of what has been published in the past 15 years has been worthwhile. Better to encourage more people to solidify & advocate for their own ideas, opinions, beliefs rather than regurgitating someone else’s.

nottorp 2mo ago
> And very little of what has been published in the past 15 years has been worthwhile. I'd say that's survivor bias. Take any 15 year time period and 98% of what has been published in any form will be crap. We just remember only the 2%. I might agree that the shift from art and entertainment to content creation has reduced that 2% to 1-1.5% though.
- devilbunny 2mo ago
  One major shift has been the death of newspapers. When that was the primary way to get information about the world around you, it wasn’t just readers who benefited - it created a steady stream of capable, workmanlike writers. They weren’t literary geniuses, but they were capable of stringing together a few paragraphs of readable prose on a deadline. And they got paid for it; how many people can make a living off their Substack?
  - tonymet 2mo ago
    Even peasant Civil War soldiers penned more expressive letters than Ivy League graduated journalists do today, so the source was even more broadly experienced. But you’re right about this one aspect.
    - nottorp 2mo ago
      Unrelated to the topic, but maybe that was because they couldn't read or write and paid someone to do it for them?
- tonymet 2mo ago

joe_the_user 2mo ago

So, you have "Thesis #3: The real threat is the war against the infrastructures and institutions that make all forms of literacy possible". So they're saying things are bad, deeply bad. But they toss darts at everyone with shallower takes along the way. OK but what some darts at those not worrying and some credit to those worrying in a less sophisticated way.

photios 2mo ago

Literacy and reading used to be cool and kids read because successful people around them did. I remember that being the case as recently as the 80s and 90s in my small post-Communist country. Then culture changed [1]. Now we have different role models with mumble rap and songs about "muh pu*y". Is it a surprise kids don't read anymore? All the issues with schools, infrastructure and technology are secondary. The spark is gone. [1] Well, it didn't change all by itself and people that changed it have names and addresses, but that's not a HN post.

kristjank 2mo ago

I really like the points this post makes about different categories of literacy, but I always let out an enormous sigh every single time I read an article or blog post that rewrites a well-referenced social phenomenon into a different one. I hate that we have to establish different categories to refer to "The Artist Formerly Know As The Literacy Crisis." It feels very scarcely useful. I really like how the schism between basic literacy, literary culture and the study of literature is examined, though. I was always under the impression, as an engineer, that being able to retrieve needed information from a printed text was tremendously important, until I trained myself in this skill to the point where I have trouble reading linear pieces of fiction (Not to mention nonlinear ones. I am trying to chug through Tropic of Cancer with English being my second language. I'm failing at a consistent and periodic pace). I imagine that now, grammar-school me would be consistently able to out-read me in an "English literature class" kind of way, while I would beat him at engineering-focused knowledge retrieval even without ChatGPT. > When commentators lament that students “can’t read,” what they often mean (though never specify) is that students are not engaging in texts in ways that resemble the interpretive practices valued within literary studies. That’s why we should ask whether they are literate in a particular discourse instead of asking if they are literate full stop. This why I find the article insightful. I appreciate how this severance between studying literature and being literate appears to contain the issue to a specific sub-field of The Artist Formerly Know As The Literacy Crisis, but I really am not sure how this is useful to anyone looking to improve the state of things. Even the author himself says that while "[even if he thinks] histrionic op-ed writers in The Atlantic misdiagnose an erosion of literary culture as mass illiteracy doesn’t mean I’m okay with it." I find this somewhat hollow still, because redirecting overarching societal shifts into the context of a very specific sub-field of a science usually just works to sweep it under the carpet. I have experienced a bunch of well-trained and passionate teachers, which resulted in me obtaining a decent grasp at literature in secondary school. Conversely, a lot of my peers did not and most of the graduates after them did not as well. They all exhibit signs of declining basic literacy (to the point of not being able to read washing machine instructions without LLM assistance). I think that bad grades in literary studies are a decent predictor of bad basic literacy, especially 5 years down the line. And, we have seen a lot of old teachers retiring where I live, with their replacements being just plain dumber, if not stupid outright. I suppose the reason is that undergrads enrolling in paedagogic courses here are mostly people that couldn't get in literally anywhere else (and immigrants seeking fraudulent student visas to work as delivery drivers). Fixing the infrastructure as the conclusion suggests would do well to maintain the already-reading and curious-to-read students, but would do little to get them interested in it. We desperately need teachers that imprint a sense of nobility or worthiness to the practice of literary culture/study and only then the infrastructure will prove itself useful once the coming generations realize there must be some wealth in making use of it, get them influenced, so to speak.

BrenBarn 2mo ago

Whether or not the decline of literacy is a pearl-clutching myth, I don't think anything is gained by laying on a bunch of academic mumbo-jumbo about "literacies" and "problematizing" things and contextualization and how everything is more complex and nuanced than we realize. That kind of theorizing takes us further from knowing about reality rather than closer. In particular, trying to repurpose words like "literacy" from their typical usage into some kind of broad and encompassing notion is a classic and classically frustrating maneuver of a certain kind of academic. It leads us to a world where we have a bunch of words that are all supposed to mean "a complex interplay between the individual, society, technology, and whatever else I feel like tossing in", and then we can argue about the differences between them. I'd rather skip that. Saying that "literacy" includes everything people need to do to navigate in society is like saying that "music" includes making armpit noises. Yes, maybe you can stretch it to include that, but that's not what people use it to mean and it's not what people are talking about when they say literacy is declining. No one is going go "Oh gosh, you're right, people are now learning about 'navigating a social media platform' and 'producing a video essay' so I guess there's no literacy crisis at all!" People know that's happening, they just don't consider it literacy, and trying to redefine literacy to include it is just sophistry.

everybodyknows 2mo ago
> trying to redefine literacy to include it is just sophistry. Or an angle toward one's doctoral dissertation in some "social science" or other.

littlekey 2mo ago

I read the first thesis and saw this section on modern civic engagement: "Consider the nested and divergent forms of literacy required for a 19-year-old trying to participate in the democratic process as an informed citizen today ... they cross-reference short-form video analysis, parse hyperlinked primary sources, evaluate the credibility and rhetorical posture of algorithmic feeds, and weigh the consensus within a comment section" which seems like a huge stretch. This may be "literacy" in the sense of being "computer literate" but I see very little connection here to actual literacy as in being able to read. First of all short form video is not reading, full stop. "Parsing hyperlinked primary sources" COULD be, but is that really happening? Most of these feeds are just full of talking heads reacting to other talking heads. The only reading going on is the last point about comment sections, and I think the comparison of that to reading a book only makes the impression more depressing, not less.