<story><title>The Erosion of Deep Literacy</title><url>https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-erosion-of-deep-literacy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>keiferski</author><text>The issue isn&amp;#x27;t whether there are abundant &amp;quot;literate&amp;quot; resources (podcasts, in your example) but whether the average member of a democratic society is literate. More importantly, whether the elites are deeply literate.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;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 &amp;quot;literate elite&amp;quot; media, e.g. &lt;i&gt;The New Yorker&lt;/i&gt;, has dropped in quality from a few decades ago. Just read some old issues to see what I mean.&lt;p&gt;Regardless, this article is hardly the first or only study of this problem. Allan Bloom wrote &lt;i&gt;The Closing of the American Mind&lt;/i&gt; in 1987. Harold Bloom and John Simon wrote a few books on the topic.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;The_Closing_of_the_American_Mi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>DubiousPusher</author><text>This article makes far reaching societal claims with essentially no evidence. The evidence presented is in the form of &amp;quot;feelings&amp;quot; of various writers concerned of their own decline in literaryfocus.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;But let us pair anecdote to anecdote. There is a podcast network called &amp;quot;The New Books Network&amp;quot;. It examines weekly the release of new academic works. It began as &amp;quot;New Books in History&amp;quot; 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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>giovannibonetti</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s not the case anymore, there are many more rewarding paths nowadays, like getting a law degree.&lt;p&gt;So, please don&amp;#x27;t assume the quality of journalism has dropped because the literacy level of society has fallen.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Erosion of Deep Literacy</title><url>https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-erosion-of-deep-literacy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>keiferski</author><text>The issue isn&amp;#x27;t whether there are abundant &amp;quot;literate&amp;quot; resources (podcasts, in your example) but whether the average member of a democratic society is literate. More importantly, whether the elites are deeply literate.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;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 &amp;quot;literate elite&amp;quot; media, e.g. &lt;i&gt;The New Yorker&lt;/i&gt;, has dropped in quality from a few decades ago. Just read some old issues to see what I mean.&lt;p&gt;Regardless, this article is hardly the first or only study of this problem. Allan Bloom wrote &lt;i&gt;The Closing of the American Mind&lt;/i&gt; in 1987. Harold Bloom and John Simon wrote a few books on the topic.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;The_Closing_of_the_American_Mi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>DubiousPusher</author><text>This article makes far reaching societal claims with essentially no evidence. The evidence presented is in the form of &amp;quot;feelings&amp;quot; of various writers concerned of their own decline in literaryfocus.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;But let us pair anecdote to anecdote. There is a podcast network called &amp;quot;The New Books Network&amp;quot;. It examines weekly the release of new academic works. It began as &amp;quot;New Books in History&amp;quot; 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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paganel</author><text>&amp;gt; The New Yorker, has dropped in quality from a few decades ago. Just read some old issues to see what I mean.&lt;p&gt;Heck, I remember reading a cycling news article from the sports newspaper L&amp;#x27;Equipe citing Villon about 10 years ago (when that newspaper still was a proper one, i.e. big-format), judging by what most French people say on &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;soccer when it comes to L&amp;#x27;Equipe that level of literacy has not been maintained.</text></comment>