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The Erosion of Deep Literacy

nationalaffairs.com

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Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#31

Post by sergeykish »

g5095 wrote: post #26

LOOK AT THE MEDIUM. I pick up a book, it has HEFT. I FEEL satisfied with my selection in hand, that I have acquired a goodly amount of reading material on a subject or by an author who I feel is worthy of my time. I open the book and skim the contents page, a worthy array of subjects that pique my interest entice me on but the MEDIUM prevents me from an indulgent glance. I understand inherently that I am expected to…

Paper medium is not that different — I can estimate size by sight, I can skim through pages, check pictures. It is different in publishing, books are often good enough to buy.

But yes, scrollbar helps to "finish" article even if it is not worth it. Disable in Chrome:

    html::-webkit-scrollbar { display: none }
https://github.com/sergeykish/hide-scrollbars

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#32

Post by bem94 »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #12

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…

> 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.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#33

Post by 314 »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #12

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…

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?

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#35

Post by niek_pas »

auganov wrote: post #29

If abstractness and departure from orality is the ultimate goal, you'd want highly technical writing, mathematical notation and so forth. The type of reading the author encourages - long-form societal discourse, is still relatively oral. There are many contradictory ideas in this piece. Speed-reading is cited as a sign of poor literacy but then so is vocalization. The two are pretty much opposites.

Mathematical notation is highly limited in the sets of ideas it can express.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#39

Post by EL_Loco »

samoa42 wrote: post #10
ultramundane8 wrote: post #6

This is a really interesting piece. I've been wanting to rage against illiteracy lately but I'm not too active in public discourse (even this). That said, I don't think it's some secret key to improving humanity. I think this because literacy is ultimately a luxury, even in modernity. The literate may be able to form more nuanced opinions, but that matters less if they can't increase literacy consistently across popu…

"those who dont know history are bound to repeat it" literacy is the only way to improve humanity.

I would say the ability to think critically, coupled with a good literacy foundation, is more important than just literacy.

I know many will say literacy is the building block to critical thinking, or something along those lines, but I don't know, I've now known many, many examples that don't support the idea.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#40

Post by EL_Loco »

scottlocklin wrote: post #27
tbrownaw wrote: post #7

Educational attainment has been increasing steadily since at least 1940 (as far back as the chart on Wikipedia shows): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_... I am skeptical that this "deep literacy" is in fact eroding, since it's what lets you learn a topic well enough to get a degree. It's also hard work; I'll put in the effort on topics that matter -- as in topics that usefully inform my fu…

>Educational attainment has been increasing steadily since at least 1940 Absolute hogwash. In my parents day (in the 60s) high school included mastery of at least one foreign language and one dead language. Mom and dad read Beowulf in high school, in Anglo Saxon; something modern English majors don't do. And my parents were working class people at working class schools in a factory town. Moving the goalposts to allow…

Except the number of people who received that education was much smaller than the number of people who go to average-quality schools today.

Here in Brazil people complain about the public schools of today, saying that 50 years ago it was great, there was latin, and french, and this and that. They all forget that the public schools from the 1960's were for the middle and upper classes (here in Brzil). The poor either had a couple of years of some very basic education, or just went to work and had none at all.

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