The Erosion of Deep Literacy • Hacker News Board

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#51

Post by Majromax » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

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…

> This was a meme a few years ago: a 1800s era Harvard entrance exam, and Harvard was the easy school

And thank goodness we've moved past such facile exams. Few of those questions test any sort of understanding, comprehension, or synthesis -- the hallmarks of the so-called "deep reading" lionized in the above-linked article.

There's no call to analyze a logical argument or to make a persuasive argument of one's own. The vast majority of questions amount to memorization and recall. The only thing truly tested here is whether the applicant was of the proper social class to have had the privilege of a preparatory school or private tutoring.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#52

Post by etempleton » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

This article mourns the loss of something that only has ever existed among a very small minority of any population in recorded history. Deep Literacy, as the author defines it, relies on the luxury of time that most individuals around the world do not have. It is the great disconnect between academia and the rest of society. This article took a very large amount of my time to read in proportion and relation to the point it was trying to make. It could have easily been 500-1000 words, but it was written in the scholarly tradition of more is more. It did not value the readers time.

Are there more distractions now? Certainly, but it is an elitist view to act as if this impacts the amount of deep reading your average citizen of any given country partakes in. If anything, the proliferation of smart phones will increase base level literacy among the masses globally allowing more individuals from more diverse backgrounds the opportunity to one day have the opportunity to engage in deep literacy.

What we are seeing now is more people engaging in conversations and debates that were previously relegated to the elites—academics, politicians, aristocrats. Are their opinions impacted by their lack of deep literacy? Certainly, but their opinions always have been, their voices just weren’t heard quite so loudly before.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#53

Post by spacemansam » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

1996 wrote: post #41

galangalalgol wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read Carr, but the article makes it sound as if only reading attention span is addressed. I am astounded at my inability to watch films I enjoyed as a young adult because the scenes are too long and the story unfolds too slowly.

Likewise, I am astounded at my inability to watch most modern media, because the scenes are too short and the story unfold too quickly. I feel that the most in the Simpsons: same characters, but it feels so different than the early seasons!! My absolute favorite sci-fi show is Star Trek TOS. It's not from my generation, but I relate far more to the way the story is told - without 3 different plotline unfolding at onc…

Hear hear, I wondered if I was alone in this. There's shows I'd watch and even (as far as I can tell) enjoy, but after a few episodes, I'd skip to Wikipedia for a summary so i didn't have to spend a couple weeks just watching. And it's only over the last 5 years or so. No idea what happened to my attention span.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#54

Post by throwaway2245 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

etempleton wrote: post #52

This article mourns the loss of something that only has ever existed among a very small minority of any population in recorded history. Deep Literacy, as the author defines it, relies on the luxury of time that most individuals around the world do not have. It is the great disconnect between academia and the rest of society. This article took a very large amount of my time to read in proportion and relation to the po…

> This article took a very large amount of my time to read in proportion

I read it, and I felt that I would have learned more, been more entertained, and had more insight into creators' direction and meaning, if I had instead used that time flicking through TikToks.

The author's "you do not cultivate a capacity to think, imagine, and create" - seems very wrong and itself unimaginative.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#55

Post by DubiousPusher » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #21

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…

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 Ne…

> The issue isn't whether there are abundant "literate" resources (podcasts, in your example)

It was exactly my point that this is not a good argument. But rather that if one wishes to indulge in argument by anecdote, they can find ample evidence for the opposing view of this article.

> 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

Was Chester A Arthur "deeply literate"? William McKinley? Taft? Harding? Hoover? I suppose I know Teddy Roosevelt was having read his biography but all this again is anecdote.

> Even the "literate elite" media, e.g. The New Yorker, has dropped in quality from a few decades ago.

You'll forgive me if I find a subjective evaluation with a sample size of one unconvincing.

> Regardless, this article is hardly the first or only study of this problem.

Yes most writings about the subject are the same kind of anecdotal grumblings free of concrete evidence. Frankly, as is just about every argument Bloom ever made.

I'm willing to accept the author's conclusion. And honestly I don't really care whether it is true or the opposite is. But if an author wishes for me to carry around their belief as part of my concept of the world they have to do better than this.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#56

Post by bobcostas55 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #13

I like to read books. I do not like to read long-form articles. Why? Because the vast majority of long-form articles are written by people who are lacking a quality editor. They are virtually always a superfluous, stream-of-consciousness verbal vomit that beats the reader over the head with information that is tangentially related to the purpose of the article, and they are usually 4-5x as long as they really need to…

As the saying goes, "Most books should be blog posts, most blog posts should be tweets, and most tweets should be deleted."

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#57

Post by tompccs » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

etempleton wrote: post #52

This article mourns the loss of something that only has ever existed among a very small minority of any population in recorded history. Deep Literacy, as the author defines it, relies on the luxury of time that most individuals around the world do not have. It is the great disconnect between academia and the rest of society. This article took a very large amount of my time to read in proportion and relation to the po…

Not only that, printed word used to be expensive! There's a remark made by George Orwell somewhere in which he addresses the claim made in the early 20th century that the working class don't read because they can't afford books. He counters that assertion by calculating that, based on the cost of going to the pictures, and the number of times a year a working-class person is likely to go, they could afford to buy enough second-hand books to read for several hours a week.

On the other hand, for anyone with a smartphone (something like 90% of adults in the developed world), there is zero marginal cost to accessing unlimited written word. I think, on the contrary, we've never as a society been more literate. Never before has such a large proportion of our communication been through text. The "deep reading" complaint might be re-characterised (and in fairness the article hints at it) as the fact that the internet makes many-to-many communication by written word as cheap as one-to-many. When the economic barriers to reaching an audience are removed, the written word more closely represents the average reader, which has never been closer than today to the average person.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#58

Post by scottlocklin » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

Majromax wrote: post #51

scottlocklin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> This was a meme a few years ago: a 1800s era Harvard entrance exam, and Harvard was the easy school And thank goodness we've moved past such facile exams. Few of those questions test any sort of understanding, comprehension, or synthesis -- the hallmarks of the so-called "deep reading" lionized in the above-linked article. There's no call to analyze a logical argument or to make a persuasive argument of one's own.…

No dude; that's what they used to teach in High School. Shitty high schools. Vastly more than your average Ph.D. in classics in current year ever achieves; you can have a great laugh trolling modern classics profs in the US with latin limericks they can't possibly understand. Let alone the algebra parts.

I snork at the rest. The present Harvard entrance exam is a great test for social signalling that you're stinking rich. Not many actual high school students actually form a non profit and get 1600 SAT or whatever; unless mom and dad are loaded and did it for them.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#59

Post by analognoise » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #4

galaxyLogic wrote: post #3

What has changed is that most everyone now has the ability to contribute to civil discussion on social media. That means even very ignorant people. This must have some kind of effect on the public discourse I would think

Not sure how it bears on the article, but yes I'd think that "very ignorant people" being able to more easily engage in discussion with those different from themselves and learn new facts and perspectives ought to very much raise the level of public discourse.

That's the THEORY. The water level will rise and we'll all be smarter.

What actually happens is Trump, anti-vaxxers, anti-science people find each other and they actually grow in numbers. It becomes harder to distinguish reality from bullshit.

That fundamental tenet of liberalism is wrong. Seriously wrong, and needs to be reworked in light of new information.

People don't critically examine new information and become smarter as a whole. They band together, form tribes, and actively seek out information that confirms their feelings and biases while blocking out other voices, and social media has made it worse as has the rapidity of modern communications.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#60

Post by DubiousPusher » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #50

keiferski wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ne…

A member of a democratic society, the media and the elites are all different groups and their “deep literacy” may or may not correlate. To me the decline of perceived “literacy” among the elites seems like a direct effect of democratization and doesn’t represent any change of the distribution of “deep literacy” in the whole population.

Exactly. Most polticial elites go to the same snazzy colleges as their forebearers where they read Homer and Thucydides. One of the big differences is the kind of public image politicians want to project.

Even still, a lot of this is just our perception. We don't dwell on the history of pugilists that slept in meat lockers or boys sloshing their father's pale of beer as the retrieve it up the street or the thousands of petty riots or the vulgar theater which was always popular. We ignore the masses and read exclusively of the elites or again of the most organized and well written of non-elites.

Yet we must live our present lives without the many professors and researchers having filtered life for us already. So it is likely we see a fairer sampling of common ideas.