The Erosion of Deep Literacy • Hacker News Board

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#61

Post by ultramundane8 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

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.

The author also says this, but also basically claims literacy hasn't improved humanity. So you repeated him without adding anything (in fact subtracting much), and I repeated myself. If anything, we've either supported my point or demonstrated your lack of deep literacy.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#62

Post by tgv » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

tompccs wrote: post #57

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 en…

The cost of reading may be lower than ever, but people read less than before. And there's no need to compare current figures to the 1850s: the 1970s will do fine.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#63

Post by superflit » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

EL_Loco wrote: post #40

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…

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…

That is the main problem.

We don't have Elites or high class anymore.*

We only have "averages".

* Talking about education not economical status

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#64

Post by Kaibeezy » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

The article has been posted on HN half a dozen times since it was published earlier this year. It’s no surprise people feel it’s worth bringing up here. I wonder why it happens to be getting traction this time.

I printed it out on actual paper after following one of the links from several weeks ago, but only got around to reading it last week. Since then I have forwarded it to several colleagues and friends.

It may be the scariest thing I’ve ever read. It’s struck a gong of inexorable doom resonating through the largest fragments of my lifetime collection of existential worry. The bad things that happen; the good things that don’t. The forces that didn’t make sense; now they sort of do. Not happy.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#65

Post by glial » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #49

There are over 4 million of people with PhD only in the US, whopping 14% of the population, that’s more than the percentage of people with a comparable level education in any other period of history in any part of the world. This makes the whole premise of this article seem very dubious.

Curious where you get your numbers, because I think they're wrong.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#66

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:37 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…

>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?

As if our politicians are some highly educated bunch anyway.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#67

Post by MajorBee » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

Unrelated to the content of the article -- it appears that the font used in the article has (some) letters "dipping down" below others; for example, the "t" and "i" in "noticing" don't have their bottoms at quite the same level. I don't know if this is just an illusion caused by font thickness or if this is stylistic choice, but I've seen a few of these styles floating around (usually in these "serious" longform articles).

Since this doesn't technically have anything to do with the spacing between letters, is it accurate to call this a feature of kerning? If not, what is the term here? Is it mean to be evocative of typewritten text? While I don't necessarily dislike it, it did prove to be mildly distracting, hence the questions.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#68

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:56 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…

[deleted]

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#69

Post by paultopia » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:59 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…

I'm not even particularly convinced that academia is consistent with such a notion of "deep literacy." On day 1 of grad school in the humanities/social sciences, one is handed a reading list of far more books than one can ever hope to "deep" read, and one very quickly learns to skim them and get the meat of it. Advice for beginning academics is filled with blog posts with titles like "how to gut a book."

This continues even post tenure. There are dozens to hundreds of important works on anything about which one might write; unless one wishes to publish one paper per five years, one continues one's grad school habit of reading at breakneck speed and with a sense of panic about the possibility that more works on one's subject are actually being published at the very moment that one is reading the previous literature.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#70

Post by TheCoelacanth » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #49

There are over 4 million of people with PhD only in the US, whopping 14% of the population, that’s more than the percentage of people with a comparable level education in any other period of history in any part of the world. This makes the whole premise of this article seem very dubious.

4 million is a bit over 1% of the US population, not 14%.