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The Erosion of Deep Literacy

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Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#81

Post by hue3 »

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…

How many people attended high school back in those days? Did people in every country have the same opportunities in terms of education? Remember that when people say education standards are improving, they are not talking about a particular country, but rather about an overall global measurement. I’m sure countries in the global south (where the majority of the world’s population lives) were not having those same education opportunities back in the 60s. But now they have widespread access to education.

Also, how useful it is/was reading in Anglo Saxon? And please, could you point out all those examples and arguments with verifiable evidence, rather than anecdotal ones?

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#82

Post by tomnipotent »

tgv wrote: post #62
tompccs wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually 1850s is a perfect time period to look at, since it's when compulsory education starting taking hold in the U.S.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#83

Post by hue3 »

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…

I noticed writers trying to come off as highly educated and pompous often write sentences that are too long, with too many adverbs and adjectives. Not to mention excessive use of passive voice and useless phrasal verbs. This is precisely the type of writing that needs an editor.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#85

Post by nine_k »

paganel wrote: post #46
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…

> The New Yorker, has dropped in quality from a few decades ago. Just read some old issues to see what I mean. Heck, I remember reading a cycling news article from the sports newspaper L'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 /r/soccer when it comes to L'Equipe that level of literacy has not been maintained.

I suspect that quoting Villon in France is like quoting Shakespeare in England, or Pushkin in Russia, or Goethe in Germany, etc. It's likely something you've read (and maybe learned by heart) at school.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#86

Post by Poc »

nine_k wrote: post #85
paganel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The New Yorker, has dropped in quality from a few decades ago. Just read some old issues to see what I mean. Heck, I remember reading a cycling news article from the sports newspaper L'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 /r/soccer when it comes to L'Equipe that level of literacy has not been maintained.

I suspect that quoting Villon in France is like quoting Shakespeare in England, or Pushkin in Russia, or Goethe in Germany, etc. It's likely something you've read (and maybe learned by heart) at school.

Not really, maybe it was the case 50 years ago (I don't know). Now I'd say the authors that are the most well known in France are Victor Hugo, Molière (we say that french is Molière's tongue), Voltaire and La Fontaine (every student has to learn some of his fable), maybe Baudelaire.

But then again, even tho most french people heard/learned about them, few could quote one of those author.

As for an equivalent of Shakespeare, Pushkin, Goethe or Dante, we don't have any author stamped "best French author", it's a matter of personal opinion I guess. I'd say maybe Proust, but not a lot of people read him. (There is a saying that half the people who say they read Proust, did not).

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#88

Post by scottlocklin »

hue3 wrote: post #81
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…

How many people attended high school back in those days? Did people in every country have the same opportunities in terms of education? Remember that when people say education standards are improving, they are not talking about a particular country, but rather about an overall global measurement. I’m sure countries in the global south (where the majority of the world’s population lives) were not having those same edu…

Everyone went to HS in my parents day; you can look up the graduation rate in the US; it was lower than it is now ~70%.

Reading Anglo Saxon is "useful" if you wish to understand the english language, and appreciate the high literature available in Old English. Sort of like reading Shakespeare or Camoes is useful in appreciating what the human race has done and what can be done with older versions of the language. If you're a cretinous boob, I guess learning handwriting, grammar and so on are also entirely optional. We can just teach kids how to thumb twiddle their phones, take birth control and twerk their asses.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#89

Post by galaxyLogic »

analognoise wrote: post #59
tbrownaw wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> actively seek out information that confirms their feelings and biases while blocking out other voice

That sounds about right from what I've seen on social media.

Apart from that it also seems that that is what the social media companies WANT to happen. They want to rile-up people to get them more engaged. The more engaged they are the more time they will spend on social media which causes other people to spend more time on social media and more adds they will consume.

Re: The Erosion of Deep Literacy

#90

Post by [deleted] »

scottlocklin wrote: post #58
Majromax wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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