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Comment by qubax | Hacker News Reader

> Sitting down and actually grasping a full book is becoming a rare skill

Nope. People are more literate today than 70 years ago. People are better educated today and have more schooling. On average, more people have read a full book than before.

Strange to think that people are nostalgic for an era were women ( half the population ) were discouraged from going to college and minorities were denied equal access to education. Even stranger that people think that people were better educated then.

It's statistically impossible for your version of the past to be true.

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And yet, we’re seeing literacy rates drop as the first generation of “always had smartphones” kids exit high school.

Our mobile phone literary is more akin to oral language in form and complexity than long form literature or technical writing.

We're seeing test scores drop. I'd reserve all other judgement.

There are tons of other dubious and dire socioeconomic "firsts" for this generation that would affect such scores. Sugar packed, nutritionally light, chemically flavored foodstuffs. Totally-Not-poverty. 60 hour work weeks across multiple jobs...

Add to it changes in what schools teach and what tests measure. Changes in who is included in those tests against 70 years before (was 16 years old drop out tested 70 years ago? pregnant teenager?).

People are better educated today and have more schooling

Proof by insistence? When you see the written reports the kids produce at my university you can only disagree violently. Two or three years in, and they still have no command of their own native language. If they read books or the daily paper you'd expect them to pick up proper usage by osmosis, but no, not here, not at this regional 4-year college.

Sounds like a case of "elite bias" that crops up in history naturally. Previously mostly the far end of the bell curve would be the only ones you tended to hear about because they were the ones writing stuff down in detail. Roman graffiti while insightful doesn't tell you much more than humanity doesn't change much when it is just some guy boasting about his sexual conquests or insulting his neighbor. Not good for telling you who is in charge or how good a job they did.

The noneducated got largely forgotten because they left little trace. Go to a retirement home and ask about what they did for a living and how much education they had - you will find a very high percentage without even a high school diploma - and that is the recent enough that they are still alive past.

Look at the internet - when it was just universities everyone was more technically knowledgeable but now that it is widespread and accessible there is a broader range. That doesn't mean that technical adeptness is going down.

You see the Miners Institutes in South Wales and the Workingmens Institutes in Yorkshire - and the people who founded those were in school until they turned 16 and then went to work for their coal mine or cotton mill. No university required.

Proof by partial anecdote? The one that compares current students to assumed past students?

And no, not everyone pick writing ability by osmosis. Some do, others don't. Speaking as someone who read a lot and wrote badly.

https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

Sorry to burst your bubble that "kids these days..."

I'm not sure that one does pick up proper usage by osmosis. To me it seems that most of us require somebody to tell one that the writing isn't that good and requires more work, whether that someone is parent, teacher, or boss.

My brother, who teaches a college class or two as an adjunct, complains of undergraduate writing. On the other hand, I can say that I was a copy editor long ago, and there were many Ph.D.s back then who couldn't write a clear paragraph.

> Proof by insistence?

Proof by statistics and facts. Hardly any women went to college back then. So that's about 50% of the population who were less educated. Thrown in minorities who were discouraged from getting an education, it's statistical fact.

Perhaps if you bothered to read my comment rather than jumping to complain about your students...

"Strange to think that people are nostalgic for an era were women ( half the population ) were discouraged from going to college and minorities were denied equal access to education."

> When you see the written reports the kids produce at my university you can only disagree violently.

Sure, the overall quality of the student body is lower because far more people attend college. But overall, the education level is higher collectively.

Also, instead of blaming technology, have you considered the quality of educators have declined markedly?

People get confused when they read or watch movies or books from the time, because the majority of them focus on the 1% of the intellectual elite. Nowadays there is a lot less of a barrier to entry for writing and publishing written articles and literature so you see a lot more dumb books now than before, but that is just because demand was less and quality control was more strict.

Also, there was plenty of junk printed - "dime novels" or tabloids. Nobody assigns those books in school anymore, so people tend to assume that everything written in past was classic.

And also, past tended to have heavy censorship so sex and such were less in picture.

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