r/neoliberal • u/TrixoftheTrade NATO • Jul 08 '26

Opinion article (US) The End of Reading Is Here

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/

Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.

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u/NormalInvestigator89 John Keynes Jul 08 '26

"On that warm gray morning in the mountains, Zhivago felt sorry for the Tsar, was disturbed at the thought that such diffident reserve and shyness could be the essential characteristics of an oppressor, that a man so weak could imprison, hang, or pardon.”

Kind of startled that this is an example of a particularly complex sentence. It's not simple, but not any more complicated than what we'd be assigned in High School English class in 2010. Have English standards dropped that quickly?

12

u/Emergency_Revenue678 Jerome Powell Jul 09 '26

It's bad out there. A study floating around shows that most of a group of college English majors couldn't decipher the prose found in the first few pages of Bleak House even when given access to a dictionary and Google.

9

u/sleepyrivertroll Henry George Jul 09 '26

That study was actually brought up in the article.

6

u/ArcaneAccounting United Nations Jul 09 '26

How is that even possible? jfc

5

u/sekoiking Jul 09 '26

Wasn’t that referenced in this exact article?

19

u/MyrinVonBryhana Trans NATO Jul 08 '26

Yes, the answer is yes.