It’s worth recalling that mass literacy is only about 300 years old, so the modern culture of private reading is only slightly older than the United States, which is probably itself a consequence of mass literacy - sparked by Luther, Gutenberg, etc. Ironically, today the USA is also probably leading the decline in mass literacy woth a “post-literate president.” Maybe book-reading will eventually become an anachronistic hobby, although even Thomas Jefferson made this dire prophecy too about fiction [1].
“Acoustic representations activated in silent reading are best characterized as inner speech rather than as abstract phonological codes.” [2]
There's different levels to literacy, there was quite sobering research published recently about English college students who couldn't parse the opening paragraphs of Bleak House, even with assistance[1].
It's not been limited to the US but in the developed world broadly cognitive performance has been crashing for about a decade, i.e. the 'learning recession'. Talk to anyone who teaches these days and you usually get a fairly depressing story about kids being unable to decode basic information
Reading the paragraph given to the students was very interesting. For context I'm much older, English is my second language, and it is very mediocre (but still much better than my generation average because of my work).
There were some words I didn't know either because of the cultural context (Michaelmas, lord chancellor, Lincoln's Inn Hall) or because of my limited English (the word mire for example). But in all cases I could infer enough meaning that I was able to read the paragraph without losing too much (except for Lincoln's Inn where I thought it was a literal inn but it's not very important for the understanding in the paragraph).
I would say I'm surprised that it was so hard for college students majoring in English but I also noticed that the young generation in my country has a big problem understanding figurative speech, worse than just a general lack of knowledge (it didn't help that it has been politically useful to pretend not to understand figure of speech for the last 15-20 years).
itchingsphynx · · focus · HN ↗
“Acoustic representations activated in silent reading are best characterized as inner speech rather than as abstract phonological codes.” [2]
1. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZyM-26EN9jpQa5BZoBCHLjE" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-...
2. <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03205520" rel="nofollow">https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03205520
claiir · · focus · HN ↗
[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...
Barrin92 · · focus · HN ↗
It's not been limited to the US but in the developed world broadly cognitive performance has been crashing for about a decade, i.e. the 'learning recession'. Talk to anyone who teaches these days and you usually get a fairly depressing story about kids being unable to decode basic information
[1]<a href="https://www.adorableandharmless.com/p/college-english-majors-cant-read" rel="nofollow">https://www.adorableandharmless.com/p/college-english-majors...
poulpy123 · · focus · HN ↗
There were some words I didn't know either because of the cultural context (Michaelmas, lord chancellor, Lincoln's Inn Hall) or because of my limited English (the word mire for example). But in all cases I could infer enough meaning that I was able to read the paragraph without losing too much (except for Lincoln's Inn where I thought it was a literal inn but it's not very important for the understanding in the paragraph).
I would say I'm surprised that it was so hard for college students majoring in English but I also noticed that the young generation in my country has a big problem understanding figurative speech, worse than just a general lack of knowledge (it didn't help that it has been politically useful to pretend not to understand figure of speech for the last 15-20 years).
thinkingemote · · focus · HN ↗
is tomorrow!