[ryao]

Such sentiments have been expressed so many times that I have lost track of all of the times variations on them have been expressed. I think it started with Socrates who claimed the written word would damage human recall. When nobody believed him and he became popular because of the written word, people inverted “literacy is bad” into “literacy is good”. In more recent times, I believe radio and TV were said to be the start of modern illiteracy.

By the way, for what it is worth, only 2% of the population can read at a college level. It had been that way for so long that I heard that the category was merged into the high school level several years ago to make the literacy rate in the top bracket 4% instead of the prior 2%. i.e. “modern illiteracy” started a long time ago if we go by numbers.

[dasil003]

Maybe Socrates was correct? I certainly think Google has damaged my memory, or maybe just age, hard to say.

[ryao]

Who knows? The guy was not a really good teacher. His student Plato ignored the meaning of what he said about learning to write a book on it. A major point of the book was that reading the book was pointless because it was a form of sophism.

Before I am downvoted into oblivion, the above text is half joking and half serious. Socrates in Plato’s Republic really does make the case that formal training via methods intended to teach is pointless by comparing education to training horses. I made that point in my college philosophy class hoping the professor would skip it on the basis that it was a bad book (my thoughts on a book that suggested you could not learn its material by being lead to it - see the cave analogy). The professor then stopped the entire class to try to make sure everyone understood the point and then continued as if the material was not criticizing him.

[lupusreal]

Probably so. Socrates witnessed the end of the Athenian Golden Age during his lifetime.

[FrustratedMonky]

Yes. People forget that Charles Dickens was considered trash, pulp, un-intellectual. That people were reading such trash would lead to the downfall of civilization. Basically what everyone says today about whatever latest media type.

[GeoAtreides]

You lie:

"From the beginning of his career in the 1830s, his achievements in English literature were compared to those of Shakespeare."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens#Reputation

[FrustratedMonky]

lie is really strong term in this case.

in his time he was not 'literature', it was pulp, common, 'popular'.

is Stephen King today, 'literature' or just 'pulp fiction'?

this is a subjective thing. authors that are 'popular' sometimes aren't considered 'literature'.

in your very own citation:::

"Among fellow writers, there was a range of opinions on Dickens. Poet laureate, William Wordsworth (1770–1850), thought him a "very talkative, vulgar young person", adding he had not read a line of his work, while novelist George Meredith (1828–1909), found Dickens "intellectually lacking"."

"Henry James denied him a premier position, calling him "the greatest of superficial novelists":

[9283409232]

Literacy rates have fallen in the past 20 years and something tells me that Dickens is not responsible.

[FrustratedMonky]

The point is, that when Charles Dickens came out, people also blamed him on lowering the literacy rate. Called something different back then.

But maybe, it's not population wide.

More people were reading Dickens, so rate of reading in population was increasing. But the elites that thought everything should be in Greek/Latin, thought everyone reading Dickens was a downgrade.

Every generation argument.

Weren't Egyptian hieroglyphs basically emoji's.

[piltdownman]

Outside of classical studies, papish notions regarding Greek and Latin were decidedly unpopular in Church of England era Britain (for obvious reasons!).

The real argument against Dickens at the time was more to do with his habit of serialising his novels in cheap newspapers. This then rendered his subject matter of choice - social commentary, fiscal egalitarianism, and empathy for the poor - a little too accessible for the comfort of the ruling classes.

He did so even in his own Newspaper 'Household Words' - which while championing the cause of the poor and working classes, did so by addressing itself almost exclusively to the middle classes!

"...We seek to bring to innumerable homes, from the stirring world around us, the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil, that are not calculated to render any of us less ardently persevering in ourselves, less faithful in the progress of mankind, less thankful for the privilege of living in this summer-dawn of time." Charles Dickens

He started this with 'Hard Times' - a thinly veiled socialist critique against unbridled capitalism and immorality. It specifically targeted Edwin Chadwick, who helped design the Malthusian basis of the appalling Poor Law of 1834, but was more generally an attack on the Utilitarians of the time. Shaw described it as a "passionate revolt against the whole industrial order of the modern world".

[FrustratedMonky]

ah. I did not know that. Good point. His subject matter put a negative spin on the 'elite's, and so naturally they criticized him.

[mistrial9]

my elderly neighbor sometimes mistakes the difference between one hundred thousand and one hundred million. The point is, she thinks they are similar numbers. So when "people who are capable of reading Dickens blame Dickens for being less literate" and "people who read Twitter/X blame Twitter/X for being less literate" .. perhaps there really is a difference in those two despite the claim being similar.