The refusal to read. . .

So accustomed to blame Covid for everything, it has been easy to see how the choices made during the pandemic have had lasting consequences upon the educational endeavor of elementary, high school, and college students.  Along with that is the accurate read of a digital culture in which the screen defines all that is relevant as well as good.  But is there more to this?

For probably 50 years or more, the educational institutions of America have typically complained about the rejected Western culture and its values as racist, patriarchal, misogynistic, and every other evil identified by modern society.  This is particularly true of colleges and universities but it is also true of high schools and elementary schools.  In fact, the schools have accompanied this disdain for traditional Western culture with a supposed liberated and egalitarian ideal in which the GLBTQ+.  The fruits of this have been seen in the lack of familiarity with the great body of literature that was once considered essential to a well-rounded education.  It has also shown up as a deficiency not simply of knowledge of these classics but a refusal to read much at all.  So the denigration of the Western literature once deemed classics has not been replaced with another body of literature but with a disdain for anything but a Cliff Notes style of talking points for any book length materials.  It should not surprise us that after a couple of generations putting down the great authors and the body of their work, few students will be interested in anything but a brief characterization of this literature by nameless and faceless others whose words are the result of a brief internet search.

This is not only true for those in public schools but also for the elite educational institutions that were once the coveted programs of learning across the economic spectrum.  If being able to read or having any degree of familiarity with the often difficult but great books of literature were a minimal requirement for admission into the Ivy League (or any other university), how many students would matriculate into those institutions today?  For with the lack of ability has come the refusal to read such works or any book length materials.  It is a common complaint across all kinds of educational institutions that students no longer pay much attention to the required reading lists or texts.  If they do, they rely on Google searches to find out for them in a few words what these longer tomes are about.  It stands to reason then that they are not only ill-quipped to discuss them but also unable to judge which treatment of the work are accurate or not.  If the future looks like AI, then it not only will end up doing the work of writing for these students but also the critical work of interpreting what is read.  Our children will be consuming the bland diet of artificial intelligence as the pablum from which they cannot escape.

So what will be done?  Will we accept this as the new normal to which we must adjust or will we break out of the self-imposed prison of dependence upon others to know what should be ours to know?  I wish I could say that I was hopeful but there are few voices today willing to deny that AI is our savior and that a book is no longer passe.  If you want to be shocked, do an interest search of what was standard reading material for a typical middle or high schooler a hundred years ago and you will find something that is not even typical for a post-graduate university student today.  

Accompanying this is also a remarkable ignorance of the Bible.  There was a time when a great orator could depend upon people recognizing quotes from the Scriptures and so these peppered the writings and public speech of our politicians and educators and statesmen.  Now, Lincoln would have to resort to quotes from Bluey or the latest Tik Tok personality to pepper a Gettysburg style address.  How do you think that would sound a hundred and fifty years later?  For all of this is not only applicable to the moment but to our legacy to those who would come after us.  Let us also not forget how easily it is to be led astray when we lack any real knowledge of primary sources.  Not long ago the Hollywood elite was upset by the use of their images for something they thought was masterminded by a Nazi sympathizer when it turned out to be the fruit of Artificial Intelligence.  

The refusal to read is almost a greater offense than the inability to do so.  Where one is merely the lack of a skill, the other is the refusal to be enlightened at all.  If this is the future you would like, at least give me the chance to offer an alternative vision of what might be.