Mass Literacy Is Overrated
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In the course of my day, I usually need to look up something at least once. Most the time it is jargon or terminology, oftentimes it is a how-to for a tool or piece of technology. I have to scroll through far too many links to get to a written explanation, and it’s never a guarantee that one exists. Instead, there is video upon video of heavily accented Indians, garishly effusive nümales, or makeup besotted eGirls spending most of the video prattling on about inanities and self-aggrandizing bullshit regarding the smashing of subscribe buttons and growing their channel or some dumb shit. These links wouldn’t be there if people didn’t click on them. In the material world, when I buy a new mini-coop or some piece of lawn furniture, my options for instructions are broken and indecipherable Chinglish, or Northern European Clip Art. Maybe I am finally crossing over into boomer-hood, but I really appreciate concise and complete written instructions, and apparently the inclusion of foreigners and females into first class citizenship means instructions have to be in picture format.
I maintain the unpopular position that probably 80% of the United States has no need of the ability to read1. There are just too many intellectually ergonomic guidance methodologies that convey all of the needed direction and explanation to perform tasks, accomplish jobs, derive meaning, and obtain fulfilment. I challenge anyone to tell me where the skill of reading is paramount for the bottom 80% of Americans, and if anyone foolishly replies, I will just as quickly point out some video or audio product or method that does the job better.
The truth is that people don't read even if they know how. They don't read books, they don't read the instructions, they don't read the rules, they don't read explanations, they don't read road signs, they don't read anything. They watch stuff, they listen to quite a bit of stuff, and they watch & listen to an aesthetic elite holding cameras in the interminable selfie-shot angle that gives them 99% of all the cues and guidance they need to be normie-strong. If you doubt this, at your next family gathering2 bring some essay that is 1.5 pages long in 12-point font single spaced, tell everybody that you are going to have them read it to themselves, then gather them around and read it aloud, then ask them to summarize what they read/heard. If your family gets past the part where you explain what you're about to do and doesn't kick you out or shame you into silence, congratulations! You are in the same group that I am: my extended family is very literate and capable, they just abjectly refuse to read except under dire compulsion. Many such cases, but not enough; Americans do not read3.
The overwhelming majority of expressed opinion is a resounding “NO” to reading, and as a Monarchist, I see this as a win. Reading should be reserved for those that deserve it, for those that are willing to do it, for those that enjoy it. If you told any specific group of Americans that they, by law, could no longer get a library card, the only ones that would push back are Karens and spiritual redditors, who would also whine just as loudly if you mandated that everybody had to have a library card. Very few people would care, so why would it then be prudent to spend billions upon billions of dollars building libraries, hiring staff, printing library cards, and running the entire apparatus? It would be a phenomenal waste of resources that helps no one but a paltry few directly and a slightly larger crowd who makes a career of patting themselves on the back4.
If you are somehow reading this and not in the 20% of the Literastocracy, the parallel I am making is with the public school system. Public education is a massive waste of resources that was only ever intended to have one outcome: obedient, replaceable, atomized labor force members. Anyone who is worth actually educating is shunted into the private school system, and any of those that have less than what it takes get diverted back out to the public university system. Neither the intelligent wealthy nor the elites trust the education of their children to public employees because they are terrible at their jobs and they ruin everything they touch.
If the goal is rampant employment potential, we would be better off placing kids in front of screens as early as possible5 and having them learn Excel and Zoom in tandem with sitting through HR training sessions. The vast majority of people are terminally "monkey see/monkey do" and that is a much easier thing to work with than the completely fabricated idea that literacy is somehow fundamental to civil society. It is a massive waste of time and resources to keep normal humans cooped up in classrooms with yammering nags, dimwitted spinsters, and spiteful crones plowing through textbooks they themselves do not actually read and have no hope of understanding. Again and again, every aspect of modern society is predicated on deceit, a structure of inherent dishonesty that has us lying to ourselves every morning as our first act of the day.
A much better system would be to have education in the home that teaches children how to be baseline decent and courteous to strangers while practicing with touch screens and the like. This, combined with year-round sports programs, massive and intricate playgrounds, and all manner of physical diversion, should be the sum total of "public education." Obviously, parents like me would secretly teach our children to read, and that would be okay so long as it is kept private. When kids are between the ages of 10 and 12, they should then be given a 3-6 month opportunity to learn to read, assuming their parents are willing to pay for the class and qualify for the voucher. If they don't get it in 6 months, then congratulations! Your sweet little child has graduated with full honors and can now go join the touch screen/ video guided workforce! If they do learn how to read in that period, they can then progress to the next stage of entry into the academic aristocracy. From that first point, it should be a 1-3 times a week for 2 hours a day activity, and only the ones who choose to read in their free time will actually continue down that type of education path.
As you recoil from this ugly vision of an illiterate future, understand that it is already happening. I rely on spellcheck because I speak way smarter than I spell, but if you took it away, shame and mockery would drive me to the dictionary and thesaurus, both of which I have. If it became illegal to read without a permit, I would get one. If I couldn’t get one, I would read illegally. People do what they want to do, forcing them to do otherwise requires massive energy and a very good reason. Why should we waste time and money forcing people to learn to do something they hate, particularly if it is extraneous to the maintenance of living? If the necessity of literacy were removed and devices & methods relying on the visual and the auditory were deployed, what would we actually lose as a society? Scarcity breeds value. I want good books, good writers, and good thinkers, sharing their brilliance and perspective to make my day brighter and life fuller. In turn, skilled people can take what we read and transmogrify it into visual works that enrich the Commons.
We don’t need to hear from everyone. Most people have very little to say. Listening and understanding are valuable tools for many, but the effort to attain mass literacy in the United States presented a massive exploit for the worst of humanity to insinuate themselves into positions of power and demand we call the fat “beautiful,” the ugly “pretty,” the dumb “brilliant,” and the evil, “good.” If you look back at the progressives that drove the “mass education” initiatives of the late 19th/early 20th century, you will see a mess of spinster ne’er-do-wells, under-sexed and over empowered, demanding a job placement program for themselves and their spiteful, ugly friends. Let’s shutter the schools, repurpose the libraries, and get people outside and active. The nebbish, bookish, academically inclined, and studious by nature will be found hiding out with any book they can find, and they can be shunted into activities where they will grow and develop. There is no need to let thespians, lesbians, and busybodies force us and our children to while away our youth learning useless skills for pointless reasons. Burn the books, then print them again, one at a time, for those that promise to earn it.
If you are a millennial like me, this statement is probably driving some part of you insane. One of the few shared dogmas left between the actual left, the ostensible left, the moronic moderates, the ostensible right, and the actual right in America is the importance of reading. But just like the monomaniacal fear of cancer from cigarettes, they are merely repeating a very effective propaganda operation against their grandparents.
assuming you have family that gathers, of course
Before the limey nitwits with bad teeth start to guffaw, before the unwashed French let slip a honhonhon, the entirety of NATO is as bad or worse than America. Americans consciously choose not to read, Europeans meekly except that certain things are unreadable. This is very much pot to kettle, but at least our commoners choose to be dumb and aren't dumb by breeding and default. I guess having the colonies win your world wars for you does have a few negative consequences.
I want to be very clear here: with the exception of the meager handful of /ourguys/ working in the education system undercover and at daily risk of being doxxed, every single person attached to public schooling, in any way and for any reason, is a part of the problem. Resign, retire, or quit. You have done enough damage.
In case you are unaware, this is already happening. I am overwhelmed by the number of parents that use tablets as behavioral modification devices. Utterly fucking disgusting. Imagine ceding the battlefield to Ms. Retard Rachel. Imagine letting Blippi the Kid-toucher teach your child anything at all. I am fairly certain I will get a bit of hate for this screed, but so many parents let their pre-literate children glue their brains to the iPad, allow pernicious and disgusting influences into their kids’ souls, sit idly by as Entertainment Media turns their sons into effeminate pseudo-sodomites and their daughters into obnoxious slatterns, and then they have the audacity to come into my church, into our spaces, and bemoan the state of society. You want to act like cattle, fine. But you also have to accept the branding, the injections, the removal of sovereignty, and the ritualized sacrifice commanded by your betters. As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord, and we shall do so with our hands, our hearts, and our heads. And lots, and I do mean LOTS, of books.
I remember taking the level 5 test and phew, it was sixth grade reading level text, at best. This doesn't coincide with anecdotal narratives of earlier times, where it seemed a larger percentage read far more extensive works. There's good reason to believe mass literacy campaigns make things worse.
You might enjoy Lionel Shriver's recently published novel Mania. This is set in an alternate timeline of the last twenty years or so. It becomes unlawful to favour the intelligent over the less so - in fact to even suggest that intelligence is a thing opens one up to being cancelled. Kids who excel at school are bullied into failure, or concealing their smarts. Swathes of words and phrases that suggest cognitive inequality are memory-holed. Joe Biden is eleected on a landslide as he's a man that noone would feel inferior to. To set a text for one's students called The Idiots is to risk being dismissed. The students won't read it, any more than they read anything else, and they certainly wouldn't pass a comprehension test, but testing is elitist and thus abolished. You get the idea.