What is the worth of words?

[lyore]

Kinda old, but: What is the Worth of Words?

It’s time to acknowledge that in a truly multimedia environment of 2025, most Americans don’t need to understand more than a hundred or so words at a time... Young people today, however, have plenty of literacy for everyday activities such as reading signs and package labels, and writing brief e-mails and text messages that don’t require accurate spelling or grammar... In 2025, higher-level literacy is probably necessary for only 10 percent of the American population.

While the author may have a point about the changing educational requirements of modern society, I question his central thesis that higher tech = less reading. I've certainly been employed in jobs where anything more than basic literacy was not required, but then again, these where low-tech, manual labour jobs - the very sort of jobs that technology tends to replace. Of course, I guess you could argue that the people running the technology don't need to be able to read either - until something breaks. Eventually, someone will have to RTFM. This assumes, of course, that the people designing the system were capable of writing one in a coherent manner. (Ok, he did say that some people will have to be able to read properly - I'm just dubious that he regards only 10% of the population as employed in jobs which require any sort of 'abstract communication' or 'organising and planning large enterprises'.)

I'd certainly hate to see the reaction of my boss to the statement that 'writing brief e-mails and text messages don't require accurate spelling and grammar'. And I can't wait for him to start communicating with me via pictures and text messages...

Anyway, I can (kind of) understand, if not agree with the majority of his arguments, although I think they are biased by a tech-centric view which regards other skills are inferior and ultimately unnecessary. Until I got to this:

The nation’s leaders must be able to read; for those who follow, the ability should be strictly optional.

Does this sound like an incredibly bad idea to anyone else? A highly educated 'ruling class' and an a semi-illiterate population? Cause that's always worked out so well...

Or this entire thing could be some kind of weird joke, and I'm just to tired to get it. *yawn*

Comments

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

Okay, I *hope* this article is intended to be satirical. Because otherwise, it makes very little sense to me!

The real value of reading as opposed to audio or text messaging is that it's *incredibly efficient*. People can read much faster than they can listen. What humans have done is adapted their most sophisticated, information rich sense- vision- to assimilate a different kind of data.

And multimedia doesn't replace text for even simple applications. Imagine reading a menu where all you had was pictures? They might look tasty, but it won't tell you what kind of sauce is on it. Or worse, a menu where you had to press a button to have someone read it aloud to you. Agonizingly slow. Sure, people could develop a system of icons for simple stuff- and have- think about symbols for rest rooms or international street signs. But text easily conveys both the simple and the complex.

I currently work in a factory that employs a lot of people in 'low end' blue-collar jobs, and I'm here to tell you, lack of literacy is an serious impediment to anything more complicated than mopping floors. We teach people the technical terms they need relating to our business, but the information is written down. And any method that used multimedia or audio recording as a replacement is going to slow things down so severely that it will *never* be accepted. We need better-educated people, not worse. And IMO the very few jobs that can be done without literacy will be more than adequately filled by the small minority incapable of learning adequate reading skills.

And your point about the educated ruling class vs. the semi-illiterate population. Yeah, incredibly bad is one way to put it. Recipe for disaster is another way. The biggest problem we have now in our application of democracy is that people don't read and think enough about it. We're complacent, we take it for granted. Encourage people to fail to acquire both critical thinking skills (already an endangered skill!) and tools for gathering data, and it only gets worse. Which is not to say there aren't some would-be imperialists out there who'd like to see that happen. But on the day this country only has a 5% literacy rate, America will be truly dead.

//end rant...*g*//

[lyore.livejournal.com]

I checked out some of his other articles, and it doesn't look like he's in the habit of writing satire, so I think it is serious.

I think the media that things are communicated can be optimised for the particular situation, and to be fair, there are time when a picture (or sketch, schematic or flow diagram) really is worth a thousand words. But there are some things (most things, I'd say) where changing from text to image/sound would either be slower, more inefficient, or just downright unclear/confusing.

I currently work in a factory that employs a lot of people in 'low end' blue-collar jobs, and I'm here to tell you, lack of literacy is an serious impediment to anything more complicated than mopping floors.

I worked in a abattoir for a while, and I have to admit, the majority of the labourer's jobs could by someone with the reading level of a 5 year old. But I think these kinds of situations are in a minority, and I certainly don't think they are any sort of basis for claiming that in general people don't need to be able to read to survive.

We need better-educated people, not worse

Absolutely! It isn't just the lack of literacy itself, or what may or may not be required in a job, it's the knock-on effect of other areas of education and society in general.

[paradox-dragon.livejournal.com]

reading itself is an inherently artificial human activity, an invention that in evolutionary terms has existed only for a blink of an eye.

Yeah, a lot like civilization.

The nation’s leaders must be able to read; for those who follow, the ability should be strictly optional.

No cookies for them. Also, I am having strange flashbacks to eighth grade history and the Protestant Reformation and printing presses. Why, brain, why?

I was unsure when reading the article if it was supposed to be some kind of, "Look, this is the way people could think in 2025! The horror!" sort of piece, or if it was actually saying what I thought it was saying. But I just woke up, and am also tired.

In all, I find the thesis idiotic. As you pointed out, the jobs requiring the least amount of literacy, in my experience, are exactly the ones that technology will replace. And this

We have made at least two generations of American children miserable trying to teach them a skill that only a small percentage of them really need. And we have wasted billions of dollars that might well have gone for more practical education and training.

and the earlier bit about correcting reading disabilities made me angry. Maybe (though I don't buy it) kids won't need advanced reading comprehension skills in 2025, but where the hell does the author get off saying that we should let kids with reading disabilities founder helplessly in a highly textual education system? Oh yeah, waste of billions of dollars, making their lives not miserable. (I have little cousins who've struggled with dyslexia and dysgraphia, so I'm a bit sensitive here, but still). And, if our school system is at all aiming to prepare students for university, it damn well better teach them to read. I doubt that will change in less than twenty years.

But yeah, the educated elite/illiterate masses in subjugation thing took the cake.

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a lot like civilization

Which was obviously such a bad idea. Quick, Back to the Dark Ages!

I was unsure when reading the article if it was supposed to be some kind of, "Look, this is the way people could think in 2025! The horror!" sort of piece, or if it was actually saying what I thought it was saying.

I think it was saying what it said, unfortunately. Perhaps because they think subtext is too complicated.

And about the reading disabilities - word. What, because they have reading disabilities, they should be automatically barred from his literate upper class?

[psuedoskribe.livejournal.com]

How dare they suggest the last fifteen years of my life in institutions were for nothing. I'VE SHED BLOOD AND TEARS FOR THIS THING CALLED EDUCATION! American children should share this pain!

I understand what he's saying, but I don't agree -- although I will laugh if in 2025 there were some world-wide catastrophic EMP that wipes out all electronic power and communications, for which the manuals and contingencies were also stored in electronic form.

Overall, I thought this article was hilarious. Perhaps the writer just wants another American revolution in fifty years.

[lyore.livejournal.com]

I will laugh if in 2025 there were some world-wide catastrophic EMP that wipes out all electronic power and communications, for which the manuals and contingencies were also stored in electronic form.

This wouldn't surprise me at all :) Although, given the author's bias towards technology, I think he'd have everything in some multi-media website someone, with no words greater than two syllables, and not sentences longer than 5 words, rather than in a hard-copy book.