chapotraphouse

I don't think this is new. I once encountered on an online political debate forum a guy who was constantly misspelling things and couldn't (wouldn't?) understand metaphors, hyperbole, or analogies. Someone would use a word like "proliferate" and he would assume it meant "pro-life."

He revealed later he had graduated with a degree in English after topics around literature came up. This was over a decade ago and Spark's Notes helped many people scoot by. Not surprising colleges are becoming diploma mills since so many of them always have been.

Ngl the dinosaur bit tripped me up until I recalled wonderful could be indicative of astonishment (USain reporting for duty! ) then everything clicked and flowed pretty seamlessly.

I don't know how none of the people in the excerpts picked up that it wasn't literally about a dinosaur in the street (or the fact they only recognized it was an animal and not a dinosaur, even when I had no fucking clue what it was meant to imply I still understood it was figurative. The fact none of them realized it was setting a scene was even more asinine. I felt illiterate reading this fact I needed a dictionary for some of the terms was disappointing (I read too much low-effort fantasy slop), and think the bar for "competent" was far too low.

I took some English in college and none of it really required older texts though so I could see how it could be overwhelming. Frankly, I am mildly concerned that I wouldn't have been able to parse it if not for the fact I studied philosophy and their prose is so much worse (in the difficulty and often in the enjoyability as well). Thinking of my fellow friends, I have I believe 2 that would probably be able to read this competently though most of my friends from other countries I know definitely could parse this, including many that learned English in their late teens.

I'm young too, so this means I likely had the same or worse literary education as everyone interviewed, the only difference would be my major and the fact I do read for leisure (or as a hobby for the gamers in the chat). (Edit: I also know a bit of a second language and can read texts in it but my proficiency is still low so I am used to strain while reading, maybe there is an acclimation effect there?)

Idk why but its funny to me that you posted this after an english major shot up some Israeli ambassadors

no metaphor left behind

Other than the first sentence of the first passage ("Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall.") these were not particularly difficult to understand. A bit verbose, but generally quite clear.

I'm not surprised that university students struggle with this though because the difficulty level and expectations for reading have fallen through the floor. Most students don't read anymore, and I assume many just use chatgpt to summarize at this point. Reading is a lot like working out a muscle and if you don't keep it up it atrophies.

I feel like it's easy to blame social media, and I know it's melted my own brain, but I don't think students are challenged to read enough at any level of education anymore and aren't helped enough to learn how to parse difficult texts. Class sizes continuously growing and funding being cut definitely doesn't help. It's hard to imagine a different outcome under the logic of neoliberalism.

I’m sorry but this article really rubs me the wrong way. The example used (the intro to Bleak House by Charles Dickens) doesn’t seem like it would have a whole lot of cultural relevance to the sample of students tested who were from public colleges in Kansas. If you’re the kind of person who already reads Dickens and/or watches British period dramas like Downton Abbey, you’ll probably perform much better in this exercise, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you are functionally illiterate or lack reading comprehension skills in a general sense. If the reading sample in question was something like Trainspotting, would it mean that Scottish readers have a unique talent for reading that others don’t have? Of course not. It just means the others aren’t Scottish.

A better example imo would have been something more universally difficult, like… A Clockwork Orange or Finnegan’s Wake, but in reality it’s hard to remove cultural bias completely. Or… You know what? Fuck it. Everyone should just be forced to read Hegel and be considered illiterate unless they can completely understand each and every sentence. How does that sound?