Most people are illiterate. Literacy is a skill with levels and most people don’t actually ever reach the level required to be a fully functional person.
This meme is a great example. Most people don’t actually reach Ogre’s level of literacy. Yeah, it’s played for laughs in the fact that Ogre is smarter than the average human, but Ogre is also completely correct about the level of literacy we should expect of people, in a perfect world.
I don’t need to be able to read Ulysses and understand all the themes and the deeper meanings, to be literate. As to actually understand all the meanings, I would have to be familiar with the culture in which it was written and the personal perspective of the author on that culture.
I don’t think the perfect world entails that everyone (or, at least most people) is overly familiar with ancient cultures and authors.
Unfamiliarity with the context of what was written is usually why people don’t catch on themes. A person with german cultural background will not read a passage about bringing honor to your bloodline, in the same way a chinese person will. A lot of Germans are deeply suspicious of the idea of honor. I learned that after decades with Germans and their culture.
How many Cultures are you familiar enough with to be able to correctly understand a text written in it?
E.g. the “remorse of conscience” is a cultural theme. A person who reads a lot of books and seek out these themes, has a different culture than a person who only scrolls on TikTok. And if the person reading books isn’t on TikTok, they are probably unable to properly understand the themes in a TikTok.
And yes, you said that there are different levels of literacy, so you didn’t say that I was illiterate if I wouldn’t catch on the “remorse”. But you present literacy as a 1 dimensional scale. 1 level, 2, 3, etc… When it is not, your ability to correctly parse a text is not 1 dimensional. You will probably fail to correctly understand a story written in ancient china, and if you understand it, you will probably fail to understand a story written in the 1950s in Germany.
Get off the horse. Stand next to us and enjoy your pleasure of reading with other people and learn different perspectives. They aren’t less literate than you, they are differently literate than you.
Most people are illiterate. Literacy is a skill with levels and most people don’t actually ever reach the level required to be a fully functional person.
This meme is a great example. Most people don’t actually reach Ogre’s level of literacy. Yeah, it’s played for laughs in the fact that Ogre is smarter than the average human, but Ogre is also completely correct about the level of literacy we should expect of people, in a perfect world.
A lot about this is, in my opinion, misleading.
I don’t need to be able to read Ulysses and understand all the themes and the deeper meanings, to be literate. As to actually understand all the meanings, I would have to be familiar with the culture in which it was written and the personal perspective of the author on that culture.
I don’t think the perfect world entails that everyone (or, at least most people) is overly familiar with ancient cultures and authors.
Unfamiliarity with the context of what was written is usually why people don’t catch on themes. A person with german cultural background will not read a passage about bringing honor to your bloodline, in the same way a chinese person will. A lot of Germans are deeply suspicious of the idea of honor. I learned that after decades with Germans and their culture.
How many Cultures are you familiar enough with to be able to correctly understand a text written in it?
E.g. the “remorse of conscience” is a cultural theme. A person who reads a lot of books and seek out these themes, has a different culture than a person who only scrolls on TikTok. And if the person reading books isn’t on TikTok, they are probably unable to properly understand the themes in a TikTok.
And yes, you said that there are different levels of literacy, so you didn’t say that I was illiterate if I wouldn’t catch on the “remorse”. But you present literacy as a 1 dimensional scale. 1 level, 2, 3, etc… When it is not, your ability to correctly parse a text is not 1 dimensional. You will probably fail to correctly understand a story written in ancient china, and if you understand it, you will probably fail to understand a story written in the 1950s in Germany.
Get off the horse. Stand next to us and enjoy your pleasure of reading with other people and learn different perspectives. They aren’t less literate than you, they are differently literate than you.