A recent YouTube essay argues that modern literature is poor quality because young writers don’t know how to write. This is because they don’t really know how to read, and this is because the US abandoned the century-old and evidence-backed phonics reading system in favour of something called ‘critical literacy’, which supposedly prioritises personal interpretation over text analysis. Thus, goes the narrative, literary comprehension has cratered, offset by a skyrocketing tendency to react subjectively to texts instead of objectively analysing their meanings. In conclusion, this is what’s behind the modern epidemic of cancel culture, where words mean whatever you want them to mean, and anyone is entitled to be ‘triggered’ by anything.
25 percent of US adults have only a kindergarten reading age, the video says, and 60 percent have that of a 10 year old. This is broadly verifiable. The essayist believes that abandoning phonics was a deliberate strategy to dumb people down and thereby make them more compliant. But this overlooks a contradiction. While politicians might love dumb voters, and advertisers love dumb consumers, any industry report will show that capitalist employers want the opposite, smart and productive workers with industry-relevant skills, because their labour is what produces profits. And taxes on those profits finance governments. Worker, voter, consumer, same person.
Conspiracy explanations are lazy. Better to apply the principle of Hanlon’s Razor: ‘Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.’ Capitalism is chaotic, contradictory and incompetent all the way down, including its education systems. Unlike the US, the UK never abandoned phonics. In fact it’s a statutory requirement. Even so, ‘the average reading age of adults in the United Kingdom is typical of a child in UK education at 9 years old’ while ‘some have a much lower reading level’.
Social media means many young people don’t read books. Reading test scores have been declining across OECD countries since 2012. Worse, AI provides a ‘frictionless’ user experience which is proving addictive, and some evidence suggests that AI-reliant students are losing the ability to learn or retain information.
Sourcing a quote provides an example of this frictionless user experience in action. Back in the 18th and 19th century, some intellectuals did indeed view the education of workers with abject horror. One remarked that teaching workers to read was ‘to tie firebrands to foxes and set them loose amid the standing corn’. Who was it? Google’s AI Overview answered at once: ‘The quote is by the Russian anarchist Emma Goldman. She wrote, “To teach the masses in a compulsory fashion is to tie firebrands to foxes and set them loose amid the standing corn,” in her 1911 essay “The Americanization of the American Girl“‘.
Er, no. The idea of Emma Goldman deprecating widespread worker education is preposterous. The essay title also looked dubious, and hyperlinked to this: ‘The phrase “The Americanization of the American Girl” is likely a misremembering of the title “The Americanization of Emily,” a 1964 British-American romantic comedy film starring James Garner and Julie Andrews.’
Well, the film is real, but otherwise, nul points so far for Google Overview. Why not ask the AI to check its own answer? ‘Did Emma Goldman write an essay called The Americanization of the American Girl“? It flashed back: ‘No, there is no evidence that Emma Goldman wrote an essay with that exact title […] “The Americanization of the American Girl” does not appear in her known works or bibliographies.’
You don’t get internal consistency because current generative AI doesn’t remember what it last told you. Next we got: ‘The quote is from the conservative politician Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said teaching workers to read was “to tie firebrands to foxes [etc]” to express her view that it would lead to “radical, anti-American, anti-God, and anti-police sentiment”.
A gargling MAGA nutjob could hardly have authored an 18th century quotation. Time for some ‘prompt engineering’, ie, rephrase question, get different answer: ‘Who opposed general education on the grounds that teaching workers to read was ‘to tie firebrands to foxes and set them loose amid the standing corn”?
This time Google Oversight gave a more plausible response: ‘The phrase was not used to oppose general education, but was a popular quote attributed to the English politician and magistrate Sir Thomas Bernard, who opposed the teaching of reading to the poor in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He feared that educating the working class would lead to unrest and was quoted as saying, “to tie firebrands to foxes… [etc].’ The AI further assured us that Sir TB, ‘a prominent 18th-century English politician and magistrate, was a vocal opponent of educating the poor’ who highlighted ‘the dangers of educating the poor, suggesting it would lead to social chaos and unrest’.
It seemed prudent to ask ‘Who was Sir Thomas Bernard?’ In a flash, the multi-hundred billion dollar oracle responded:
‘Sir Thomas Bernard (1750–1818) was an English lawyer, philanthropist, and social reformer, best known for … founding the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor… he […] dedicated much of his life to improving the lives of the poor and working children.’
Could this philanthropist have worked to improve the lot of the poor while emphatically against educating them? Not unless he was very confused. A clarification then: ‘Did Sir Thomas Bernard oppose educating the poor while campaigning to improve their conditions?’
‘No, Sir Thomas Bernard did not oppose educating the poor; in fact, he was a strong advocate for their education and included it as a key part of his efforts to improve their conditions.’
Acres more text in the same vein.
So, bright, shiny, and useless. ‘Frictionless’ learning is a delusion. The mind needs friction like the body needs fibre. Reading, writing and critical thinking are vital for workers. They’re the basic skills of revolution.
Many expect the AI bubble to burst, as the rampant spending shows derisory returns. The result could be a cold shower all round.
Paddy Shannon
1 comment:
Excellent article.
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