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Originally Posted by REßEL
Actually it could be argued that reading itself is the downfall of modern society. It is only in the past 100 years or so that the majority of the general population have been able to read. In short it is ONLY modern society that has been able to read in any great number.
I don't personally think reading has much to do with it. The majority of society has never either been able, or willing, to read.
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While a large portion of western society may be able to recognize words on a page not that many actually understand what is being written. A lot of that also comes from shortened attention spans.
How many times on GFY has somebody taken the time to write out an intellegent response that took more than a paragraph to express only to have someone say 'I'm not going to read all that'. They say it as if it is a badge of honour. My mother would have been rather disturbed if I expressed to her that reading more than a few hundred words was serious hard work. Somewhere these people were either too lazy to pay attention in school or the system failed to recognize they needed remedial reading classes. Most likely it was a combination of both.
My sister had a great deal of trouble with reading that was finally noticed by a teacher in the second grade. It turned out she had horrible vision that was making it nearly impossible for her to focus on the page. My parents got her help - actually put her in a Quaker school for a few years with more individual attention - and now she is a teacher herself.
She wasn't dumb and neither are a lot of the people here (and in general with the same level of reading problems) but somewhere it was conveyed to them that it was okay to read a sentence and not actually understand what it says.