It would be great, but sadly the increase of literacy did not come with an increase in critical thinking, or reasoning skills.
As Qui-Gon Jinn said: the ability to speak (or, in this case, read) does not make you intelligent.
this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
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I agree! However we have been regressing for the last 25 years …
...and then the rest of that sentence is "in the western world according to measured statistics"
I have knowledge of two written languages, so... can I offset that by counting me as having 200% Literacy Rate? 🤔
I mean, what better than being Literate? Being Double Literate! xD
/kidding
I would argue it comes in at a close second after the invention of antibiotics and modern medical science in general.
Now we can read all the depressing news from around the whole world!
xD
Or you can choose to ignore all that and read about this happy memory I have:
Speaking on the topic of literacy, I remember when I first came to the US, my mom was the one that taught me English, from the very little that she did learn while in... I guess she had Basic English classes in China? No idea how she learned that, but... anyways...
And she was also learning new vocabulary too. We kinda just taught ourselves English together (I mean, on top of public school that I go to). At the time, I didn't know how significant it was, but now, I realize this language expands horizons, and seeing the world from a new perspective, I mean... it is the lingua franca of the world. I remember my mother used to complement me when ever I manage to recall what each words mean when she quizzed me.
And so... that helped me understand my environment quicker. Understanding the language didn't exactly help me make much "friends", at the time, I still lacked the confidence to converse, but at least eventually get less and less scared and can kinda feel my way around this new world.
The world might be cruel, but we can choose to cherish the little happiness the arises out of this chaotic storm.
It's sad to see that we're heading towards a future where people can't read a text longer than one summarized paragraph, and write anything longer than a sentence without using LLMs.
Children are already skipping learning of very important skills by offloading it to AI in school.