Keep up the good work! I was home schooled for first 10 years and the rest of it i went to public school which was very disappointing. My mom homeschooled me in phonics and i was lightyears ahead of my public school classmates it was a nightmare my first day witnessing this.
My husband and I watched the video last night and it inspired quite a revelatory discussion between us. My husband has been trying to write fiction professionally as a career for 3 years now, since he lost his last job and has had difficulty finding work in our area. I myself have started dabbling in short story writing and do intend to go onto longer works when time and energy allow, though my goals for writing will always be in the hobbyist direction.
We have been in writers groups for a few years, attended writing conferences both good and bad, and talked to other writers who are successfully selling books. However, when we look at what they are publishing, as we sincerely wish to further the rising tide principle, we have found that most of what our fellows and peers are publishing are simply not enjoyable to us, nor of a quality to which we ourselves aspire. Further, much of the advice we have been given on how to write to find audiences, or worse, in the requirements of publishers and editors within the small presses, and even for those which admire the classics of the past or the pulps of the early 20th century, have been quite lacking in depth and most often follow a standard or formula that is expected by, as they say, "modern audiences."
Your video has shown a light on why this is so. It is not just that writers themselves do not understand grammar or the English language and have not advanced in literary criticism or have reading comprehension still on primary grade levels, it is also the editors today editing and guiding those writers; it is also the publishers publishing this material. Not only have the readers themselves been poorly trained in how to write because they have been poorly trained in how to read and cannot comprehend language, so to have the editors. Not only have the writers been trained to think and interpret and write according to a particular formulaic style deemed "right" by their educators, so too have modern readers and editors themselves. This explains to me the rise of writing guides and programs such as "Save the Cat" or "The Snowflake Method" or "Story Grid", or the insistence that all writing must be 3 act structures or a hero's journey with its formula, and so on.
And as you also mentioned, not only are most readers, writers, editors, and other publishing professionals woefully lacking in their understanding of grammatic concepts, literary analysis, prosody (thank you for teaching me a new word there!), and the inflections and nuances of the English vocabulary, they are ignorant of their own ignorance, and are instead in many cases arrogantly proud of it!
This, I now realize, is why, when I say I want to write westerns like Louis L'Amour or Zane Gray, or write adventure like Robert Louis Stevenson or mystery like Agatha Christy or Arthur Conan Doyle, I am often told that while its good to admire these giants of the field, I must not try to write like them because that style is "out of date, archaic, and not acceptable to modern audiences." Once such publisher who has videos on Youtube - Falstaff Books https://youtu.be/C6o-MFNPzgE - even stated flatly in a video on reasons why a manuscript was being rejected that "you are not Tolkien" and if Tolkien were writing today, even he would not have been allowed to write Lord of the Rings as he did then; even Tolkien would have been forced to write according to modern standards. When I brought the horror of this particular statement to the attention of a discord community of writers of which I am a member, I was told that "of course that is so; modern writing methods have evolved beyond those of Tolkien's day." Such statement left me perplexed and rather appalled for I do not consider modern writing to be evolutionarily advanced beyond even the writing of the mid twentieth century; frankly, I consider modern writing of the last 30 years especially to be devolution and regression.
This particular realization, however, has left something of a pall upon me and my husband. We both grew up reading older literature. As a teenager I readily and eagerly entertained myself with novels such as "Ivanhoe", "The Three Musketeers", "Robin Hood", "Innocents Abroad", "Treasure Island," "Gulliver's Travels", "The Black Arrow," and even "Canterbury Tales." I read the unabridged version of "Kidnapped" when I was 11 years old. I've read Shakespeare for fun; I've read almost every Sherlock Holmes story written by Doyle. I was taught to read using the A-Beka system from Pensacola Christian College in the 80's which was phonics based.
Looking back at this, I can see now how this sort of reading expanded not only my vocabulary but my reading comprehension skills. Nowadays, while I do not read much fiction, I do read older non-fiction, especially Spurgeon and other religious writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, writing which requires a great deal of concentration to understand.
But I enjoy this sort of intellectual stimulation; reading such in depth and profound writing slows me down, captures my full attention, and enables me to absorb the subject matter and retain it for future contemplation in ways that modern, "easy" writing does not.
I want more of this sort of writing and I wish that if possible, my own attempts at writing mimic that of the past. As does my husband. But this leaves us at an impasse. We are told to "write what you want to read." Indeed, many of the great writers such as Tolkien wrote what they did because they simply wanted more of what they liked and could not find it by anyone else. This is precisely why both of us wish to write.
But we also wish to find an audience, and in my husband's case, wish to sell enough books to be able to supplement our income and be a "full time" author. For him, this creates a tense situation that I do not know how to rectify. If he writes the way he wishes and emulates the style of the greats that so impacted him, the audience that will be able to read, comprehend, and enjoy such writing is small and vanishing each year. Further, it will be against all the advice given by our peers and will set us even further apart in the circle of influence and connections we have found to help us find readers, especially as independent authors or authors who wish to work with small independent presses.
However, the only option left is just as unpalatable: followed said advice, dumb down the language, follow the "modern" formulas and methods, cut out dialogue tags, descriptions, adverbs in all cases, be sure to cut to the action as soon as possible, write first person or third person close only, and wash and repeat. This will reach more readers who are only capable of reading material written in this manner, and would lead to more opportunities in the small press sphere of influence, but not only will such writing feel demeaning and not in line with what we love, it has the very real danger of stunting our own reading comprehension and ability to wield grammar and vocabulary effectively. Indeed, I've already seen this to some extent in myself; I suffered a twelve year drought of writer's block after spending years reading fan fiction; I came to realize that my own voice and writing ability fell to the level of what I was reading; if I was reading mediocre writing, my own writing fell to match. If I wish to write like the greats of the past, I must find time to read them and not only read them, but practice writing in their style, and damn the editors or peers who try to tell me otherwise.
For me personally, this does mean I must accept that my audience shall be small; should I succeed in writing anywhere close to the style I admire, there will be few out there today who will have the ability to read and grasp it. So be it; this is the freedom of being a hobbyist writer.
For my husband and others who are in the same quandary, I do not know the answer. For if the education system of the last 40 years has so dumbed down society that they cannot comprehend or read advanced writing, where is the professional writer to find an audience for his own advanced writing?
My favorite fiction writer (as judged by his entire body of work) is Jack Vance, and I realized sometime ago that Jack Vance could not be published today, less because of his language—look at the enduring popularity of certain sword and sorcery writers who used much more "archaic" language—than because he wrote books mostly driven by the settings and the ideas he wants to explore, and this is not a style of narrative that modern audiences enjoy. But what I have since figured out is that even when he was published in his time, it was because the science fiction/fantasy community was small enough that he had fans who were fellow writers, editors, and publishers who could essentially push him on a market that was desperate for content of any sort. Yet even then he tried to adapt to the market by writing pulpy adventure stories of the sort audiences demanded at the time.
I think that there's always going to be some works that are original or unconventional that don't find a large audience and a minority that do, but even then the audience may be more interested in what they think these works represent than actually reading them. Consider how many people reference the ideas in works by Ursula Le Guin and Jorge Borges but have never actually read anything they wrote themselves. And I suppose it's better to be referenced by word of mouth but rarely read than not read at all—and the people who don't read you may recommend you to people who will read you—but as a reader it is discouraging to me how hard it is to get even the people who claim to be interested in Borges or Le Guin's ideas to actually read them firsthand.
I think there is a case to be made for making some concessions to the taste of modern audiences, as with Vance's decision to move toward pulpy adventure stories (though these rank low in my list of Vance's works). For me at least, I think the approach is to figure out what is the core thing you want to convey in my writing, and then make concessions to marketshare only if those changes won't impede what you want to convey. The problem with that approach, of course, is finding the right audience to distinguish between what is simply not appealing to people who have expectations of a certain genre versus what is me not conveying what I want to convey to people who could be my target audience.
Fascinating read. Your piece reminds me of the idea CS Lewis railed against in his “Abolition of Man”. Your statements about the billionaires training obedient workers reminded me of his statements about “men without chests “ or people trained to be smart enough to push the buttons without asking why the buttons need to exist.
This is a very interesting topic. I've been mulling over it for the past few days since I first watched your video. I am an artist, I went to school for illustration and I teach drawing, painting and visual storytelling for an online school. I don't have any real training in teaching - most of the past 6 years of teaching in-person and online have mostly consisted of me "trying things out". I teach a comics class to middle school and high schoolers. I have them take scenes from classic literature and we learn the process of taking the written word and interpreting it into sequential images that tell the story. I've noticed a portion of the students don't seem to have developed reading comprehension. They either want to interpret each line of text as its own image or they can't seem to link a character's response to the actions of another character. They can't seem to grasp the subtext of a passage. It's strange because most of these students are homeschooled. They are taking an online class as a supplement to educational material they might not have access to otherwise. Overall, the students are very intelligent. I don't see this in the classes that deal with learning the skill of drawing - probably because they aren't tied to the act of reading. I appreciate you posting all of these resources. I'm very curious to see if there is anything similar on visual literacy and if visual literacy, reading comprehension and literacy in general are linked in any way. Thanks again!
I grew up with phonics in my small rural school in North Dakota. Here’s a funny struggle we all had, with our particular accent: the schwa sound. All of us hated our phonics workbooks because we never knew when that stupid sound was going to be the focus, and it was impossible for us to hear it simply because of the way we say our vowels. (We really, really say them. Especially the O.) Nothing made us groan like opening our books and seeing that cursed upside down e.
This doesn’t have any real impact on your excellent video and article. I only had experience with phonics and didn’t realize they’d stopped using it until I saw it in my nieces and nephews. But the schwa sound haunts me to this day.
As Kurt Vonnegut put it in "Harrison Bergeron," which I read in WEEKLY READER during 7th or 8th grade (I can't remember because I had the same English teacher both years), if your goal is a flat equality rather than a jagged one, as in the book referenced below, it's just easier to drag people down than it is to lift them up.
What advice would you give to parents of children (ages 10 to 13)? My kids go to public schools, and I would like to supplement their reading and literary education. Are there any specific homeschooling resources you recommend? (I would prefer not to reinvent the wheel.)
Homeschooling GenX mom here. I recommend checking out Logic of English which teaches basic and advanced phonograms plus morphemes. It also teaches the 31 spelling rules and grammar. Additionally, they offer a catch-up cursive writing workbook, if you need (another tremendous aid to true literacy). I also use McGuffey's Eclectic Readers for reading practice and comprehension with my younger child. My older child (11 y/o) reads 4-5 classic youth novels per year and keeps a literature journal to narrate what he read or to answer comprehension/critical thinking questions. We also still do read-aloud novels every evening. These are generally novels that stretch their vocabulary and thinking with guidance from mom and dad (who are animated readers prone to fun character voices). Hope that helps and best wishes to you.
I'm not sure my personal experience would be much help. My father started out with a very old homeschool program that was very small and went out of business while we were using it, and then he shifted to a correspondence program with a small private school. I've heard that there are a lot of excellent homeschooling resources out there these days, but I've only tried one and it was academically rigorous, but intended to be a replacement for all schooling, not just a supplement. But one thing I CAN say: if you're mainly concerned with supplementing your children's reading and English learning, Hooked on Phonics still exists. Here's a link to the site so you can see what they have to offer https://www.hookedonphonics.com/
I was homeschooled and have just started homeschooling my 5 year old. For Phonics, we have started using "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons"which I highly recommend as you can it take as fast or as slow as you like: https://startreading.com/
Also: for more information on the "Reading Wars" and how terrible Whole Language really is, I highly recommend the podcast "Sold a Story" from American Public Media : https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
In Germany, reading is taught by using phonics and I haven't seen the whole word method used anywhere. Yet, reading competency in slipping in Germany as well - though not to the degree of the US. In addition, Numeracy is also going down nearly everywhere.
Thus I'm not sure, if the underlying issue is really "critical literacy" and whole language teaching. I suspect that a general distraction by the online world, a tendency to continuously reduce difficulty to make the numbers look better and a belief that you don't need to calculate / memorize / read anymore because calculators / wikipedia / AI exist and you can always use those to get the information you need.
Critical literacy might be compounding the issue in the US, but I think it's more an aggravating factor than the underlying cause.
Your video was interesting to me and connects or potentially connects some dots. One thing I've noticed: so, I'm hyperlexic, that is to say I taught myself to read, in my case by the time I was three. So while I'm in my 30s, I never had to learn to read in school. I've realized that a lot of my favorite books, pretty much the only people I meet who have read them are over 60. I assumed that this was a matter of changing tastes, but A. in several cases, people have told me they tried to read those books and “could not understand the language,” and B. where I have met someone under 60 who has read those books, they are people I either know or suspect are hyperlexic.
I want to mention two books that are not in your list, which makes sense because they are not directly addressing the problem of the decline in literacy, but which I think are potentially relevant:
First is the book The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch. Lasch makes clear that narcissism is not an overdeveloped sense of self, as most people even today seem to think, but rather an obsession with the image one projects—one’s reflection. The way that Lasch describes narcissism in his book, I've realized that I see it everywhere but I also see a difference between people who are inherently narcissistic and more-or-less normal people who have been taught to think and act in a narcissistic fashion in certain contexts. At least the way that you present critical literacy, it sounds a lot like another example of training people to act in a narcissistic fashion in certain contexts.
Moreover, I have noticed that most people of my generation say that they care most about works driven by “good characters,” but what I have found that they seem to mean in practice is that this means that they like fiction only if it is driven by conflict between characters according to a fairly predictable pattern, in terms of both the characters and their conflicts, essentially focused on who is in and who is out and who is up and who is down. Lasch’s culture of narcissism encourages a similar preoccupation with social status and social relations, and I think that this may be reflected in the preference for this conception of “character-driven” books. I think this could also might explain why Jane Austen seems to be the only older novelist younger people still read.
The other book I want to mention is Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. One of the things that shocked me about that book was how much he placed the decline of civic institutions at the feet of the rise of television, a factor I previously would never have expected. In fact it seemed so improbable that I initially rejected the role of television in this decline and assumed there was something wrong with his analysis that I just could not pinpoint. However, I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that he was right about both television and his predictions about the impact of the internet: I missed it both because I have never experienced a community without television to even compare my experience to, and because my family did not have cable TV growing up, which limited the impact according to Putnam’s own analysis.
Part of what has led to me concluding the impact of television is so pervasive it’s like water to a fish has come from my comparisons of fiction from before cable and VCRs became common to that written at least a decade after. One thing I noticed quite starkly is a difference in how old are versus newer novels convey critical information not possessed by any of the normal viewpoint characters. Older fiction may start a book or a chapter in third person omniscient and then zoom in, and may also have short connecting passages written in third-person omniscient. Newer fiction rejects this convention, especially for connecting passages, and will reveal the same information sections written from the perspective of disposable one-off characters, and indeed I've noticed that most writers today think omniscient connecting passages are “bad writing.”
Moreover, even where older writers would use one-off characters to convey information—as with Alan Paton in my favorite novel, Cry, the Beloved Country—these passages were often written in a way that would be very hard to directly adapt to the screen and convey the same information: connecting/expository passages in newer fiction are always heavily visually focused. My conclusion about this, and about other changes I’ve observed, is that modern writers try to write books with the idea that they might be adapted to the screen in mind. Modern readers have therefore come to expect books will be written in a screen-friendly fashion, such that deviations from the formula fundamentally feel “off.”
You have some keen insights here, especially the last one about television which I and my husband have both talked about in length for quite some time.
While I am not hyperlexic, I think that the method and context under which I learned to read in my early years had much more of a benefit than I realized until now. I went k-12 in a Christian school. The primary level used the A-Beka book system from Pensacola Christian College. We learned to read before Christmas in Kindergarten, were doing basic math and addition by the end of Kindergarten, were learning cursive by the end of the 1st grade and starting to learn basic algebra at the end of the 2nd and fully in 3rd. We also were given a strong grounding in phonics, with much emphasis put on memorization. I can remember to this day standing beside my desk and repeating the phonics charts posted on the wall. We had quizzes on phonics as well, and this was in addition to regular English class. We were memorizing poems in 1st and 2nd grade and of course, the times tables.
But even more importantly, we were taught to read and memorize the KJV Bible starting in Kindergarten. So from a very early age, I was immersed into reading that is often considered quite archaic today; indeed many versions of the Bible have been written in the last century to combat the problem of people being unable to comprehend the KJV's language which I was reading and comprehending with ease in the 2nd grade.
And I think the test results for the school showed. Back in the 80's and early 90's, ever school system in the state and I believe the country had to take what were called achievement tests, including our private school. It was a week long series of tests given to the students to test in all manner of education - math, science, grammar, reading comprehension. I consistently scored past high school on all my subjects by the 3rd grade. What's more, our school as a whole was consistently in the top quartile of schools in the entire state and handedly beat the local schools every year. During that decade, people who were not members of our church nor really religious would nevertheless send their children to our primary school through the 6th grade because we had such a success rate with a quite advanced curriculum.
And even to this day, though I have not touched a grammar book since 1997, I still remember much of what I was taught and have had comments made on my first drafts. I had never before now thought about how reading the KJV at such and early age and being taught how to understand language much advanced for my age may have had to play in the test schools for both myself and the school at large, and that foundation may well be why I was able to move into reading the classics by the 4th grade, tackling things like Kidnapped and Don Quixote, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Shakespeare and to comprehend what I was reading, and that this further is the reason why I was able to score the highest score possible on reading comprehension on the ACT test in my senior year.
My husband and I looked up "Bleak House" and both read the first chapter. My husband's primary school years were in the 70's so he missed much of the turnover to the "newer methods", but even still, he struggled to grasp certain words and concepts in that passage that I explained to him. He was able to understand the general gist of what was happening, but did not pick up on the meaning of certain words that I was able to grasp even if I had never seen them before myself.
I now wonder if my reading comprehension abilities stem from that grounding in the language of the KJV all those years ago.
As for television being a detriment to current writers, my husband and I both have been lamenting this fact for quite a long time. TV not only destroy civic institutions, but family cohesiveness as well. My parents have often talked about how in the evenings their own families when they were growing up would play games together and spend time together. How many families today, however, even sit down to watch a movie together or play something together?
Further we have both also seen that the mentality of writing today is most definitely geared toward writing visually. We too have run into the idea that "omniscience voice" is wrong and is often said to be "head hopping" or even that any sort of break from one character to another is wrong except by chapters.
Its the same for taking time to describe a setting or what a character is seeing - oftentimes I have been told that streamline and cut down such passages, to "trust the reader" to figure them out, and to "start with the hook as close to the beginning as possible." While I certainly do not want to fall over the purple prose cliff, I still wish to spend time to describe what I see. As in the Bleakhouse example with the fog, to me, taking that time to set the scene also conveys the mood; the visual imagery of the words and tone used can put the reader in the right frame of mind for the story they are about to read.
We both have often offered to read and critique other writers' stories in our writing circles and time and again, we have been left scratching our heads on what we have read and seeing how poor it is, not because the writers are lazy or sloppy but because they simply do not know what good prose even looks liked. And we easily see from these examples where writers today are absolutely trying to emulate what they see on TV.
I also think screen plays have led to the notion of streamlining the description because television and movies have the advantage of the images of the scene to set that tone and mood while starting right at the action scene. People have forgotten, however, that novels are not tv. Sadly, though, I believe writers, editors, and publishers today do not realize this, do not understand the difference between the mediums, and worse still, do not care.
I think that I would add that screenwriting itself has affected novel writing too. In some good ways (log lines might be the best example) and in some bad... formulaic plotting and characters, for eg.
How many wannabe writers are watching YouTube videos about writing, rather than reading? How many writing videos use Hollywood examples rather than book examples because they're visual?
This collection connects so many dots to me... I personally saw a Linguistics Department being overtaken by Critical Theory, much like the theme you explored so well in your video about Villains: no study dared to affirm anything and suggested many 'hidden meanings', anywhere they chose one existed.
But let me just redeem my fellow Brazilian Paulo Freire - I dare say he's more a target of this kind of "critical" approach than a precursor. His method was for adults (maybe you knew this already or you intuited when you said "this method is not for children"), he was focused on illiterate field workers, who couldn't be convinced there was value in learing how to read, during a 30-years dictatorship in Brazil. That's where this mix of social awareness came from: he realized they paid attention if he taught them how to read about their tools, payment methods, instead of the phrases in literacy books for children, 'peter took the kite for his dad' (a sentence full of "P"s in Portuguese).
So he was more in search of a shortcut for adults - and yes, revolutionary democratic thinking in a dictatorship that singled him out as 'communist'. It was not for children nor a substitute to phonetics (still in place in Brazil). Ira Shor, I confess I never heard of this name - and I'm licensed to teach Math and had a lato sensu in distance learning - so I guess he's the post-modern impostor here.
A closing thought: I had the priviledge to go to a congress in Education, Paulo Freire affictionates, and I confess I was expecting the same crap as in the Linguistic department, Critical Theory, etc. I watched, for hours, presentations of case studies by public servants from all around Brazil, on how they taught rural people, riverside people, people in historical havens for runaway slaves, how they got the public fundings, which methodology they used, how they measured the results about literacy, math, some critical labor skill... very hands on, realistic people in a country with so many excluded people since colonial times (and so much bullshit in Academia). If they knew how their work is... 'tokenized', is this a word? I think it's obvious English is not my first language, right :D Sorry for any nonsense.
It's sad that this channel has basically became a political right/wing dog whistle. And it's very apparent in this video. Asserting the notion that bad writing is because of leftist politics that prioritises "the message" over the text itself feels like something out of an anti woke YouTube video. What's worse is that People like you always advocate for anti intellectual acts like "academia is evil but I'm not"
Conservatives name five grea film directors, anime, tv shows or cisssic novels that are overtly right wing. I'll wait.
Is there a reason you seem to have omitted all the parts from the "The country school of tomorrow" that completely make the point you are trying to make using it wrong?
> We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply. We are to follow the admonitions of the good apostle, who said, ''Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low degree." *And generally, with respect to these high things, all that we shall try to do is just to create presently about these country homes an atmosphere and conditions such, that, if by chance a child of genius should spring up from the soil, that genius will surely bud and not be blighted. *
> So we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the home, in the shop, on the farm. *We shall train the child for the life before him* by methods which reach the perfection of their adaptation only when the child shall not be able to distinguish between the pleasures of his school work and the pleasures of his play.
That seems to not match your claims about what the book is about. At all.
Given this *flagrant* abuse of selective quoting and it's LONG history of being a antigovernment talking point, I find all the *other* references rather suspect.
Hi there, I'm a reading teacher who just watched part of your video. Just dropping in to say, if anyone's reading this and having second thoughts about some things that were said in the video or the claims from some of the sources referenced here, there's a podcast episode I'd highly recommend listening to to get a better understanding of this issue. Linked here: https://www.haveyouheardpodcast.com/episodes/152-the-reading-wars-are-older-than-you-think
Dear Hilary, I love your writing and videos, thank you so much. I think you would very much enjoy Richard Mitchell's newsletter and books, The Underground Grammarian, Less Than Words Can Say, The Gift of Fire, and The Graves of Academe (free at https://sourcetext.com/grammarian/). I can also recommend the first part of David Mulroy's The War Against Grammar. These are thoughtful and amusing "on the ground" reports and commentary by English professors who witnessed the bombs of mindless barbarity falling in real time in their classrooms and in their campus administrations.
Keep up the good work! I was home schooled for first 10 years and the rest of it i went to public school which was very disappointing. My mom homeschooled me in phonics and i was lightyears ahead of my public school classmates it was a nightmare my first day witnessing this.
My husband and I watched the video last night and it inspired quite a revelatory discussion between us. My husband has been trying to write fiction professionally as a career for 3 years now, since he lost his last job and has had difficulty finding work in our area. I myself have started dabbling in short story writing and do intend to go onto longer works when time and energy allow, though my goals for writing will always be in the hobbyist direction.
We have been in writers groups for a few years, attended writing conferences both good and bad, and talked to other writers who are successfully selling books. However, when we look at what they are publishing, as we sincerely wish to further the rising tide principle, we have found that most of what our fellows and peers are publishing are simply not enjoyable to us, nor of a quality to which we ourselves aspire. Further, much of the advice we have been given on how to write to find audiences, or worse, in the requirements of publishers and editors within the small presses, and even for those which admire the classics of the past or the pulps of the early 20th century, have been quite lacking in depth and most often follow a standard or formula that is expected by, as they say, "modern audiences."
Your video has shown a light on why this is so. It is not just that writers themselves do not understand grammar or the English language and have not advanced in literary criticism or have reading comprehension still on primary grade levels, it is also the editors today editing and guiding those writers; it is also the publishers publishing this material. Not only have the readers themselves been poorly trained in how to write because they have been poorly trained in how to read and cannot comprehend language, so to have the editors. Not only have the writers been trained to think and interpret and write according to a particular formulaic style deemed "right" by their educators, so too have modern readers and editors themselves. This explains to me the rise of writing guides and programs such as "Save the Cat" or "The Snowflake Method" or "Story Grid", or the insistence that all writing must be 3 act structures or a hero's journey with its formula, and so on.
And as you also mentioned, not only are most readers, writers, editors, and other publishing professionals woefully lacking in their understanding of grammatic concepts, literary analysis, prosody (thank you for teaching me a new word there!), and the inflections and nuances of the English vocabulary, they are ignorant of their own ignorance, and are instead in many cases arrogantly proud of it!
This, I now realize, is why, when I say I want to write westerns like Louis L'Amour or Zane Gray, or write adventure like Robert Louis Stevenson or mystery like Agatha Christy or Arthur Conan Doyle, I am often told that while its good to admire these giants of the field, I must not try to write like them because that style is "out of date, archaic, and not acceptable to modern audiences." Once such publisher who has videos on Youtube - Falstaff Books https://youtu.be/C6o-MFNPzgE - even stated flatly in a video on reasons why a manuscript was being rejected that "you are not Tolkien" and if Tolkien were writing today, even he would not have been allowed to write Lord of the Rings as he did then; even Tolkien would have been forced to write according to modern standards. When I brought the horror of this particular statement to the attention of a discord community of writers of which I am a member, I was told that "of course that is so; modern writing methods have evolved beyond those of Tolkien's day." Such statement left me perplexed and rather appalled for I do not consider modern writing to be evolutionarily advanced beyond even the writing of the mid twentieth century; frankly, I consider modern writing of the last 30 years especially to be devolution and regression.
This particular realization, however, has left something of a pall upon me and my husband. We both grew up reading older literature. As a teenager I readily and eagerly entertained myself with novels such as "Ivanhoe", "The Three Musketeers", "Robin Hood", "Innocents Abroad", "Treasure Island," "Gulliver's Travels", "The Black Arrow," and even "Canterbury Tales." I read the unabridged version of "Kidnapped" when I was 11 years old. I've read Shakespeare for fun; I've read almost every Sherlock Holmes story written by Doyle. I was taught to read using the A-Beka system from Pensacola Christian College in the 80's which was phonics based.
Looking back at this, I can see now how this sort of reading expanded not only my vocabulary but my reading comprehension skills. Nowadays, while I do not read much fiction, I do read older non-fiction, especially Spurgeon and other religious writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, writing which requires a great deal of concentration to understand.
But I enjoy this sort of intellectual stimulation; reading such in depth and profound writing slows me down, captures my full attention, and enables me to absorb the subject matter and retain it for future contemplation in ways that modern, "easy" writing does not.
I want more of this sort of writing and I wish that if possible, my own attempts at writing mimic that of the past. As does my husband. But this leaves us at an impasse. We are told to "write what you want to read." Indeed, many of the great writers such as Tolkien wrote what they did because they simply wanted more of what they liked and could not find it by anyone else. This is precisely why both of us wish to write.
But we also wish to find an audience, and in my husband's case, wish to sell enough books to be able to supplement our income and be a "full time" author. For him, this creates a tense situation that I do not know how to rectify. If he writes the way he wishes and emulates the style of the greats that so impacted him, the audience that will be able to read, comprehend, and enjoy such writing is small and vanishing each year. Further, it will be against all the advice given by our peers and will set us even further apart in the circle of influence and connections we have found to help us find readers, especially as independent authors or authors who wish to work with small independent presses.
However, the only option left is just as unpalatable: followed said advice, dumb down the language, follow the "modern" formulas and methods, cut out dialogue tags, descriptions, adverbs in all cases, be sure to cut to the action as soon as possible, write first person or third person close only, and wash and repeat. This will reach more readers who are only capable of reading material written in this manner, and would lead to more opportunities in the small press sphere of influence, but not only will such writing feel demeaning and not in line with what we love, it has the very real danger of stunting our own reading comprehension and ability to wield grammar and vocabulary effectively. Indeed, I've already seen this to some extent in myself; I suffered a twelve year drought of writer's block after spending years reading fan fiction; I came to realize that my own voice and writing ability fell to the level of what I was reading; if I was reading mediocre writing, my own writing fell to match. If I wish to write like the greats of the past, I must find time to read them and not only read them, but practice writing in their style, and damn the editors or peers who try to tell me otherwise.
For me personally, this does mean I must accept that my audience shall be small; should I succeed in writing anywhere close to the style I admire, there will be few out there today who will have the ability to read and grasp it. So be it; this is the freedom of being a hobbyist writer.
For my husband and others who are in the same quandary, I do not know the answer. For if the education system of the last 40 years has so dumbed down society that they cannot comprehend or read advanced writing, where is the professional writer to find an audience for his own advanced writing?
My favorite fiction writer (as judged by his entire body of work) is Jack Vance, and I realized sometime ago that Jack Vance could not be published today, less because of his language—look at the enduring popularity of certain sword and sorcery writers who used much more "archaic" language—than because he wrote books mostly driven by the settings and the ideas he wants to explore, and this is not a style of narrative that modern audiences enjoy. But what I have since figured out is that even when he was published in his time, it was because the science fiction/fantasy community was small enough that he had fans who were fellow writers, editors, and publishers who could essentially push him on a market that was desperate for content of any sort. Yet even then he tried to adapt to the market by writing pulpy adventure stories of the sort audiences demanded at the time.
I think that there's always going to be some works that are original or unconventional that don't find a large audience and a minority that do, but even then the audience may be more interested in what they think these works represent than actually reading them. Consider how many people reference the ideas in works by Ursula Le Guin and Jorge Borges but have never actually read anything they wrote themselves. And I suppose it's better to be referenced by word of mouth but rarely read than not read at all—and the people who don't read you may recommend you to people who will read you—but as a reader it is discouraging to me how hard it is to get even the people who claim to be interested in Borges or Le Guin's ideas to actually read them firsthand.
I think there is a case to be made for making some concessions to the taste of modern audiences, as with Vance's decision to move toward pulpy adventure stories (though these rank low in my list of Vance's works). For me at least, I think the approach is to figure out what is the core thing you want to convey in my writing, and then make concessions to marketshare only if those changes won't impede what you want to convey. The problem with that approach, of course, is finding the right audience to distinguish between what is simply not appealing to people who have expectations of a certain genre versus what is me not conveying what I want to convey to people who could be my target audience.
You will truly love John C. Wright then.
Here is a freebie: https://archive.org/details/john-c-wright-awake-in-the-night#:~:text=Awake%20In%20The%20Night%20:%20John,Borrow%2C%20and%20Streaming%20:%20Internet%20Archive&text=An%20illustration%20of%20a%20horizontal%20line%20over%20an%20up%20pointing%20arrow.
Fascinating read. Your piece reminds me of the idea CS Lewis railed against in his “Abolition of Man”. Your statements about the billionaires training obedient workers reminded me of his statements about “men without chests “ or people trained to be smart enough to push the buttons without asking why the buttons need to exist.
This is a very interesting topic. I've been mulling over it for the past few days since I first watched your video. I am an artist, I went to school for illustration and I teach drawing, painting and visual storytelling for an online school. I don't have any real training in teaching - most of the past 6 years of teaching in-person and online have mostly consisted of me "trying things out". I teach a comics class to middle school and high schoolers. I have them take scenes from classic literature and we learn the process of taking the written word and interpreting it into sequential images that tell the story. I've noticed a portion of the students don't seem to have developed reading comprehension. They either want to interpret each line of text as its own image or they can't seem to link a character's response to the actions of another character. They can't seem to grasp the subtext of a passage. It's strange because most of these students are homeschooled. They are taking an online class as a supplement to educational material they might not have access to otherwise. Overall, the students are very intelligent. I don't see this in the classes that deal with learning the skill of drawing - probably because they aren't tied to the act of reading. I appreciate you posting all of these resources. I'm very curious to see if there is anything similar on visual literacy and if visual literacy, reading comprehension and literacy in general are linked in any way. Thanks again!
I grew up with phonics in my small rural school in North Dakota. Here’s a funny struggle we all had, with our particular accent: the schwa sound. All of us hated our phonics workbooks because we never knew when that stupid sound was going to be the focus, and it was impossible for us to hear it simply because of the way we say our vowels. (We really, really say them. Especially the O.) Nothing made us groan like opening our books and seeing that cursed upside down e.
This doesn’t have any real impact on your excellent video and article. I only had experience with phonics and didn’t realize they’d stopped using it until I saw it in my nieces and nephews. But the schwa sound haunts me to this day.
As Kurt Vonnegut put it in "Harrison Bergeron," which I read in WEEKLY READER during 7th or 8th grade (I can't remember because I had the same English teacher both years), if your goal is a flat equality rather than a jagged one, as in the book referenced below, it's just easier to drag people down than it is to lift them up.
http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=issue&vol=i68&article=_interview
Here via another site. My thanks for having a blog in parallel to your video series.
Appropriately, considering the topic, I learn faster and more easily, by reading.
Doing gods work. Youtube brought me to your channel just now.
What advice would you give to parents of children (ages 10 to 13)? My kids go to public schools, and I would like to supplement their reading and literary education. Are there any specific homeschooling resources you recommend? (I would prefer not to reinvent the wheel.)
Homeschooling GenX mom here. I recommend checking out Logic of English which teaches basic and advanced phonograms plus morphemes. It also teaches the 31 spelling rules and grammar. Additionally, they offer a catch-up cursive writing workbook, if you need (another tremendous aid to true literacy). I also use McGuffey's Eclectic Readers for reading practice and comprehension with my younger child. My older child (11 y/o) reads 4-5 classic youth novels per year and keeps a literature journal to narrate what he read or to answer comprehension/critical thinking questions. We also still do read-aloud novels every evening. These are generally novels that stretch their vocabulary and thinking with guidance from mom and dad (who are animated readers prone to fun character voices). Hope that helps and best wishes to you.
I'm not sure my personal experience would be much help. My father started out with a very old homeschool program that was very small and went out of business while we were using it, and then he shifted to a correspondence program with a small private school. I've heard that there are a lot of excellent homeschooling resources out there these days, but I've only tried one and it was academically rigorous, but intended to be a replacement for all schooling, not just a supplement. But one thing I CAN say: if you're mainly concerned with supplementing your children's reading and English learning, Hooked on Phonics still exists. Here's a link to the site so you can see what they have to offer https://www.hookedonphonics.com/
I was homeschooled and have just started homeschooling my 5 year old. For Phonics, we have started using "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons"which I highly recommend as you can it take as fast or as slow as you like: https://startreading.com/
Also: for more information on the "Reading Wars" and how terrible Whole Language really is, I highly recommend the podcast "Sold a Story" from American Public Media : https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
Excellent series! Thank you!
In Germany, reading is taught by using phonics and I haven't seen the whole word method used anywhere. Yet, reading competency in slipping in Germany as well - though not to the degree of the US. In addition, Numeracy is also going down nearly everywhere.
Thus I'm not sure, if the underlying issue is really "critical literacy" and whole language teaching. I suspect that a general distraction by the online world, a tendency to continuously reduce difficulty to make the numbers look better and a belief that you don't need to calculate / memorize / read anymore because calculators / wikipedia / AI exist and you can always use those to get the information you need.
Critical literacy might be compounding the issue in the US, but I think it's more an aggravating factor than the underlying cause.
I believe the lack of memorization has played a huge part in the decline of reading comprehension and academic success.
Your video was interesting to me and connects or potentially connects some dots. One thing I've noticed: so, I'm hyperlexic, that is to say I taught myself to read, in my case by the time I was three. So while I'm in my 30s, I never had to learn to read in school. I've realized that a lot of my favorite books, pretty much the only people I meet who have read them are over 60. I assumed that this was a matter of changing tastes, but A. in several cases, people have told me they tried to read those books and “could not understand the language,” and B. where I have met someone under 60 who has read those books, they are people I either know or suspect are hyperlexic.
I want to mention two books that are not in your list, which makes sense because they are not directly addressing the problem of the decline in literacy, but which I think are potentially relevant:
First is the book The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch. Lasch makes clear that narcissism is not an overdeveloped sense of self, as most people even today seem to think, but rather an obsession with the image one projects—one’s reflection. The way that Lasch describes narcissism in his book, I've realized that I see it everywhere but I also see a difference between people who are inherently narcissistic and more-or-less normal people who have been taught to think and act in a narcissistic fashion in certain contexts. At least the way that you present critical literacy, it sounds a lot like another example of training people to act in a narcissistic fashion in certain contexts.
Moreover, I have noticed that most people of my generation say that they care most about works driven by “good characters,” but what I have found that they seem to mean in practice is that this means that they like fiction only if it is driven by conflict between characters according to a fairly predictable pattern, in terms of both the characters and their conflicts, essentially focused on who is in and who is out and who is up and who is down. Lasch’s culture of narcissism encourages a similar preoccupation with social status and social relations, and I think that this may be reflected in the preference for this conception of “character-driven” books. I think this could also might explain why Jane Austen seems to be the only older novelist younger people still read.
The other book I want to mention is Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. One of the things that shocked me about that book was how much he placed the decline of civic institutions at the feet of the rise of television, a factor I previously would never have expected. In fact it seemed so improbable that I initially rejected the role of television in this decline and assumed there was something wrong with his analysis that I just could not pinpoint. However, I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that he was right about both television and his predictions about the impact of the internet: I missed it both because I have never experienced a community without television to even compare my experience to, and because my family did not have cable TV growing up, which limited the impact according to Putnam’s own analysis.
Part of what has led to me concluding the impact of television is so pervasive it’s like water to a fish has come from my comparisons of fiction from before cable and VCRs became common to that written at least a decade after. One thing I noticed quite starkly is a difference in how old are versus newer novels convey critical information not possessed by any of the normal viewpoint characters. Older fiction may start a book or a chapter in third person omniscient and then zoom in, and may also have short connecting passages written in third-person omniscient. Newer fiction rejects this convention, especially for connecting passages, and will reveal the same information sections written from the perspective of disposable one-off characters, and indeed I've noticed that most writers today think omniscient connecting passages are “bad writing.”
Moreover, even where older writers would use one-off characters to convey information—as with Alan Paton in my favorite novel, Cry, the Beloved Country—these passages were often written in a way that would be very hard to directly adapt to the screen and convey the same information: connecting/expository passages in newer fiction are always heavily visually focused. My conclusion about this, and about other changes I’ve observed, is that modern writers try to write books with the idea that they might be adapted to the screen in mind. Modern readers have therefore come to expect books will be written in a screen-friendly fashion, such that deviations from the formula fundamentally feel “off.”
You have some keen insights here, especially the last one about television which I and my husband have both talked about in length for quite some time.
While I am not hyperlexic, I think that the method and context under which I learned to read in my early years had much more of a benefit than I realized until now. I went k-12 in a Christian school. The primary level used the A-Beka book system from Pensacola Christian College. We learned to read before Christmas in Kindergarten, were doing basic math and addition by the end of Kindergarten, were learning cursive by the end of the 1st grade and starting to learn basic algebra at the end of the 2nd and fully in 3rd. We also were given a strong grounding in phonics, with much emphasis put on memorization. I can remember to this day standing beside my desk and repeating the phonics charts posted on the wall. We had quizzes on phonics as well, and this was in addition to regular English class. We were memorizing poems in 1st and 2nd grade and of course, the times tables.
But even more importantly, we were taught to read and memorize the KJV Bible starting in Kindergarten. So from a very early age, I was immersed into reading that is often considered quite archaic today; indeed many versions of the Bible have been written in the last century to combat the problem of people being unable to comprehend the KJV's language which I was reading and comprehending with ease in the 2nd grade.
And I think the test results for the school showed. Back in the 80's and early 90's, ever school system in the state and I believe the country had to take what were called achievement tests, including our private school. It was a week long series of tests given to the students to test in all manner of education - math, science, grammar, reading comprehension. I consistently scored past high school on all my subjects by the 3rd grade. What's more, our school as a whole was consistently in the top quartile of schools in the entire state and handedly beat the local schools every year. During that decade, people who were not members of our church nor really religious would nevertheless send their children to our primary school through the 6th grade because we had such a success rate with a quite advanced curriculum.
And even to this day, though I have not touched a grammar book since 1997, I still remember much of what I was taught and have had comments made on my first drafts. I had never before now thought about how reading the KJV at such and early age and being taught how to understand language much advanced for my age may have had to play in the test schools for both myself and the school at large, and that foundation may well be why I was able to move into reading the classics by the 4th grade, tackling things like Kidnapped and Don Quixote, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Shakespeare and to comprehend what I was reading, and that this further is the reason why I was able to score the highest score possible on reading comprehension on the ACT test in my senior year.
My husband and I looked up "Bleak House" and both read the first chapter. My husband's primary school years were in the 70's so he missed much of the turnover to the "newer methods", but even still, he struggled to grasp certain words and concepts in that passage that I explained to him. He was able to understand the general gist of what was happening, but did not pick up on the meaning of certain words that I was able to grasp even if I had never seen them before myself.
I now wonder if my reading comprehension abilities stem from that grounding in the language of the KJV all those years ago.
As for television being a detriment to current writers, my husband and I both have been lamenting this fact for quite a long time. TV not only destroy civic institutions, but family cohesiveness as well. My parents have often talked about how in the evenings their own families when they were growing up would play games together and spend time together. How many families today, however, even sit down to watch a movie together or play something together?
Further we have both also seen that the mentality of writing today is most definitely geared toward writing visually. We too have run into the idea that "omniscience voice" is wrong and is often said to be "head hopping" or even that any sort of break from one character to another is wrong except by chapters.
Its the same for taking time to describe a setting or what a character is seeing - oftentimes I have been told that streamline and cut down such passages, to "trust the reader" to figure them out, and to "start with the hook as close to the beginning as possible." While I certainly do not want to fall over the purple prose cliff, I still wish to spend time to describe what I see. As in the Bleakhouse example with the fog, to me, taking that time to set the scene also conveys the mood; the visual imagery of the words and tone used can put the reader in the right frame of mind for the story they are about to read.
We both have often offered to read and critique other writers' stories in our writing circles and time and again, we have been left scratching our heads on what we have read and seeing how poor it is, not because the writers are lazy or sloppy but because they simply do not know what good prose even looks liked. And we easily see from these examples where writers today are absolutely trying to emulate what they see on TV.
I also think screen plays have led to the notion of streamlining the description because television and movies have the advantage of the images of the scene to set that tone and mood while starting right at the action scene. People have forgotten, however, that novels are not tv. Sadly, though, I believe writers, editors, and publishers today do not realize this, do not understand the difference between the mediums, and worse still, do not care.
I think that I would add that screenwriting itself has affected novel writing too. In some good ways (log lines might be the best example) and in some bad... formulaic plotting and characters, for eg.
How many wannabe writers are watching YouTube videos about writing, rather than reading? How many writing videos use Hollywood examples rather than book examples because they're visual?
This collection connects so many dots to me... I personally saw a Linguistics Department being overtaken by Critical Theory, much like the theme you explored so well in your video about Villains: no study dared to affirm anything and suggested many 'hidden meanings', anywhere they chose one existed.
But let me just redeem my fellow Brazilian Paulo Freire - I dare say he's more a target of this kind of "critical" approach than a precursor. His method was for adults (maybe you knew this already or you intuited when you said "this method is not for children"), he was focused on illiterate field workers, who couldn't be convinced there was value in learing how to read, during a 30-years dictatorship in Brazil. That's where this mix of social awareness came from: he realized they paid attention if he taught them how to read about their tools, payment methods, instead of the phrases in literacy books for children, 'peter took the kite for his dad' (a sentence full of "P"s in Portuguese).
So he was more in search of a shortcut for adults - and yes, revolutionary democratic thinking in a dictatorship that singled him out as 'communist'. It was not for children nor a substitute to phonetics (still in place in Brazil). Ira Shor, I confess I never heard of this name - and I'm licensed to teach Math and had a lato sensu in distance learning - so I guess he's the post-modern impostor here.
A closing thought: I had the priviledge to go to a congress in Education, Paulo Freire affictionates, and I confess I was expecting the same crap as in the Linguistic department, Critical Theory, etc. I watched, for hours, presentations of case studies by public servants from all around Brazil, on how they taught rural people, riverside people, people in historical havens for runaway slaves, how they got the public fundings, which methodology they used, how they measured the results about literacy, math, some critical labor skill... very hands on, realistic people in a country with so many excluded people since colonial times (and so much bullshit in Academia). If they knew how their work is... 'tokenized', is this a word? I think it's obvious English is not my first language, right :D Sorry for any nonsense.
It's sad that this channel has basically became a political right/wing dog whistle. And it's very apparent in this video. Asserting the notion that bad writing is because of leftist politics that prioritises "the message" over the text itself feels like something out of an anti woke YouTube video. What's worse is that People like you always advocate for anti intellectual acts like "academia is evil but I'm not"
Conservatives name five grea film directors, anime, tv shows or cisssic novels that are overtly right wing. I'll wait.
Happily, I am not a dog.
The most recent anime I enjoyed was Frieren.
The most recent book I (re) read was the Fellowship of the Ring.
Are these dog-whistles, or am I still allowed to enjoy them?
The dogwhistles are piercingly loud if you can hear them. Gotta love conservatives who are too cowardly to show their true colours!
Is there a reason you seem to have omitted all the parts from the "The country school of tomorrow" that completely make the point you are trying to make using it wrong?
> We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply. We are to follow the admonitions of the good apostle, who said, ''Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low degree." *And generally, with respect to these high things, all that we shall try to do is just to create presently about these country homes an atmosphere and conditions such, that, if by chance a child of genius should spring up from the soil, that genius will surely bud and not be blighted. *
> So we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the home, in the shop, on the farm. *We shall train the child for the life before him* by methods which reach the perfection of their adaptation only when the child shall not be able to distinguish between the pleasures of his school work and the pleasures of his play.
That seems to not match your claims about what the book is about. At all.
Given this *flagrant* abuse of selective quoting and it's LONG history of being a antigovernment talking point, I find all the *other* references rather suspect.
Hi there, I'm a reading teacher who just watched part of your video. Just dropping in to say, if anyone's reading this and having second thoughts about some things that were said in the video or the claims from some of the sources referenced here, there's a podcast episode I'd highly recommend listening to to get a better understanding of this issue. Linked here: https://www.haveyouheardpodcast.com/episodes/152-the-reading-wars-are-older-than-you-think
Dear Hilary, I love your writing and videos, thank you so much. I think you would very much enjoy Richard Mitchell's newsletter and books, The Underground Grammarian, Less Than Words Can Say, The Gift of Fire, and The Graves of Academe (free at https://sourcetext.com/grammarian/). I can also recommend the first part of David Mulroy's The War Against Grammar. These are thoughtful and amusing "on the ground" reports and commentary by English professors who witnessed the bombs of mindless barbarity falling in real time in their classrooms and in their campus administrations.