I don't know about the able-to-read part. I am wondering if people are still getting the basic skills in school. For instance, I was told by a headhunter that a resumé must state its case in the first 25 words or less, because the reader (a person in lower management) won't read further than that. (The old standard was 100 words; but that was a couple of generations ago.) Now, Mr. Trevelyan seems to be a snob who thinks some intellectual authority knows what is worth reading in a universal sense, but most people probably know what is worth reading _to_them_ in the immediate case, like the resumé reader trying to find the best candidate for a particular job. If they find mere reading to be laborious, they are going to have a hard time accomplishing that end. More abstract and theoretical stuff is going to be beyond them. I am not the only one who has noticed this.
I don't know about the able-to-read part. I am wondering if people are still getting the basic skills in school. For instance, I was told by a headhunter that a resumé must state its case in the first 25 words or less, because the reader (a person in lower management) won't read further than that. (The old standard was 100 words; but that was a couple of generations ago.) Now, Mr. Trevelyan seems to be a snob who thinks some intellectual authority knows what is worth reading in a universal sense, but most people probably know what is worth reading _to_them_ in the immediate case, like the resumé reader trying to find the best candidate for a particular job. If they find mere reading to be laborious, they are going to have a hard time accomplishing that end. More abstract and theoretical stuff is going to be beyond them. I am not the only one who has noticed this.
jamenta loves the British system of totalitarian slavery, remember.