The ruling class wants you to be literate enough to understand their written orders. And nothing more. True literacy is punk. True literacy is revolutionary.
If you look at this article and think “this is too long to read” you’re part of the target audience. Make the time.
They definitely do feel like they’ve spent too long in their self-described “Academic Zoo.”
Having not been in academia for years now, I absolutely agree with you on this- nothing drives reading comprehension and general attention span quite like a real incentive.
In a way, I kinda think you’re both right, but the article’s approach is all wrong. They want to treat the symptom, not the disease.
The “Ruling class” is incentivized to inspire the kind of apathy that just happens to inspire poor literacy, and instead of focusing on haranguing people about reading, we just need to give them reasons to give a shit about, you know, anything.
A zest for life in general.
People who feel passion will write and read- you see it simply by the fact that fanfiction went crazy the moment the internet got a decent volume of users.
Fwiw, I think you are also right too:-). I understand somewhat what the OP is trying to say here: you need to get over yourself, and put in some WORK to get you through the cognitive dissonance that reading is likely to cause. However, try saying that in ANY other context:
a white person to a black person: “uh, have you tried just getting over it? slavery was hundreds of years ago now, and it’s not like *I* ever owned any slaves” (note that there is just too much wrong here to even begin to unpack in a short space, but here I am focusing on how insensitive it is: even though black people would LOVE to simply “get over it”, especially for it to STOP HAPPENING, as in right this very moment, that is a PROCESS and they cannot simply snap their fingers and wish away an entire history built upon it, e.g. how police - and employers - will treat someone different based on color of skin)
an old man (or woman) to a young girl: “you know you would look prettier if you smiled more, right?” (okay… first, this is objectively true, but once again, it’s nowhere near the point - if she is frowning or whatever, simply telling her to plaster over her emotional state and “be pretty”, for the sake of the external viewer and once again, regardless of how she feels about the whole thing - is again extremely insensitive?)
a man to a woman: “sexism is a thing over the past, maybe if you want a higher salary you should just work harder?” (as is the theme here, this is like 90% untrue, even if it contains a germ of truth - some women can rise up, despite the shackles, and indeed you’ll never know if you do not try and all that but… dayum, how insensitive to phrase it like this?)
In all of these, the packaging seems equally as important as the message itself, if not more so. Now, my own reply did take an unnecessarily aggressive stance, though it was intentionally modeled after the one I read out from OP’s wording, in an attempt to highlight it better (since some people can see some things more clearly when they are repeated back to them, perhaps they are too close to fully see the implications of their own stance?). And I dunno, sometimes that works… but it does seem far more likely that a gentler approach might result in a better chance of reception?
For instance, each of my above instances could have been rephrased:
Rather than shame the already-victims, putting the onus on the receiver to do ALL the work, wouldn’t a true leader (or at least encourager) inspire their audience to do the desired task, as in empower them to do what they should want already to do? (dayum, that sounded really profound, - I better write that down!:-P)
… https://media.tenor.com/xOf2-hefBXIAAAAM/huh.gif