Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, August 11, 2025 Real World News
Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have replaced reading and critical thinking in post-Covid America.
Academic competition is discouraged if not banned. And yet the Media-Campus cultural establishment condemns the dismantling of the failed Department of Education.
In "Defining Culture Down", Commentary magazine executive editor Abe Greenwald notes how pop stars are lauded as modern day poets.
"After the new two-part Billy Joel documentary premiered on HBO Max, Bill Maher had Joel on his Club Random podcast and almost seemed to be bullying the pop giant into admitting that he, Joel, is a great poet," Greenwald wrote, adding that New York Times writer John McWhorter "argued that Bruce Springsteen’s 'primary contribution is as a poet.' "
Greenwald continued: "I love Billy Joel, and I love Bruce Springsteen’s first five or six albums, but they’re not poets. They write great songs, which is an achievement that we can celebrate on its own without having to dress it up as something else."
When Bob Dylan was awarded a Nobel Prize in literature in 2016, he did not show up to accept the award. Dylan has been known to refer to himself as a “song-and-dance man.”
"And that’s what they all are," Greenwald wrote.
Taylor Swift even marketed herself as a poet with the release of her album "The Tortured Poets Department".
"We’ve taken to calling pop stars poets because we’ve run out of poets to call poets. And we’ve run out of poets because we’ve run out of poetry-readers," Greenwald wrote.
Last year, the National Center for Educational Statistics found that U.S. adults at the lowest level of proficiency in reading went from 19 percent to 28 percent between 2017 and 2023. That's a nine-point jump in adult illiteracy in just six years.
This year, National University reported that the latest data shows that more than half of American adults read below a sixth-grade level, with millions struggling to complete everyday reading tasks.
The results include:
• In 2023, 28% of U.S. adults scored at or below Level 1 literacy, indicating significant difficulty with everyday reading tasks.
• In 2023, 29% of U.S. adults scored at Level 2 literacy, showing basic reading proficiency but challenges with complex texts.
• In 2023, 44% of U.S. adults scored at Level 3 literacy or above, indicating strong reading and comprehension skills.
• About 130 million U.S. adults (54% of those aged 16–74) read below a sixth-grade level, according to modeled estimates.
• Approximately 45 million U.S. adults are functionally illiterate, reading below a fifth-grade level.
• 21% of U.S. adults are classified as functionally illiterate, unable to complete basic reading tasks.
• The average American reads at a 7th- to 8th-grade level.
"Yet people think Donald Trump is wrong to call out the failures of the Department of Education," Greenwald wrote.
"And it’s no secret what pandemic school closures did to childhood reading (and math) scores. Those kids will be adults soon enough, and with the prevalence of AI, many of them may never have to become fully literate to get by."
Greenwald continued: "We’re defining down extraordinary achievement as a way of accepting a decline in the extraordinary, or perhaps a simple decline in the competent. Pop stars aren’t poets, AI content creators aren’t artists, and political influencers aren’t philosophers or historians. We’re dumbing things down because it’s easier than finding our way back to cultural greatness."
Nineteen years ago, producers hesitated to release the science fiction comedy "Idiocracy," but it went on to become a cult film and disturbing prophetic. The plot involves a slacker soldier who get placed into a hibernation experiment the authorities forgot about until he is jolted awake by a garbage avalanche.
During the "five hundred years, average intelligence decreases due to societal expectations, discouraging well-educated individuals from having children as the less-educated reproduce indiscriminately; genetic engineering is forgone in favor of hair loss and erectile dysfunction treatments. As a result, infrastructure deteriorates, low comedy and vulgarity defines culture, and consumerism is left unfettered," according to a Wikipedia plot summary.
