I just flashed back to one of many times in the last few years that the person behind the cash register couldn't handle basic making change without the machine telling him how to count.
But then, if we're seriously talking about "the classics", then "everyone" is already classic-illiterate, aren't they? I mean, I took two semesters of Great Books and done a good bit of further reading on my own. I'd be willing to bet that puts me in the top 1% of the population. But I'm still fairly classic-illiterate by the standards of 100 years ago...
Huh? I'm trying to get my head around today being less 'classically literate' than in the early 1900s. For example, in the United States, 10% of the populate was flat-out illiterate. Only 50% of people were enrolled in primary education (reaching a middle-school level education). [1] Secondary schools (High School) just started around the 1890s. Enrollment in schools that are now mandatory was 10%. [3]
Since 1942, inflation-adjusted cost per pupil increased by 700%. [2] Some of that is surely inefficiency but most is because we spend more on education. This means better teachers and better materials.
And this is in a country with one of the largest GDP in 1900. You can pretty safely assume we've had far less drastic changes in our own education system compared to the rest of the world.
I'm sure Thomas Jefferson could destroy you in Classics knowledge. However, he was one of ten his age that had the means and passion enough to spend much of his life reading them.
But, this all adds up. This leads to people reading War and Peace, Jane Eyre and Great Gatsby before they leave mandatory secondary school. And while not every country is at this level, technology and humanism has given people a much better chance in life to explore these types of works all over the world.
