Reading Tutor

04/19/2026

I found this interesting. And I learned new things.

What will happen in our second peasanthood

04/01/2026

This is an excellent article. It's kind of dry but still worth reading. So, go ahead, hit the link. Read it.

Two champions of knowledge-rich instruction reflect on its current momentum

03/25/2026

Of course! But they also have data to prove it.

Is the page finally beginning to turn on children and screens? For the first time since the advent of social media, we are seeing a burgeoning alliance across all political divides to protect children from digital harm. In 2024 Jonathan Haidt delivered an urgent manifesto for change in The Anxious G...

03/21/2026

03/11/2026

https://aeon.co/essays/what-we-think-is-a-decline-in-literacy-is-a-design-problem Interesting point of view. I don't know if he's right, but this is something to consider.

Your inability to focus isn’t a failing. It’s a design problem, and the answer isn’t getting rid of our screen time

11/09/2025

Reading comes in many forms.

11/04/2025

https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-literate-society-aa1 This is a great article that goes along with the video I posted yesterday. It's a bit long, but well worth reading.

From the article: "Modern students who are unable to read are once more reliant on the authority of their teachers and are less capable of racing ahead, innovating and questioning orthodoxies.

These students are just one symptom of the stagnant culture of the screen age which is characterised by simplicity, repetitiveness and shallowness. Its symptoms are observable all around us.

Pop songs in every genre are becoming shorter, simpler and more repetitive and films are being reduced to endlessly-repeated franchise formulas. Studies suggest that the number of “disruptive” and “transformative” inventions is declining. More money is spent on scientific research than ever in history but the rate of progress “is barely keeping pace with the past”.

Doubtless many factors are at work, but this is also precisely what you would expect of a generation of researchers who spent their childhoods glued to screens rather than reading or thinking.

Even books themselves are becoming less complex.

If the literate world was characterised by complexity and innovation, the post literate world is characterised by simplicity, ignorance and stagnation. It is probably not an accident that the decline of literacy has ushered in an obsession with cultural “nostalgia”; a desire to endlessly recycle the cultural forms of the past: the television shows and styles of the nineties, for instance, or the fashions of the early 2000s.

Our culture is being transformed into a smartphone wasteland.

Cut off from the cultural riches of the past we are condemned to live in a narcissistic eternal present. Deprived of the critical tools to question and develop the insights of those who went before us, we are condemned to endlessly repeat and pastiche ourselves, superhero film by superhero film, repetitive pop song by repetitive pop song.

Most of all, this increasingly trivial and mindless culture is a calamity for our politics."

Put your phone away (when you're done with this post). Ignore your social media. Read a book.
And contact me if you or someone you know needs help with reading. I teach people to read.

And the end of civilisation

11/03/2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Iqc-lah8g4 I found this video very interesting. They cover a lot of ground in their discussion of literacy, post-literacy, smart phone and screen addiction, effects of social media, history, philosophy, and many other things. It just might be worth your time.

If you’ve noticed that you’re reading less, or you’ve been concerned with the decline of reading as a leisure activity, or you’re wondering what happens if a...

10/24/2025

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”
― George Orwell

Send a message to learn more

10/23/2025

Yes, there is a new Reading Tutor video today.

Niall Ferguson wrote an interesting article on the decline of literacy. It's at: https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-without-books-we-will-be-barbarians ....

10/18/2025

Proper word usage is important.

Read Cul de Sac—a comic strip by creator Richard Thompson—for today, October 18, 2025, and check out other great comics, too!