The Briterati, as I call Britain’s media pontificators on matters spiritual and temporal, are in a spin over reports that parents no longer read to their children and that the state is failing to protect the wee ‘uns from pornography. It is good to drop in on Britain from time to time, if only to observe moral guardians’ ephemeral preoccupations in the columns of newspapers that fewer and fewer people bother to read.
Last time I was here, columnists were obsessing over who would design Kate Middleton’s wedding dress. All that is forgotten as the press ferrets out other tidbits to digest and regurgitate.
This week, it’s the kids. A study by the National Literacy Trust claimed that 25 percent of twelve-year-olds could not spell, that one in six Londoners cannot read without difficulty, and that most London employers have trouble finding literate employees. Apparently, only two-thirds of families with children keep books at home. Almost all of them, though, have computer games. This is not a happy picture for a country where the printing press made Milton and Dickens available to the masses.
Read the rest at Taki’s Magazine.
