The future of writing?

[Cabbages and kings]

[Jeff Tanyard]

I've watched a few of her videos.  One of them popped up in my YouTube recommendation sidebar one day, and I decided to give it a try.  Also, she looks like Agent Scully, so I couldn't really not give her a chance.  ;)

As a long-time critic of the public school system, I completely agree with her about the "whole word" stuff that the schools taught for a time (and that some might still each).  I can't imagine how many kids have had their brains stunted by that garbage.

And, of course, I agree with her about AI usage causing people's brains to atrophy.  AI is like fire: a useful servant, but a fearful master.

[Cabbages and kings]

She does look similar to agent Scully from "The X-Files". 

[Hopscotch]

I learned to read in the Stone Age of Dick and Jane.  My Millennial daughter learned from Dr. Seuss.  Both worked.  Perhaps not for every kid in the classroom.  But the key for both of us was parents who read to us at bedtime, pointing out the word-sources for their reading, firing the child's curiosity.  Lincoln had barely a year of formal schooling on the frontier but an illiterate mother who pushed him to learn reading.  He did okay.  We need some new teaching scheme less than we need parents to just read to their kids at bedtime.

[Bill Hiatt]

"When in doubt, blame the schools."

In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't watched the whole video yet. (Edit: I listened to the rest as I typed his response.)

The presenter assumes a remarkable degree of homogeneity in American education. I taught for 36 years, the last one being I think school year 2014-2015. Among other things, I was a department chair, the coordinator of the honors program, BHEA (union) director-at-large for the high school, and a member of the superintendent's advisory council or similar under three different superintendents. In other words, I have a lot of experience, not only in English teaching but in the larger school in general.

When was the first time I heard about critical literacy? Today. Yes, the philosophy that the presenter claims was dominant since the 1990s and seemingly more or less universal, I had literally never heard of.

Are there controversies in education over the best way to teach reading (and many other things)? Yes. But phonics has always had its defenders, and though I wasn't involved in teaching reading in elementary schools directly, I certainly taught thousands of people who were the product of the supposedly homogeneous educational system the presenter denounces. They were almost all functioning above the level that the presenter assumes is pretty much all our schools produce. They almost all read whole books, wrote coherent essays, and though some used Spark Notes, they could also perform on spontaneous reading tasks and/or read books for which such aids were not available.

The high school I worked in was a good one, but it was by no means the best. Yet according to the presenter, such schools literally do not exist.

The truth is that the federal government, even if it wanted to, has few mechanisms for enforcing a particular teaching method. The states have a wider range of options but are much more diverse in their attitudes. Local school boards are the same way. And ultimately, teachers have much greater influence over the way in which things are actually taught than the video suggests.  As one of my colleagues once said about what to do if an administrator is pushing you to move in a way you know isn't optimal, "Smile sweetly, close your classroom door, and do whatever you damn please." Now, this isn't always a good situation, but it does make possible a teacher being able to teach effectively even if there were hypothetically some constraints on best practices.

In addition, good modern schools are also heavily reliant on data-driven decision-making, which means that the teachers involved in the teaching of reading would have more exposure to the related research than the presenter assumes. Also, the efforts to construct standardized tests that measure critical thinking (in the correct definition of the term) are having positive effects. Teacher practices will sometimes be informed by high stakes tests, which can sometimes be a bad thing, but which in this instance should force a move toward more effective teaching of reading where such teaching doesn't already exist. For better or worse, everybody does the public accountability dance.

As far as writing is concerned, I run across excellent examples of it every single day, many by people young to have supposedly been stunted by critical literacy.

Are there bad schools? Sure. But is the pattern universal and government promoted? Not as far as I can tell. The relatively decentralized nature of the system would mitigate against such an outcome.

Also, there are other explanations for the gaps that the presenter notes:
erratic funding for schools
the tendency to fund through local property taxes, which means that students from poor families are more likely to attend poor schools
the rise of entertainment alternatives to reading, like TV and video games, as well as an internet structure geared to short attention spans
and many other things...

There are many ways in schools could certainly improve. But my experience suggests that the dystopian view espoused by the presenter is, at best, an overgeneralization. 

[Anarchist]

Also, she looks like Agent Scully, so I couldn't really not give her a chance.  ;)

There will always be only one Scully.

[elleoco]

My experience with modern education is strictly in observing a lot of the results in places like forums dedicated to other interests, and I've got to tell you a lot of modern people are close to illiterate. They make posts so bad it's almost impossible to figure out what they mean. Then I also remember a sheriff's deputy of my county bemoaning the fact that most of the young people they have to deal with can't sign their names. To a lesser extent it's also in online articles authored by people you'd expect to be wordsmiths.

Younger people are also ignorant of history to an alarming degree.

My grammar school experience was back in the Dark Ages, but my mother used to say how lucky I was in my first grade class. There were only two in my school, but one teacher - mine - started our reading experience using Phonics and the other used whole word recognition. At the time I didn't understand why Mom said that, now I do, and effects of one over the other seem to still haunt schools today.

Since I bought a new car this past September, I joined some car forums, and there you see the startling inability of people to do basic math concerning things like car loans and negative equity. A lot aren't too bright about reading things before signing them either. Is that because reading a multi-page contract is too difficult? Ages aren't so apparent there, but still ...

[Jeff Tanyard]

"When in doubt, blame the schools."

Who's in doubt?  I'm certainly not.   

Don't make the mistake, Bill, of thinking you're the only former school system employee here.  You're not.  I've never been a teacher, but I've worked in the bureaucracy.  I've seen how the sausage is made, and I made some of it myself.  I'm familiar with the educational-industrial complex, a creature most people don't know exists but is just as slimy as the more widely-known military-industrial complex.  And no, I'm not talking about textbook publishers.

I've also seen teachers with decades of experience look like wide-eyed children when they visit the central office and really see the behind-the-scenes stuff for the first time.  Most teachers simply have no idea how the system actually works outside of the actual school buildings.

The system exists for those who are profiting from it, and I don't mean the teachers.  Any actual learning that occurs among the students is a nice bonus but still incidental.

My grammar school experience was back in the Dark Ages, but my mother used to say how lucky I was in my first grade class. There were only two in my school, but one teacher - mine - started our reading experience using Phonics and the other used whole word recognition. At the time I didn't understand why Mom said that, now I do, and effects of one over the other seem to still haunt schools today.

Your mother sounds like she was wise beyond her years.

The whole point of a written language is to codify the spoken language.  We all learn to talk before we learn to read, and even illiterate tribes have spoken languages.  Phonics, by turning spoken sounds into symbols, enables the easiest possible transition from the spoken word to the written word.  A hieroglyphic system, which is what "whole word" essentially boils down to, makes that transition needlessly more difficult.  In fact, it's not really a transition at all; it's more like a completely separate venture.  Kids can learn to read that way, but it's harder, and more kids will fall by the wayside.

I learned to read in the Stone Age of Dick and Jane.  My Millennial daughter learned from Dr. Seuss.  Both worked.  Perhaps not for every kid in the classroom.  But the key for both of us was parents who read to us at bedtime, pointing out the word-sources for their reading, firing the child's curiosity. 

Parents reading to their kids is absolutely crucial.  I was also fortunate in that regard.   

I learned the alphabet from Sesame Street.  I was probably two or three years old.  When Mom heard me singing the alphabet song along with the characters on the show, she decided it was time to start teaching me how to read.  I particularly enjoyed the Berenstain Bears and the "read-along" books with 45-rpm records that I would play on my Fisher-Price record player.   

[Lorri Moulton]

Schools are great, but the one-on-one we get at home makes a HUGE difference. 

Reading with our kids, older kids teaching younger ones (I showed my brother how an equal sign can be a magical portal in algebra), and let's not forget multiplication rock! My dad had already shown us the secrets of 9, but the pool game was great in the cartoon.  Also, music makes it easier to remember.

My mom taught me cursive during an Air Force softball game we were watching (I was 6).  I still remember writing "Mary had a little lamb" on lined paper she found in her purse. 

If I'd had to depend on only what I learned in school, it would have been more difficult.  I wish one of my teachers had explained that words don't follow rules well since so many come from other languages.  Apparently, no one thought that was important in the second grade, but it explains a lot!

[Post-Doctorate D]

If I'd had to depend on only what I learned in school, it would have been more difficult.

There was a drawing technique I learned in a YouTube video years and years after I was out of school that would have made a world of difference had I learned it in school.  And it was something that could have been taught in less than five minutes.

[Bill Hiatt]

I think we all agree with the role of the parents in education is critical. Positive parental involvement has a large impact.

I've also seen teachers with decades of experience look like wide-eyed children when they visit the central office and really see the behind-the-scenes stuff for the first time.  Most teachers simply have no idea how the system actually works outside of the actual school buildings.

I'm well aware that sometimes district-level decision-making is far from optimal. But the classroom is where the rubber meets the road. It's where education really happens. I've seen instances in which the district office was pretty dysfunctional, but education continued to happen, anyway. That's not to say that district administration has no impact. But the classroom has far more. For instance, Marzano studied achievement patterns for students in four groups: those in a bad classroom in a bad school, those in a good classroom in a bad school, those in a bad classroom in a good school, and those in a good classroom in the a good school. To the surprise of practically no one, the students in a good classroom in a good school performed best, and students in a bad classroom in a bad school performed worst. However, the real takeaway was that when school and classroom varied in quality, the classroom was far more important than the school. True, Marzano didn't measure bad vs good school districts, but I think it's a logical inference that if school administration's impact is small compared to the classroom's, then district impact is likely even smaller.

I'm familiar with the educational-industrial complex, a creature most people don't know exists but is just as slimy as the more widely-known military-industrial complex.  And no, I'm not talking about textbook publishers.

I don't doubt it exists, but I question that its impact is anywhere nearly as universal as the presenter alleges. Yes, there are organizations that try to influence educational policy, though they don't all agree with each other in terms of which way they want to move. Yes, there are tech companies and textbook companies that push. But they, too, are hardly a monopoly.  And in the case of the latter, some districts are divorcing themselves altogether from such companies and having teachers with content expertise write their instructional materials instead.

If your experience was in a larger district, it was probably more bureaucratically influenced than smaller ones are. I taught in three different ones (two small and one large), and the large one was by far the least efficient administratively. The smaller ones were less easy targets for bureaucratic manipulation because communities were more directly involved. School district are run, at least in California, by elected school boards, typically five people in the smaller ones, with two or three up for election every two years. The same parents who take the time to read to their kids and otherwise support their education often also keep an eye on school policies. And you know what? A big enough crowd showing up to a school board meeting has changed district policy. I've seen it happen several times. I've also seen board members lose reelection bids when the community was unhappy with them.

Does that mean nothing bad ever happens in the back office? No, it doesn't. Human institutions are inherently imperfect. But without even considering the diversity in state governments and the relatively limited federal role, it's clear that there are a lot of moving parts at the local level that are hard to control by some sinister outside force. (The US has over 13,300 local school districts.) And small districts also have relatively small administrative staffs. That means if something weird is going on, there are only a small number of people who could be responsible. I've also seen administrators, even superintendents, fall because of community dissatisfaction. (And one went to jail, but that's another story.)

Local bodies like school boards end up being more responsive to public opinion than more remote ones. Enough parent and community scrutiny can improve schools that are having problems.

Are there still bad teachers, bad administrators, and bad schools? Yes. But are there also good ones? Yes. The video's monolithic presentation just doesn't reflect reality.

The Military-Industrial Complex has the advantage of being able to work with a number of unelected decision-makers and a president who (since I think Dwight Eisenhower) doesn't have any military command experience. Also, for national security reasons, a lot of discussion is behind closed doors. Contrast this with education, in which much more discussion is public (at the local level by law, at least in California, only personnel matters can be discussed in closed session). You have also a large number of people involved in decisions, from the president and congress to the fifty state governors and legislators to the 13,300 school boards. That could be a problem in that it's harder to make constructive change universally. But it's also hard to corrupt the entire system.

Aside from the nature of the system, as I've said, the video presenter's narrative doesn't square with my classroom experience. And, as both a speech coach and a department chair, I interacted with colleagues in a number of other districts, locally and nationally in the first case, locally in the second. Experiences were diverse, but in no case did anyone have an experience that exactly mirrors what the presenter is talking about. That the issue exists in some places, I don't doubt. I'm not questioning the presenter's own experience--or yours. But that experience is far, far from universal.

I'd have to say the same thing about people being unable to write. I think people turn to something like ChatGPT because of laziness or the desire to improve efficiency (PJ, for example, is in the latter group). I disagree with the use of Ai, but its use isn't proof of incompetence. Other forces are also at work. And I still have no trouble finding good and sometimes even great material to read. is there also garbage? Sure. But again, it's far from universal. One of my students who graduated not that many years ago is turning out beautiful prose, and he's far from being alone. There's a whole flood of younger people on Substack who know how to write perfectly well, some even brilliantly. (And yes, a very few write badly, but not enough to justify the sweeping generalization that no one can write.)

[LilyBLily]

I have no clue what phonics are.

Our parents taught us kids to enjoy learning. They bought us books. They took us to the public library. They told us what key words were across multiple languages. Key words like "book" and "library," actually.

The public school system was good; we were in a rich county and parents themselves were well-educated. Obviously, it makes a difference. But love of learning comes first.

[Jeff Tanyard]

I have no clue what phonics are.

Teaching the sounds made by the 26 individual letters and by the combos like "ou" and "ch" and whatnot.  Kids who learn to read via phonics can read new words by sounding them out for themselves.

Here's a brief but pretty good summary of the controversy:

[Hopscotch]

If I'd had to depend on only what I learned in school, it would have been more difficult.

Vividly recall my surprise when my daughter's first grade teacher discovered she could read.  And told her to stop reading at home and slow down to plod lockstep thru the assigned lesson plan w/the rest of her class.  She saluted, of course, but continued her own march.

[Bill Hiatt]

If I'd had to depend on only what I learned in school, it would have been more difficult.

Vividly recall my surprise when my daughter's first grade teacher discovered she could read.  And told her to stop reading at home and slow down to plod lockstep thru the assigned lesson plan w/the rest of her class.  She saluted, of course, but continued her own march.

I think we'd all agree that teacher was wrong! Admittedly, there are challenges to dealing with a student who is way ahead of everybody else, but it's well worth taking the time to meet them.

There is a related issue in higher grade levels that is brought on to some extent by standardized testing. While emphasis on accountability is good, emphasis on one high stakes test as the sole measure for judging schools is bad. One effect is that students already scoring at the top are ignored. While you would expect struggling students to get more intervention, you'd also hope for programs that encourage already advanced students to keep advancing.

[Bill Hiatt]

I like the second video. I think we all agree on the importance of phonics in reading instruction.

Taking both videos at face value, it would appear that whole language is different from critical literacy. At least, the descriptions in the videos are totally different. The chronology is also different. The first video suggests that we are still in the grip of critical literacy right now (with a little nod to the fact that phonics is sometimes also included). The second video has the pendulum already swinging back. Here is a third chronology that suggests that swing was already starting to happen in the 1990s, when the first video claims that critical literacy achieved total dominance. https://phoneme-graphememapping.com/reading-instruction-a-historical-timeline/.

Since I didn't teach elementary school, I can't bear firsthand witness to how reading was being taught in my district. I will say that I didn't see a drop at the high school level, as one might expect if the district had abandoned phonics. But as I've mentioned, the system is pretty decentralized in some ways. Not all schools march to the beat of the same drum.

[PJ Post]

21% (possibly as high as 28%) of the US population are functionally illiterate (2024). And over 50% read at a 6th grade level. I think the problem may be a little deeper than phonics.

For grins and giggles, the first survey done in 1870 reported a US illiteracy rate of 20%*. So, after 150 years of progress, research and education systems analysis, we've lost a percentage point to a period just after the civil war and without any real schools to speak of. /slight-hyperbole

When folks talk about inherent or systemic inequality, this is one of the datums that supports their assertion.

In the Chicago School District, 69% of students read below proficiency standards. In 2024, only 23% of Juniors met those standards. The graduation rates have improved over the last ten years, from 77% to 84% in 2024.*

Scarsdale, a super wealthy NY town with one of the best school systems in the country, boasts a 99% graduation rate and a high school reading proficiency of 99%, as well.*

They're both generationally, deep-blue Democrat cities.

Raise your hand if you can spot the underlying causation.

___

*Although the data analysis may vary from study to study, the underlying trends remain unchanged. Also, while Scarsdale's performance is at the top, Chicago's is middle of the road.

[Lorri Moulton]

If I'd had to depend on only what I learned in school, it would have been more difficult.

Vividly recall my surprise when my daughter's first grade teacher discovered she could read.  And told her to stop reading at home and slow down to plod lockstep thru the assigned lesson plan w/the rest of her class.  She saluted, of course, but continued her own march.

My brother had the same issue.  Apparently, I was teaching him too much when I got home from school.  By the time he got to kindergarten, I had been sharing things from 2nd grade.

[cecilia_writer]

My older son used to read whole books such as the Swallows and Amazons series to the younger one. There's 6 years between them so it was really nice to see that.
I remember one of the older one's early teachers saying he would never get anywhere unless his handwriting improved! I felt like writing to her to gloat when he graduated with a 1st class honours degree and class prize.

[Bill Hiatt]

Scarsdale, a super wealthy NY town with one of the best school systems in the country, boasts a 99% graduation rate and a high school reading proficiency of 99%, as well.*

One of our consistent educational problems is the way we fund schools, though we have made some progress in that area. There is still much to be done.

As I've mentioned before, when schools are funded based on local property tax, the result is a system in which the people living in poverty have to send their kids to impoverished schools. The situation is complicated by the fact that these parents often had a similar educational experience themselves, so they are less able to fill the gap left by a less functional school (and certainly unable to send their kids to private school).

It's not that miracles don't sometimes happen in poor schools, but the odds are certainly against it. Parent support, as I just mentioned, is also typically far less in such schools. And aside from parental influence what are the factors most strongly correlated with student learning? Teacher quality and class size--both heavily dependent on financing.

While there are teachers who deliberately go to work in struggling schools, it's hard for a teacher supporting a family--as most of them do--to make that choice. Practically speaking, most applicants for teaching jobs have to consider salary and benefits packages pretty seriously. The result is a situation in which an economically challenged school has to scrape the bottom of the barrel--if there even is a barrel. Last I checked, we were still in a nationwide teacher shortage. When other professions have trouble recruiting, employers find ways to make the positions more attractive. When states have difficulty finding enough qualified teachers, they tend to lower standards instead.

[PJ Post]

It's sad when the most meaningful predictor of future happiness is the zip code you're born into.

[Lorri Moulton]

I have never understood why schools don't go by county or state.  It's so unfair that wealthy areas (which usually have access to supplemental help for their kids) get more money than the areas that really need it.

[Post-Doctorate D]

When I was in school, I had lower-performing classmates that could tell you the stats for baseball or football players, and team records and all sorts of useless sports information, but they couldn't remember historical events or math formulas or whatever.

If you knew that kind of sports stuff, you were cool and awesome.

If you knew actual science facts, historical facts, math formulas, proper spelling and grammar, you were basically an outcast.  Something was wrong with you.

And, not just sports, but pop culture or celebrity news and gossip and whatever.  You know that stuff, you're cool.  You know actual, practical, useful information and you're weird and lame and all sorts of names.

Throwing more money at schools is not going to solve any of those problems.  There are people that have had fewer resources, less access to information, and even were discouraged from learning, yet they excelled anyway because they were determined to learn and found ways to do it.  If you value education, if you get kids to realize the value of education, you'll find a way to make it work even with limited resources.  If you can't get people to value education, if you can't get kids to realize the value of education, it won't matter how many resources you have.

I think that is the bigger problem than funding.  There are too many people that don't think they need to learn certain things, that don't value it, and even will discourage others from the same.

And then, too, I think perhaps more time needs to be spent on basic life skills.  I think we spent more time learning to sew than learning how to balance a checkbook or balance your bank and credit card statements.  We didn't spend much time at all on money skills compared to lots of other things.

[Cabbages and kings]

"Because nothing lifts people up more... than lowering standards."

[PJ Post]

When I was in school, I had lower-performing classmates...

We don't all have the same mental horsepower, but the education system should account for that. Reading is a pretty low bar. And while we should definitely promote the positives of learning in general, much of our educational problem is, in fact, related to disproportionate funding, as well as managing the investment of that funding.

[Bill Hiatt]

Throwing more money at schools is not going to solve any of those problems.  There are people that have had fewer resources, less access to information, and even were discouraged from learning, yet they excelled anyway because they were determined to learn and found ways to do it.  If you value education, if you get kids to realize the value of education, you'll find a way to make it work even with limited resources.  If you can't get people to value education, if you can't get kids to realize the value of education, it won't matter how many resources you have.

That there are also cultural variables working against education is undeniable. Can you find examples of people from impoverished backgrounds who still got themselves a good education? Sure! But does that mean that money is completely irrelevant? No!

There are some students who could find ways to educate themselves if they wanted to. But that's a small minority, and we can't easily inculcate better values into everyone rapidly enough to change that part of the puzzle. Such a paradigm shift tends, by its nature, to be gradual.

Most students need the guidance of a good teacher--or teachers at the secondary level. That's why teacher quality repeatedly comes up in studies as the most significant variable schools can control. A lot of people, consciously or unconsciously, want teachers to all be self-sacrificing saints who will soldier on regardless of their personal financial status. And it's certainly true that most people who become teachers aren't doing it to become rich. . But surprisingly, most teachers do feel the need to consider their own financial situation.

One of the effects of inadequate funding is stagnating salary levels, which in turn result in fewer people going into teaching. When I first got my credential, states like California had an excess of teachers. That rapidly became a deficit within a few years. Quality took a hit as well. I can remember a colleague and I comparing notes a long time ago. When we were in high school, a fairly large number of people were interested in careers in teaching, including some of the strongest students. Flash forward a couple of decades, and few of our own students were interested--and often they were among the academically weakest. That's not to say that those are the only people left in the teaching pool by any means. There are a few saints, plus people whose spouses are the primary breadwinners and people who are single and childless (like me). But it does illustrate that teacher compensation in many areas is a factor impeding teacher recruitment.

Figures vary, but it appears we have 55,000 open positions and around 400,000 staffed by unqualified or underqualified teachers. Guess where these issues are the most acute? That's right--schools with less money to spend. And who gets the best teachers in the pool? Generally, schools with the most money to spend.

Even places like California, which got away from the reliance on local property taxes (by having the education portion of the tax paid to the state, which then redistributes it), haven't really solved the issues of inequality. That's partially because the formula takes into account cost of living in the different areas on the assumption that school employees either need to live nearby or have commuting expenses. There is truth in that, but it somewhat perpetuates the pattern that schools in affluent areas (with high housing costs) get more money. Also, most districts have education foundations to raise donations, but their success is largely a function of how affluent their community is. And there are also various ways for city governments (who are still funded by local property taxes) to legally funnel some of their money into the local school districts.

I don't blame the more affluent for wanting the best they can get for their children. Any parent wants that. But in the current climate, where budgeting is basically a zero-sum game, every dollar that goes one place takes a dollar away from another. That means any attempt to equalize educational spending is met by opposition from people who can better afford to donate to political campaigns, have the time to be politically active, and vote at a much higher percentage rate. And the worst part? We probably should be spending more money on students in poverty to try to reduce existing gaps.

One other issue needs to be addressed--the disparity between teacher responsibility and teacher pay. Back in the day, teachers were primarily dispensers of information and coaches for skill practice. Naturally, those responsibilities still exist. But today's teachers are also expected to be psychologists, social workers, nutritionists, first-aid providers, emergency responders, surrogate parents (in extreme cases), and (in schools who think the best security plan is to give all the teachers guns) expert marksmen. In other words, teachers are expected to fill any gap in the lives of students or the functioning of the school that comes up. If a student is having any kind of problem, even if it's not caused by the school, teachers are expected to fix it. (And at least in California, in the event of a disaster like an earthquake, teachers are expected to stay with their students until every single one is claimed by a parent--whether the process takes hours or even days. That means teachers have to make emergency plans for their families in the event that the teacher is trapped at school.)  Yet as responsibilities increase, pay does not increase in a commensurate way.

A typical teacher contract pays on the basis of a seven and a half hour day. Two separate national studies have shown that the typical teacher work day is ten hours, the difference being grading, preparation, parent conferences, student conferences, etc. And that doesn't even count days on the weekend. At the peak of my career, I was doing 10-12 on weekdays and 4-5 on Saturday and Sunday. In other words, I was doing a 58-70 hour work week and getting paid for a 37.5 hour week. Oh, and then there was the all the time I spent, mostly during winter break, writing college recommendations, or the time I spent during summer prepping for the new school year. Call me crazy. (People did, even at the time.) I don't regret doing it, and if I could go back in time, I wouldn't change my career choice. But when a community member said that teachers just needed to put more effort into the job, I described my typical day and added, "There's no such thing as more."

Do all teachers work that hard? Of course not. Some do the bare minimum. But if the average is a ten hour day, you've got to figure that the slackers have to be fewer in number than the workers. The prevalence of stress-related illnesses among teachers is also an indicator. And in my own English department, there were a high number of divorces, one full nervous breakdown and some partials. I never broke down completely, and I dodged the divorce because I never married in the first place. But I did gain an understanding of why education in medieval Europe was mostly handled by monks. 

I'm sorry for the avalanche of detail. But it's the kind of thing that, if you haven't taught, you aren't going to realize. Even I didn't realize what teaching was like until I did it. (I actually thought I could teach during the year and write during the summer. LOL. That didn't happen except for the very first summer and the three at the very end. 

So no, money isn't the solution to every educational problem. Sadly, there are many contributing factors, and just having more money doesn't necessarily produce a better result if the money isn't spent wisely. But not having the funds to encourage people to go into teaching and compensate them a bit more like they should be is certainly part of the problem.     

[LilyBLily]

Where I live, rural West Virginia, there is an endemic culture of scorning education. It's just as bad here as we are told it is among city ghetto families and peers. Sneering at students who excel puts a definite damper on individual ambition and confidence.

Put that into the equation, along with the fact that it used to be that really smart women didn't have many career options, so a lot of them chose to teach. Along with the usual duds, we had a significant cadre all across the country of women who put their very real intelligence into raising up students. Now, a lot of those women choose to work in other fields, because at last they can. Efforts to raise teacher salaries to encourage gifted people to turn or return to teaching haven't been successful as far as I know.

[Bill Hiatt]

Here and there, districts make an effort to raise teacher compensation, but there is no systematic effort to do so. I think one of the recommendations of the President's Commission during the Reagan administration was to raise teacher salaries to competitive levels.

One of the reasons we have particularly acute shortages in math and science is that people with those backgrounds have far more lucrative paths to pursue. Some years ago, the state of Georgia had to go to the extreme of hiring people from Germany, using a package that included teaching them English and paying for their relocation. That's how desperate things were.

And yes, teaching isn't treated like other professions. One time, one of my students said to me, "I'd really like to be a teacher, but my mother would be so disappointed." Society relies on its teachers for more than it realizes, but it generally doesn't respect them in the way one might expect.

[Hopscotch]

Just 5 job categories are absolutely essential to making a city or town function - police, firefighters, EMT, teachers and garbage collectors.  All of them should be paid premium salaries.  But if a teacher earns more than an IT clown, then what's the world coming to?

[Post-Doctorate D]

When I was in high school, my long term plans were to be elected President when I was 35 and then run for local school board or some other small local office and then become a teacher.

Didn't do any of those things.

[Jeff Tanyard]

If it was just about salary and benefits, then one would expect lower-paying private schools to report lower teacher satisfaction.  But that's not what we see:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/public-vs-private-school-teachers-librarians-us-2025-daniel-a--lkjze

I earned an engineering degree once upon a time, and I've tutored many students over the course of my life, usually in math.  I suspect I'd make a pretty good math teacher because I've already produced excellent results as a tutor, and I've had many people--including public school teachers--tell me I should be a teacher.  I believe teaching, in theory, is a noble and fulfilling pursuit, and I'd take a teaching job at a private school for a very modest salary if I thought the place was being run to my liking, because a man does not live by bread alone.

I wouldn't take the same job at a public school for a hundred grand a year, though.  I might do it for a million.  Maybe.  And under no circumstances would I ever send my own child to a public school.  Until the zealous public-school proponents understand why this is, they'll never fix anything, and all the things they wring their hands about will continue to happen.

Do those proponents want to improve public schools?  Actually improve them, I mean, and not just complain about salaries and funding?  Then they should stop the endless and tiresome "more money for teachers" demands and start addressing the actual structural problems.  Those problems will never be fixed, of course, because the Iron Law of Bureaucracy renders the status quo as implacable as iron, but it's what must happen as a prerequisite for substantial and permanent improvement.  Jaime Escalante bucked the system for as long as he could with remarkable success, but he got threats and hate mail for it, and the system beat him in the end. 

Any nail that tries to stick up will be inexorably hammered down, and many people--like me--who might otherwise have been excellent teachers have no desire to be hammered like that.  And I would be hammered, because I would prioritize student performance even when doing so would flagrantly break the system's rules (which would pretty much be all the time).  I'd be an outlaw, basically, and the system and its supporters would destroy me for it.

[Hopscotch]

Jerry P's Iron Law is rite but sits atop something even more fundamental - the first purpose of a bureaucracy is to preserve itself.  A bureaucracy is a living thing independent of its two classes of participants.  And can/can drag us all wherever it prefers to go.

[PJ Post]

In 1972, the US literacy rate was over 99%, even with underfunded schools and segregation.

Clearly, our priorities have changed.

[Bill Hiatt]

If it was just about salary and benefits, then one would expect lower-paying private schools to report lower teacher satisfaction.  But that's not what we see:

One of the things that I realized over the years is that those kinds of comparisons are flawed in one important respect. They include salary and health benefits, but they don't include other perks (some of which may be off the books, and are almost never made public, but all of which are separate from traditional benefits and usually not publicized). The most significant one is free tuition for staff members who have students enrolled in the school. How much of a perk is that? Well, in California, the average private high school tuition is $19,830. Elementary school is typically lower. But the amount varies by state and by school. The most prestigious school in my area charges $52,500 (plus a one-time registration fee and a few thousand more to cover books, activities, and meals). Start talking boarding schools, and you could be looking at as much as $89,000 (though it may be that the teacher perk wouldn't include living expenses in such a case).

Nor is that necessarily the only perk. For instance, the most prestigious school in my area offers free meals to faculty members. That may really only mean lunch, depending on the teacher's schedule. But even free lunch for the whole school year is a considerable savings. Also keep in mind that teachers are typically given free room and board at boarding schools, and there is at least one that offers retired teacher housing as a perk. Think about how much savings we're talking about in school-year room and board.

Because these arrangements are typically not public, it's impossible to do an accurate assessment of how much they affect real teacher compensation. But it does not take a mathematical genius to realize that even an average amount of tuition included as part of a teacher compensation package would materially affect the comparison.

Religious private schools tend to be cheaper by a considerable amount. For instance, the range for Catholic schools is more like $4,000 to $10,000 (not including discounts for parishioners and siblings), up from earlier generations but much more reasonable than many independent private schools. This affordability is partly due to donations and subsidies from the larger church organization. However, Catholic schools can pay less in part because, though the supply of free monks and nuns has fallen dramatically, there is still a pool of devout Catholic laypersons who can be called upon. 97.4% are lay teachers now. Many of them are graduates of the schools in which they teach or of other Catholic schools and see their teaching as part of their service to the church. In other words, a disproportionate number of them are of the "saint" personality type described earlier. Even so, there is turnover, particularly among unmarried women (a smaller demographic than in public schools). In other words, people who actually have to live on their salaries will tend to move on at some point. One of my former colleagues left Catholic school teaching in part because she did the math and realized that she was never going to be able to achieve her financial goals. In any case, the situation is substantially different from that in public education or even in other private schools.

Here's one more wrinkle in the public school/private school comparison. People who qualify for a full pension may retire from public school and continue teaching in private school. At least in California, more than a certain amount of public school teaching leads to a  proportionate decrease in the amount of the pension payments (so people can't be getting pension payments and a full-time salary concurrently). But private school teaching isn't counted against the retiree's pension. In other words, someone could get full retirement benefits plus a full-time private school salary, and the total would be considerably higher than the former public school income even though the private school salary, taken by itself, is not as high. I can't find stats on this, but I've known several people who did it. One even became headmaster of the private school in question. That's just one more way in which private schools can get good teachers without having to offer competitive salaries.

As far as autonomy is concerned, yes, that's important as well, and I'd like to see public schools give teachers more of a role in decision-making. That's another important reform. I didn't mention it before because I was trying to keep my response shorter. (Obviously, I failed at that, anyway. )

Do those proponents want to improve public schools?  Actually improve them, I mean, and not just complain about salaries and funding?  Then they should stop the endless and tiresome "more money for teachers" demands and start addressing the actual structural problems.  Those problems will never be fixed, of course, because the Iron Law of Bureaucracy renders the status quo as implacable as iron, but it's what must happen as a prerequisite for substantial and permanent improvement.  Jaime Escalante bucked the system for as long as he could with remarkable success, but he got threats and hate mail for it, and the system beat him in the end.

The iron law of bureaucracy seems like a good excuse for some people (present company excepted) to do nothing. In any case, if you compare schools today to schools decades ago, it's clear that a lot has, in fact, changed over the years. It's important to remember that a lot of decision-making is still local, and much of that happens in small districts. In most of those, we could count the number of bureaucrats with any real role in decision-making on our fingers. Someone who wanted to have a sit-down with any of them could get one within a few days, at most. Someone who wanted to talk to a school board member could probably set something up in the same amount of time. In other words, none of the people in charge are inaccessible.

Of course, one meeting may not do the job. School board meetings happen once every two weeks, and anyone who wants to speak can (for a maximum of three minutes). Have something longer to say? Divide up the material and recruit friends to deliver it.

The key is being willing to persist and having a decent approach. I've known people who generally interacted by insulting people or shouting at them. Shockingly, they didn't get anywhere. But if one is diplomatic and plays the long game, real change is possible. That doesn't mean it always happens--but it can happen.

I was fairly outspoken in the school district where I spent most of my career. (I know, shocker!) But in the beginning, I very seldom got results. (A common joke at the time was, "If you want to kill a proposal, have Bill speak in favor of it at the board meeting." ) However, I kept going, and over the years, I managed to effect at least some change. I reorganized the competitive speaking program and rewrote the curriculum for the revised courses. I successfully advocated changes in the graduation requirements, got teachers more of a role in decision-making, created an interdisciplinary combination of AP US History and AP Language and Composition, improved access to honors and AP classes, successfully advocated for the rolling back of some undesirable contract provisions, advocated successfully for numerous changes in the English curriculum, expanded the use of technology, and many other things. I also headed off a number of undesirable changes.

To be clear, the list of times I failed to effect change was longer. And I was by no means a solo act. I contributed, but a lot of other people did as well. Also, there were teachers, community members, and even students who successfully promoted other changes in which I wasn't involved. The point is, though, that change is possible.

This is especially true in a time in which school boards meetings are televised and/or left for posterity on YouTube, but the direct, personal touch is always best. Congressmen may be able to avoid local town halls, but school board members can't avoid their own public meetings. And there's nothing like a standing-room only crowd to get a politician to refigure the political calculus.

I've seen administrators fall. I've seen school board members defeated for reelection. I've also seen both groups shift position right before my very eyes. As for the iron law of bureaucracy, remember that high carbon levels make iron brittle, and low carbon levels make it bendable. Either way, it can be fractured or bent.

Jaime Escalante had the misfortune to have been fighting a much larger bureaucracy and in having large been a solo act, or at most, a duo. In a smaller district and/or one with parents groups able to become more involved (tough in lower-income areas owing to people needing to work long hours, lack of affordable child care, etc.), the outcome would have been different. Even as it was, he succeeded for a time and benefitted a lot of students in the process.   

   

[PJ Post]

Not sure where to park this....

I don't necessarily agree with his conclusions, but thought you guys might enjoy it.

[LilyBLily]

I agree with him.

Here's the latest AI-replaces-writing outrage: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/business/ai-claude-romance-books.html

What I find baffling is this woman's attitude. Since when is this a race? A contest? She supposedly sold at least a few books to Harlequin / Mills & Boon; theoretically, she has real writing chops. (It has been many decades since that publisher was desperate enough to accept incompetently written manuscripts just to get the latest trend books on the shelves.) So why does she spew out mere product now? And not very successful product, if I have done the math right. A lot of steps are missing from her self-publishing story, too.   

[Hopscotch]

From the article:  "You're an opportunist hack using a theft machine..." and "Eventually...readers will not care."

[Bill Hiatt]

I'd pick the novel written by a person in six months over the one written by AI in a day every single time.

I can't help but think that the more novels there are, the less one will be able to charge for one. A big determining factor in pricing is the relationship between supply and demand. Flooding the market with AI-written novels creates a much bigger supply but does not increase demand. Short of some artificial intervention, The increased supply will tend to drive prices down.

[Post-Doctorate D]

I can't help but think that the more novels there are, the less one will be able to charge for one. A big determining factor in pricing is the relationship between supply and demand. Flooding the market with AI-written novels creates a much bigger supply but does not increase demand. Short of some artificial intervention, The increased supply will tend to drive prices down.

Only if you look at novels in general rather than specifically.

That is, as a reader, do I want to read a space exploration novel or do I want to read a Star Trek novel?  If the former, than any space exploration novel may do, in which case, cheaper options may win out.  If the latter, I have no choice but to pay whatever the Star Trek rights holder(s) asks for the novel.  Also, in that case, I may only want to read novels by specific writers that write Star Trek novels.

Same for science fiction.  Do I want to read any science fiction novel or do I want to read something by a specific author?  If the former, cheaper options will win out.  If the latter, again, I have to pay what the author/publisher asks or not buy that book.

Things depend on what kind of reader we want.  Do we want readers who read the genres our books are in or do we want readers who want to read our books?  If we are chasing after the former, those are probably the more price sensitive.  Someone who reads a book a day is more likely to want less expensive books than someone who reads a book a month.  We hope for more sales from the former, but that's also a race to the bottom price wise.  Someone who reads fewer books may be less price sensitive, but they may also be more likely to remember and tell others about your novel if they enjoyed it.  For the more prolific readers, our books are more likely to be lost and forgotten in the flood of books they've read.

[TimothyEllis]

I'd pick the novel written by a person in six months over the one written by AI in a day every single time.

I can't help but think that the more novels there are, the less one will be able to charge for one. A big determining factor in pricing is the relationship between supply and demand. Flooding the market with AI-written novels creates a much bigger supply but does not increase demand. Short of some artificial intervention, The increased supply will tend to drive prices down.

Only if that bot drek makes it into the top 500,000 of each Amazon store.

And that's 1 sale a month territory.

As long as it fails to sell, it just expands the bottom of the bottomless pit, and affects no-one.

If they can get it to sell, then and only then does it become an issue, because only that top 500k of books in each store matters.

Beyond that, volume is irrelevant. The fact that 50 million books becomes 55 million, is irrelevant to that top 500k.

100 million books that no-one can find isn't going to change the price on the 500k that can be.

[Bill Hiatt]

Both PDD and Timothy have good points.

I was reacting specifically to the claim in the article that "Cora Hart" was making money from her AI products. That suggests that at least some of them must be visible. But it also makes me think she must be spending at least some time editing the AI output. Even in a somewhat formulaic genre like romance, surely stories that meet the requirements of the genre but are better written and show some originality within that framework do better than those that don't.

Also, having to do multiple pen names (presumably to camouflage just how many novels one is churning out) loses part of the benefit of having a large catalog.

To go back to the number of titles for a moment, yeah, the ones who fall below 500,000 won't be visible in search results. But if an author has even one book above that threshold, someone who likes that book can easily find others by that author. I've had books drop below that but still make sales, presumably from people who are looking for me specifically. Also, from a strictly statistical standpoint, the more books that are vying for attention, the less likelihood any one self published book has of being stumbled upon enough to get into that top range.

And books below the 500,000 threshold can also clog mechanisms like AMS ads. One of the reasons that getting a positive ROI from them has become steadily harder is that the volume of people using the system (and therefore the volume of books being advertised) has steadily increased. Not everybody churning out AI books is going to use AMS ads, but some will. And they can be taking up space in the ad system even if they aren't selling at all. For those purposes, Amazon cares about your ad budget, not about your book's viability. The more people competing for space, the higher the cost per click becomes. Other discoverability mechanisms (also not affected by a book's visibility in Amazon searches) tend to become similarly clogged.

I'm generally an optimistic person. So I'd like to believe that AI drek isn't going to have any effect. But I do think that there are causes for worry.



 

[PJ Post]

AI can't really write books yet. The more things generative AI has to keep up with, that is, the more complicated the expectation, the more likely AI will fail. And it turns out books have a lot of moving parts, even crappy ones. So, AI is still very much a workflow tool. It speeds things up but still requires significant editing.

Also, we've been on a downward drek spiral for a long time. Most books, movies, shows and music kind of suck these days. Like everything else in society, mere competency has become praise-worthy. At the end of the day, I'm not sure AI is any worse.

And yes, the proliferation of AI books will drive the price down to nothing, which is the same thing that happened to music even before AI.

But the secret sauce for relevancy and higher prices remains the same - non-fungibility, beginning with an identifiable brand.

I've asked this question of Creatives a lot over the years: Do you prefer to create or have created? For those that prefer to have created, their validation comes from having a product, be it money or ego. AI is definitely a concern for these folks.

But for those that find validation through the creative process itself, AI is either a tool or simply irrelevant - and has no effect on their earnings.

[Bill Hiatt]

As I've mentioned, I think what triggered me was the implication in the article that the author was cranking out whole books (after refining prompts etc.) There is no mention of her doing any editing of the books. But I suspect she must have because I do believe AI isn't up to that kind of creation, either.

Also, we've been on a downward drek spiral for a long time. Most books, movies, shows and music kind of suck these days. Like everything else in society, mere competency has become praise-worthy. At the end of the day, I'm not sure AI is any worse.

It's hard to know for sure. In a discussion on that issue on Substack, I responded to someone who basically said, "All modern fantasy is garbage," by pointing out that none of us have read more than a small percentage of what's available. And we don't have any way of knowing whether that percentage is representative or not. Generally, people who make that particular argument are in the it-was-all-downhill-after-Tolkien club, and their examples are a small handful of bestselling fantasy writers. They aren't even familiar with midlist kind of authors, not to mention the vast number of self published authors--or even the vast majority of people writing fantasy fiction on Substack. I've said this before, but I never seem to struggle to find good stuff to read.

It's also important to keep in mind that our view of earlier eras is skewed. Nobody but scholars reads most of the work that was produced in those eras. For instance, most readers have some familiarity with Shakespeare, maybe a little with Marlowe (Faustus at least), but hardly even know the names of most of the other playwrights of the time. A lot of their work didn't even survive, and some of it that did is, well, not exactly Shakespeare. I think for example of The Birth of Merlin by William Rowley, a tragicomedy in which Merlin (the child of Satan) is born as a full-grown man. Even if you like Arthurian material, this one is difficult to sit through. The reason Shakespeare (or, if one believes Dennis McCarthy, Thomas North) is still read and performed is that his work is superior, sometimes ridiculously so. But even he's uneven. I doubt he'd be remembered is his only surviving work were Merry Wives of Windsor or Titus Andronicus.

What's true of Elizabethan England is true of most earlier societies. We have lost the vast bulk of what was written, and we read only the cream of the crop from what's left. In contrast, we have everything from the current era, warts and all. So it's easy to say, "Wow, we've gone downhill." But what we're really seeing is that our hill is a lot bigger pile. Buried within it are probably just as many gems as in any other era, but they may be harder to find, owing to the sheer bulk of their surroundings.

Also, at least in the US, we're stuck with polarization of literary tastes, so that anything that has, for example, a gay character, is woke, and anything that doesn't is somehow anti-gay. In other words, half the population could easily dislike a work that future generations may find merit in because our likes and dislikes are more influenced by contemporary politics and less by an attempt to discern their literary merit. Works too early to comment on such issues then get enshrined as better. Tolkien is good, but I don't think the whole genre that he helped inspire is as worthless as some people say.

Fun fact: There is a movement to get Tolkien canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. He was religious. But I think the movement will struggle to find the two miracles necessary to qualify for sainthood.

[TimothyEllis]

Fun fact: There is a movement to get Tolkien canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. He was religious. But I think the movement will struggle to find the two miracles necessary to qualify for sainthood.

Given his writing, which I found very hard to read, I'd classify both trilogies of movies as 2 miracles.

[Bill Hiatt]

Fun fact: There is a movement to get Tolkien canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. He was religious. But I think the movement will struggle to find the two miracles necessary to qualify for sainthood.

Given his writing, which I found very hard to read, I'd classify both trilogies of movies as 2 miracles.

LOL. Some people in that discussion were trying to make an argument for the wide influence of his writing being a miracle, which I now realize was unintentionally ironic.

But that also raises a good point. We all have different tastes. One person may see a work as garbage. Another may see it as genius. And there will be lots of responses in between. Some of that is generational. Some of it is rooted in other causes.

[Jeff Tanyard]

Nobody but scholars reads most of the work that was produced in those eras. For instance, most readers have some familiarity with Shakespeare, maybe a little with Marlowe (Faustus at least), but hardly even know the names of most of the other playwrights of the time.

To be fair, plays are meant to be performed and watched, not read.  People don't read modern plays like Cats or Rent any more than they read Shakespeare.  They see them performed at the theater.

I doubt he'd be remembered is his only surviving work were Merry Wives of Windsor or Titus Andronicus.

Vincent Price and Diana Rigg might quibble with that.  Their film adaptation of a scene from Titus Andronicus was...ahem...quite memorable.  ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_Blood

(Seriously, that movie was wild.  About as 1970s as the 1970s could get.)

Also, I played the Merry Wives of Windsor overture in high school band, and I like the piece a lot, so the play has certainly been relevant in my life, though in an oblique fashion.

Fun fact: There is a movement to get Tolkien canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. He was religious. But I think the movement will struggle to find the two miracles necessary to qualify for sainthood.

Depends on how one defines a miracle.  Tolkien's influence on culture all over the world has certainly been astounding, even among those who don't speak or read a word of English.  One might even call his global significance miraculous.

[Bill Hiatt]

Since the canonization process involved is Catholic, it would be the Catholic definition:

wonders performed by supernatural power as signs of some special mission or gift and explicitly ascribed to God.

(Catholic Encyclopedia)
To illustrate, let's look at the two miracles that got one of the more recently canonized saints, Carlo Acutis, on the list.

St. Carlo Acutis?s first miracle involved a Brazilian boy born with a malformed pancreas being healed after praying to Acutis. A second miracle was recognized in May 2024, after a young Costa Rican woman was healed from a serious head injury. The woman?s mother had made a pilgrimage to Acutis?s tomb to pray for her daughter?s healing, which began within 10 days of the pilgrimage. This second miracle paved the way for Acutis?s canonization in September 2025.

(Encyclopedia Britannica)
Where does Tolkien stand under this criteria?

Here?s the challenge. Canonization requires signs that God himself confirms what the Church discerns: miracles through the saint?s intercession. Two are required for full canonization.

You might say: that should be a piece of cake (or Lembas) for someone who has touched so many lives. And indeed, I?ve heard countless testimonies of Tolkien?s works leading people out of despair, guiding them back to faith, even awakening vocations. Those are real miracles of grace, although not the kind the Congregation for the Causes of Saints usually examines.

For canonization, we would need documented, medically inexplicable healings through prayers offered to Tolkien. To my knowledge, no such claims have been formally submitted.

(Father Roderick's substack)
All of that said, I agree that Tolkien has been influential, and I'm glad that so many people feel a spiritual connection to him. But he doesn't fit very neatly into the current system by which saints are canonized.

On the other point, it's true that plays are meant to be performed, but a lot of people do read them. Let's say, however, that we're talking about performances. The picture is still exactly the same. Shakespeare is performed a lot, Marlowe occasionally, and the others, hardly at all. And from 1567 to 1642, 543 plays survive (most unknown to all but scholars and a number out of print), 744 plays have been lost, and hundreds more may have been performed but have left no evidence at all. So we might conclude that Shakespeare's time was more literally brilliant than ours, but the bulk of that literary output is gone.  In ancient Greece, the issue is even worse, with only about 10% of literary works that are mentioned somewhere still in existence, and who knows how many existed for which even the names have been lost?

Every era up to near the present is the same. We do better following the advent of the printing press, but even so, prior to electronic means of preservation, a lot of works got lost or exist only in a small number of copies.

So my original point--that we use only a very small selection of modern works to draw these conclusions, and that we have only a very small number of works, probably in many cases the best of the era, to compare them to--does seem supported by the evidence.

I'll also add that every generation laments its own decadence and looks back to a supposed golden age in the past.

[Jeff Tanyard]

Since the canonization process involved is Catholic, it would be the Catholic definition:

True.

Personally, it doesn't really matter to me that much.  I'm not Catholic, and what they do in Rome is their business, not mine.     Canonization of Tolkien would please me, but only because any form of praise for Tolkien pleases me.  I like it when people like the things I like.

So my original point--that we use only a very small selection of modern works to draw these conclusions, and that we have only a very small number of works, probably in many cases the best of the era, to compare them to--does seem supported by the evidence.

Sure.  This really just boils down to the "90% of everything is crap" rule, and I believe that rule to be a pretty accurate truism.  Generally speaking, the stuff that survives is the stuff that was popular in its own time, not the stuff that never caught on, because popularity results in many more copies being made, and more copies is the best insurance for long-term survival in the face of wars and natural disasters and whatnot.  I just don't like lumping the apples in with the oranges under the all-encompassing "literature" term.  Shakespeare's works, though technically literature, are more akin, in my opinion, to modern-day professional wrestling than to anything written down.  It's performative entertainment, and it makes more sense to me to compare it to other forms of performative entertainment.

I'll also add that every generation laments its own decadence and looks back to a supposed golden age in the past.

That doesn't mean they're wrong.  Empires decline and fall.  Civilizations collapse.  Nations are conquered.  Entire ethnic groups disappear from history forever.  Decadence often precedes these things.  Earth is a brutally Darwinian place, not a safe space, and societies that treat their own existence like a party instead of a contest will eventually be replaced by more serious peoples.  Some people understand this and want to prevent or at least delay the collapse, hence their complaints about decadence.

If it makes you feel better, doom prophets are rarely heeded.  For example, Ron Paul was warning about the specter of a housing bubble as early as 2001, believe it or not, but it didn't make a lick of difference in the end.  Bubble is inflated, bubble collapses, capital goes to another sector--or another country--and starts a new bubble.  Rinse and repeat until the end of time.  As it is with markets, so it is with nations, peoples, and civilizations.

[LilyBLily]

One of my favorite college courses was Renaissance Drama. It was in that class that I learned Hamlet was a classic revenge play--and so was Dirty Harry. (Or was it Magnum Force? It has been a few years.) The body count is quite literally the same in The Revenger's Tragedy, Hamlet, and Dirty Harry. Hamlet is a genre play that rises above the others.

No, I haven't read anything by Aphra Behn, and yet didn't she write a ton of things that were popular in her day? And so on, in every era. One has read The Three Musketeers, but what about the dozens of other books by pere and fils? And so on. We only hear about the bestsellers that rise above short-term popularity and persist over many generations. I remember some important critic claiming that The Woman in White was the best novel of the nineteenth century, but who ever reads more than The Moonstone? (I did, but I remember nothing about either book.)

It's not that 90% of everything is crap--although it probably is. It's that as Bill says, we tend only to know about the items that reached the top of the hill and for whatever reasons of literary merit stayed there over centuries and through dumb luck were not incinerated by wars. People are always telling stories, and many of those tellings are good quality. But only a few outlast their era. In our own era, we have access to it all, the stories that will last and the ones that won't. And we do not know which those will be.

[Jeff Tanyard]

One of my favorite college courses was Renaissance Drama. It was in that class that I learned Hamlet was a classic revenge play--and so was Dirty Harry. (Or was it Magnum Force? It has been a few years.)

You're probably thinking of the Death Wish franchise.  Those were more straight-up vigilante revenge stories than the Dirty Harry movies.