Chapter 10 Is the reading comprehension ability of modern people really declining?
First, consider the very common phenomena around you.
Most Japanese people don't read very much, and they only read some very simple books. The result of this is that their thinking ability and problem-solving ability are declining, which means that they may become "stupid" from now on.
In fact, looking at the best-selling books in recent years, they generally promote some inspirational books with "simple content" and "immediate results".You may ask again, can you judge that the "IQ" level of the Japanese is declining just because of these books?
This looks simple, but is actually quite complicated.
For example, when you ask current college students to read He's work, even if it is in Japanese, they will complain endlessly, saying "it's too difficult to understand".The difficulty of these books is the same for college students in the past, but college students in the past can read them eagerly.However, based on this alone, can it be said that the reading comprehension ability of college students has declined?
In fact, those reading materials that were indispensable for college students in the past have been gradually eliminated by today's college students.However, it can be said that today's college students have different reading comprehension skills than before.
Today's college students may not have the ability to understand Masao Maruyama, but they can understand computer terms and Internet terms that previous college students have never been exposed to.
Therefore, it cannot be concluded that the reading comprehension ability of college students today is declining compared with that of college students in the past.
Therefore, even for those phenomena or people that seem "weird and stupid", we should not jump to conclusions.
Even for things that have already been determined, don't slack off before drawing conclusions, and think carefully.
What I mean by this is that the way Japanese people read is changing a lot.
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