Tangle PREVIEW: The Friday Edition. - Rebuilding a literate America.
Mar 6, 2026
A look at a modern literacy crisis and why falling reading skills matter for civic life. A surprising study shows even college English majors struggle with classic texts. The show traces how teaching methods shifted and points to places reversing the trend in elementary schools.
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College Students Struggle With Deep Reading
- Young Americans increasingly struggle with deep reading and comprehension even at college level, shown by 85 English majors reading Dickens where only 4 fully understood the passage.
- Natalie Wexler's and Nathan Heller's reporting links this to wider declines in interest and ability in reading across Gen Z, not isolated incidents.
Literacy Decline Threatens Civic Capacity
- Declining literacy threatens civic competence because fewer citizens can parse laws and political texts, risking societal forgetting and decline.
- Audrey Moorhead frames low literacy as a national problem tied to Gen Z and Gen Alpha entering the workforce and electorate.
Southern States Lead Elementary Reading Recovery
- Southern states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee saw big elementary reading score gains, led by Mississippi's reforms beginning in the 2010s.
- Mississippi's results were strong enough that its former superintendent Carrie Wright was hired by Maryland to replicate them.
