The Work of Pre- and Post-Literacy

Are we circling back to a dumbed-down past we never really left?

The work of orality and literacy

A growing chorus of researchers earns their bones warning us that always-pitiful humanzee attention spans are dwindling. Tests of reading comprehension, numeracy, and reasoning skills appear to have peaked about a decade ago before slipping steadily across many countries and age groups. John Burn-Murdoch, writing recently about “peak brain power” in the Financial Times, cited global data on academic performance and found that verbal and numerical reasoning have dipped across the OECD, starting well before the disruptions of the pandemic. Observers note that more of us now scroll endlessly through feeds than we do read books in focused silence — indeed, last year’s survey of American reading habits showed fewer than half of all adults managed to finish even a single book. Part of this shift might be traced to our supposedly “post-literate” digital environment, in which we absorb most information through images and videos rather than through text on a page.

Many argue that people have lost something vital in this transition: a capacity for patient reflection and extended reading, once prized in modern society. However, a closer look suggests that mass literacy and near-universal reading comprehension might never have been as widespread or uniform as we like to imagine. Adam Fox’s excellent Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700¹ describes a time that was partly literate and partly reliant on spoken exchange. This era was centuries before the deployment of our current world wide web of lies, but it offers surprising insights into what daily life can look like in a world not governed by the printed word. Our present “decline,” in other words, may not be a collapse so much as a reversion to older humanzee habits. While modern technology has given us infinite scrolls and push notifications to keep our goon hands (GHs) hard work, earlier generations had ballad-singers, wandering minstrels, recited proverbs, and rhyming strings of practical knowledge. Where we might see only a downward trend, my own reading of Fox’s book urges us to consider that humanity has long survive in spaces that rely heavily on oral tradition.

This essay takes up that notion. I want to take what the kids call a “deep dive”² into Fox’s account of “oral-literate” interplay in early modern England, then aligns it with present concerns about shortened attention spans. My aim is to show that even in a distinctly “trad” time often viewed as “less developed,” men and women adapted shrewdly to limited access to books and writing. Their old ways of memorization, singing, conversation, and group recitation thrived — not necessarily because people could not read but because reading was hard, boring, and unnecessary, and other methods performed the job more efficiently. For most in the 1500s and 1600s, reading was never a universal skill, yet their memory and word-of-mouth resources were astonishingly strong. The shape of life today, with news and gossip passing around social media, might not be as “post-literate” as we assume. Instead, it may echo a pre-literate existence grounded in spoken communication, with print as just one strand in a web of everyday information.

A popular ballad that helps frame Fox’s argument is “Chevy Chase.” This was a tale of rivalry on the Scottish border, replete with battle imagery and high drama. We can trace it (in scattered forms) from its late medieval origins, when traveling singers and fiddlers would perform it. But it is also preserved in manuscript notebooks, broadside sheets sold at fairs, and even scraps of early print. Trained historians long assumed that a purely oral version had circulated for centuries, untainted by the new technology of print. In reality, the evidence shows how “Chevy Chase” migrated promiscuously between the spoken and written word. A minstrel named Richard Sheale in the mid-16th century wrote down the song from a printed broadside in his personal notebook, then likely recited it wherever he performed, giving the ballad renewed life as an oral piece. Through scribal copying, it found its way into folio scrapbooks, then reentered the world of print. There was no single “oral” or “written” or “printed” iteration. Instead, Fox writes, they “infused and interacted with one another in myriad ways.”

What if contemporary “declines” in reading also move us into more mixed conditions of knowledge-sharing, with texts (and sexts!), social media, short videos, and voice notes as heirs to the old minstrelsy? The dreaded “decline of reading” might not extinguish all intellectual exercise; it could prompt a reconfiguration in how people store and pass along what matters. Early modern villagers did this through stories, jokes, rhymes, riddles, communal singing, and local gossip. Those might seem unsophisticated to some of us. Yet, as Fox suggests, many people had no real impetus to read or write. A farmer might measure his fields using a wooden tally-stick, with carved notches that signified how many sheaves of wheat he owed or how many days a harvest took. He might memorize thousands of lines of verse that taught him when to sow or gather based on the shape of oak-apples or the color of fish fry. Laborers or sailors chanted in chorus to coordinate tasks, just as group messages or livestreams can coordinate ours. None of these involved reading in any formal sense. Similarly, a modern-day true poster whose goon hand (GH) and post hand (PH) are fully engaged can likely process thousands of text, audio, and video posts without reading, listening to, or even watching any of them — merely “feeling” the “post juice” as he knuckleballs one out across the long day’s journey into night.

John Burn-Murdoch contends that the falling test scores in modern math and reading highlight a mismatch between our capacities and the digital environment. Websites today flood users with infinite refresh feeds, notifications, and ephemeral images — an onslaught that degrades and dissolves those already-weak attention spans. Many children (and adults) do not read lengthy texts, and an increasing share of the population lacks basic problem-solving ability for everyday tasks. So we are left wondering: is this reversing centuries of progress? The data from Fox’s era, if we examine it carefully, remind us that “universal literacy” didn’t exist in the period he covers and might never have existed at all. Yes, the ability to sign one’s name — the common measure used by historian — did rise from perhaps 5 percent to 20 percent of men by the mid-16th century, then on to around 45 percent by 1700. Yet that still leaves around half of adult men, plus more than half of adult women, who could not sign. Even allowing for the possibility that many who could not sign their names still read rudimentarily, a significant chunk of the population moved through life without heavy reliance on writing.

For them, it was enough that official documents, be they leases or wills or court records, existed in the hands of local notaries, stewards, or literate relatives, where their word salad could have the intended magical effect. Outside of unusual circumstances, they never needed to read these lines themselves — just to trust or distrust them, which is about all that opinion polling indicates we humanzees are capable of doing today with regard to important policy decisions and the like. Meanwhile, daily business happened face to face, guided by custom and memory. People stored knowledge in their heads with the help of songs and rhymes. A lullaby to calm a fretful infant, a repeated verse to measure cloth, a short tune to keep the plow team moving — these were perfectly functional ways to carry on. Once you see it from that angle, the notion that literacy is indispensable for normal life begins to crumble. Indeed, mothers across the social scale taught children prayers, not through printed sheets but by repeating them each night. Many had verses for every part of housekeeping — herb-lore, cures for ailments, bits of local history — that call to mind the tidbits of information today’s younger people rely on from TikTok and other sites.³ Some historians suspect that those who are “unlettered” can develop formidable memory skills in compensation. Fox cites examples of illiterate clerics or farmers who recited entire biblical passages and genealogies, simply because they practiced storing that knowledge in their minds — much like how true posters who have never read books or even articles can somehow sustain entire podcasts simply by working through a vade mecum/commonplace book composed of thousands of banger “frens vs. enemas”-type posts that contain the verbiage they need to make their points.

At the same time, Fox is keen to remind us that the growth of printing (and the expansion of schooling) did leave its mark. By 1600, roughly 30 percent of adult men might sign their name, perhaps reading with some degree of fluency. Cheap pamphlets, broadside ballads, and ephemeral “small books” poured from London presses in runs of a thousand or more, feeding an appetite for sensational wonders, popular romances, and daily news. It would be a mistake to say that Elizabethan or Stuart England was an entirely oral realm. But it would also be naive to think the new technology of print replaced oral tradition. Instead, it augmented it, which is all that books have ever been capable of doing for a mass culture that largely (and stubbornly) refuses to read. That dynamic interplay let people weave textual material into spoken forms. A stable of traveling entertainers might glean new ballads from pamphlets, learn them by heart, and carry them to remote villages. In turn, a local tale told around the hearth might get scribbled in a letter, find its way to a printer, and come back as a printed chapbook, recited by new voices in a fresh region. Fox sees an “ever-shifting synergy of forms,” precisely what we might observe in the digital environment of today.

John Burn-Murdoch laments that the digital environment is sapping our sustained concentration, but we might recall that early modern and even our boomer relatives rarely read for hours at a stretch either. Even the modest expansions in literacy did not produce libraries in every home. In fact, the average person’s reading might have been quick, sporadic, or done communally: a local official reading a letter aloud to a crowd, a parson sharing the news from a printed pamphlet, or an older sibling reading a chapbook to younger ones. The rest of life went on in speech. Our modern version is scrolling bullet-point updates on social media, or listening to a 30-second audio summary or reaction on TikTok. The difference is that elites maintain illusions about some sort of golden era that preceded it.⁴ The truth is that the dense, contemplative reading we associate with the age of the novel was always a minority pursuit. Many people from roughly the mid-1700s onward were taught to read sentences from the Bible or sign a ledger, but they still gleaned most of their knowledge from conversation, from newspapers read or retold to them, from the radio or the television in the centuries that followed.

Fox’s research on the role of memory further challenges the assumption that a reading-based approach is inherently superior for most. Many examples confirm that even well into the 1600s, a mayor of Chester who could not read could perform official duties admirably, relying on a clerk or on memory for basic speeches. Others used rhyming lines to keep track of genealogies or property boundaries. People also harnessed group recitation. In the darkest months of winter, they would gather by the fire, spinning wool and sharing “catches” (round-songs), repeating riddles, and exchanging moral fables. That was how they entertained themselves. Present-day commentary frames the shift away from reading as a meltdown,⁵ yet if we cannot sustain a novel’s length or a monograph’s complexity, we might be forging a new oral-literate or “post-literate” equilibrium, reminiscent of older systems in which knowledge circulated socially.

That is not to say that every aspect of the modern transformation is benign. One difference is that early modern groups did not simply succumb to an avalanche of optimized corporate amusements fed to them via a corporate-manufactured device that allowed for infinite edging and scrolling. They had structures, constraints, and communal routines that shaped how they listened and spoke. By contrast, digital platforms harness algorithmic feeds to drive endless engagement, so even if we communicate in a style reminiscent of an older orality, it is indeed a far cry from the village green or the winter hearth. The constant barrage of novelty we face can hamper deeper reflection. John Burn-Murdoch rightly points out that active, deliberate use of digital tools can still be beneficial.⁶ Many of us, however, are passively absorbing scattered images or disjointed commentary. He believes that this shift from “self-directed to passive consumption” fosters a unique kind of distraction. In that sense, our half-oral, half-visual environment can look more tumultuous than the “oral-literate” world Fox examined.

Yet some parallels remain. People in the 1500s and 1600s faced plenty of rumor and misinformation. Fox dedicates an entire section to “Rumour and News,” showing how individuals might receive a breathless letter about a supposed foreign invasion, pass it along verbally to a neighbor, and watch the story grow and mutate as it spread across the parish. There were no fact-checkers or easy ways to verify. For that matter, the so-called “newsbooks” and early newspapers of the 17th century specialized in sensational “wonder tales,” fueling rumors about monstrous births or dire prophecies. While the format was physical print, the actual impetus behind the stories resembled modern clickbait: maximum excitement, minimal scrutiny. That interplay between partial text and swirling rumor is akin to our social-media environment, which blends short bursts of typed posts with swirling word-of-mouth video commentary. Both can create confusion, panic, or ephemeral excitement; the former because reliable information is in short supply, the latter because a deluge of content made it every bit as hard to sort wheat from chaff.⁷

As for the claims that “reading is dying,” we might ask if it was ever truly universal or unassailable. A vast majority of the population has always found extended reading burdensome, even in periods, like ours, that are widely regarded as “more literate.” Pre-modern society taught many its knowledge exclusively through spoken means, and if there were some “golden age” of universal literacy, historians have not pinned it down. Indeed, the historical record suggests that, by 1700, only around half the population could read more than just a few words. Even if the younger generation in the 21st century read fewer printed pages and prefer brief TikTok videos,⁸ that might not represent a cataclysm so much as a rebalancing. This rebalancing might be questionable in certain arenas — research has shown, for example, that consistent reading helps shape attention and fosters complex thinking⁹ — but it also might revive more social ways of learning, reminiscent of how neighbors once passed around songs, proverbs, and stories.

One of Fox’s major takeaways is that print did not wipe out oral tradition. Instead, it sparked a feedback loop: text gave new life to songs and stories. Illiterate or semiliterate members of a parish could find out about these through listening. Then, in turn, some local anecdote might find its way into a chapbook. It is no stretch to see a modern parallel in how a short talk on a podcast might shape the conversation among frens, who retell it to others, which might lead to a viral clip or “hot take” commentary piece. The difference is the speed and scale: we do all this at lightning pace. But at root, we are still bridging speech and text in an ongoing cycle of fairly low-grade content. That is not necessarily “progress” or “decline.” It is a shift in emphasis, akin to repeated transitions throughout history.

This perspective runs counter to the mainstream narrative that equates reading with progress and equates an “oral-literate mix” with backwardness. If our data now show that 25 percent of adults in wealthy countries cannot interpret basic math statements or parse more complex texts, that warrants concern. Yet it may also reflect that some have chosen other paths of skill.¹⁰ Fox reminds us that in early modern times, certain men and women easily navigated day-to-day tasks — some quite intricate — without being able to sign their names. They measured fields with notches, memorized entire genealogies, recognized the precise time of day without a clock. They handled the social aspects of communal knowledge in ways that did not demand much recourse to books. Much like the kids of today, they might have been stumped by a multi-step reading comprehension problem, but they found a degree of success in other realms. Some might say that computing or scanning barcodes is the modern equivalent. Others note that fewer tasks now revolve around physical measurement or local knowledge, so perhaps we truly have lost something.

Returning to the question asked by John Burn-Murdoch — have we passed “peak brain power”? — it depends on what we measure. If the benchmark is long novels, advanced test-based reasoning, or quiet hours spent wading through detailed arguments, then yes, the data might show a downward slant. But if we measure forms of oral intelligence, group recitation, emergent spoken or visual skill, and an ability to glean vast amounts of data from videos, memes, or subtle social signals, then we might well see that we humanzees are faring about as well as ever. Like the men and women in Fox’s 17th-century parishes, the modern user thrives in a hybrid environment, in which the richest forms of knowledge might be gathered from discussion, audio-visual content, and constant interplay between ephemeral talk and more permanent text. We cannot be entirely sure this is better or worse¹¹ — only that it is not an outright novelty.

The big question is whether that shift fosters or undermines the kind of patient reflection that has historically been associated with major discoveries, political wisdom, or profound insight. Adam Fox’s study stops short of praising or condemning the era he covers. He mainly sets out to show how text and speech commingled, with interesting results for cultural transmission. For him, the insight is that knowledge thrives in many forms — oral repetition, scribal copying, printing, even translation from one medium to another. Similarly, our own predicament may not be the end of critical thinking. Instead, it might be an invitation to reevaluate how we use the digital environment. Do we “in the know” content consumers let algorithms push trivial amusements, or do we carve out structured ways to use tools like AI that will otherwise be used to further stultify what’s left of public discourse?

That is partly why it is worth revisiting older societies. In 16th- and 17th-century England, people had never known a world of mass schooling or universal reading. Yet they found ways to maintain lively mental worlds. We are not used to imagining “illiterate” communities as intellectually subtle, but Fox’s examples of cunning folk who memorized complicated cures for illness, shepherds who invented elaborate counting words, or local officials who gave formal speeches despite being unable to read, explode that myth. They lived richly off a mix of inherited lore and new ideas of which they heard or saw only glimpses. Many in the 21st century, too, might not have advanced reading or writing skill, but they are adept at navigating swirling networks of audio, video, and partial text.

That is one possibility: a cyclical pattern in which reading is only one approach among many.¹² The other possibility is that we do ourselves no favors if we stop teaching deeper reading altogether. If we decide that everything can be done quickly, verbally, or visually, we risk losing the benefits that real literacy, carefully nurtured, has delivered over several centuries. The impetus for the Reformation was in many ways the capacity for serious-minded laypeople to read Scripture and interpret it independently. The impetus for democracy in America was the ability of ordinary citizens to read laws, charters, and manifestos.¹³ If formal reading recedes entirely, the political and spiritual consequences will be far-reaching. There are arguments that orality does not hamper civic engagement if the spoken or video-based sphere is robust, but we do not yet know how that plays out at scale in the modern day.¹⁴

What we can say, drawing on Adam Fox’s analysis, is that the world has never split neatly into “literate” or “nonliterate” societies. Early modern England showed that a continuum of skills coexist, from fully literate scribes to half-literate artisans to people who neither read nor wrote yet thrived on memory and speech. Our society has a comparable continuum, in which a small portion of the population still reads heavily and a bigger portion relies on fleeting digital or visual input, with some bridging both. Where that leads is uncertain. Possibly we will reevaluate the importance of reading and create new methods to preserve it. Possibly we will refine media so that it fosters more thoughtful or dynamic conversation, bridging the old and new. Either way, looking at the 1500s and 1600s, we see that so-called post-literacy might be less of a decline and more of a shift back to an adaptable norm.

Our modern anxieties — declining test scores, fracturing attention, reduced reading — reflect real challenges. But they also reveal that something much older underpins our culture: the diverse ways we handle knowledge. Before universal schooling and mass printing, men and women muddled along with partial literacy, flexible orality, and deep memory — much as millions do today, long after the full implementation. We are not going to collapse simply because fewer people now read monographs cover to cover, because few people ever have. We may discover new methods to preserve public reasoning, though this strikes me as unlikely.

Even if that fails, we can recall that humanity has endured low literacy in previous centuries without stalling out entirely. So the next time a newspaper headline warns that fewer children take up books, it might be worth remembering that reading, although immensely beneficial to some, is only one technology among many for carrying ideas forward. Rather than bemoan the end of a past that ain’t like it used to be and never was, we might find that we have circled back to a mode of living that was, in truth, always there — less textual, more oral, just as Adam Fox’s early moderns would have recognized.

1. You can download it there.

2. 2,000+ words, but don’t worry: AI can summarize it for you. Or you can skip reading it entirely and just feel the post, as many do.

3. See this story from The New York Times to better understand just how disturbingly accurate this comparison is.

4. My mother, who spent decades teaching in the public schools, would be happy to tell you that the kids of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, &c. are no less ignorant than their peers today, although they definitely weighed a lot less: “From 2017 to March 2020, the prevalence of obesity among U.S. children and adolescents was 19.7% This means that approximately 14.7 million U.S. youths aged 2–19 years have obesity.”

5. Oh, my heart — they’re only reading three of those dreadful YA novels a year instead of four! Won’t anyone think of the children?

6. For example, having read this essay, you could proceed to read Adam Fox’s book to learn more. Wouldn’t that be fun? No? Well, I’m not your dad.

7. In fact, it’s probably harder for poor readers and counters — i.e., most everyone — to do this, because so much that is recorded has the ring of truth. It’s arguably harder for the average humanzee to identify AI deepfakes than it would be for a learned cleric to dispel a peasant’s belief in the existence of the Jersey Devil or some such venerable beast.

8. See footnote 3, supra.

9. I like doing it, and you can follow along with what I’m reading here, but I’m a hopeless dork and a living fossil from a prior age.

10. Not every nation wants to be like the notoriously infertile and prosocial Japanese, who excel at judo, JRPGs, sumo wrestling, manga, and taking tests.

11. I’d stake my life savings on it being worse, but that’s just me!

12. And done primarily by a class of people who either protect the priestly truths or keep the lights on and communicable diseases at bay.

13. Which makes sense when one realizes that colonial America was one of the most literate in history — perhaps the most literate, in the sense of a small community of laypeople engaged seriously with civic ideas at all levels.

14. The data we do have suggests that things aren’t looking good.