Converging and possibly not unrelated, strictly speaking:<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-eli...</a><p>Ivy admissions standards may continue to conform to the mean literacy level, if subtly and gradually.<p>The students described in the article would have been in the bottom-third of a prep school class in the 1990's. Their options would have been limited to State schools or lesser but expensive Liberal Arts colleges with lax admissions standards.<p>It doesn't square not to be able to read a better book, within a restricted period, and to have higher verbal intelligence. The former is the primary training method for the latter.<p>Literacy and verbal intelligence development requires training that can't be duplicated outside of book reading. Most quality students will have been devouring (any) books since primary school. The Calvin and Hobbes enjoyer in third grade, or earlier, is the LoTR enjoyer in seventh. Is then the Crime and Punishment reader in secondary. That type of literacy progression is generally impossible to skip.<p>Circling-back to the cited problem of the Op: the infant who is frequently read and spoken to is the early Calvin and Hobbes enjoyer.<p>I think that state-funded packages of age-appropriate books, annually delivered to all parents perhaps until their child is in pre-school, would be a better than normal use of welfare funds. As it would widely benefit society. A trick to the continuity of such a program would be to keep partisans away from demanding that the books be in any way politicized content.