N.N. Scott: In the USA, many of the colleges and universities currently most dedicated to reading in the curriculum are trad-conservative Christian institutions.

Could we please start funding the humanities again? It's not just that we're losing the ability to read, we're losing the understanding of what reading even is

In the USA, many of the colleges and universities currently most dedicated to reading in the curriculum are trad-conservative Christian institutions.

I went to one, and while that was easily the most (only) valuable part of my education, definitely not a great state of affairs

True enough, but I do wonder if "the understanding of what reading is" is even a thing, outside of a perennially narrow community of practice. Reading is a most curious, historically recent, and definitely non-natural innovation. The STEM people could say that math notation is a form of writing.

"Mathematics is a shorthand language in which each symbol has a precise and agreed-upon meaning, Once the language is learned, we find that it is only a form of English after all." -- Isaac Asimov, "Understanding Physics" (1966) v.1 p.17

I'm pretty sure that the understanding of what reading is is a thing because it's very obvious when it's absent

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