Salinas to close public libraries "indefinitely" after New Year
WS: It is very sad, indeed, but reflects a popular trend. Fewer and fewer people, especially young, read books or - for that matter - are capable of communicating in writing. Reading is very uncool and can subject the perpetrator to a serious loss of popularity among his/her peers. Written communication becomes scarcer, as more and more people communicate in pictograms, monosyllables and grunts (cf. instant messaging).
However, even more disturbing is that distinction between literati and illiterate coincides with those between social classes. The upper class kids go to elite schools and participate in a whole gamut of extracurricular activities designed to enhance their intellectual potential while the lower class kids go to schools that teach them mainly how to put marks on standardized tests (no writing or reasoning skills required - just picking the right item from a short list supplied by authority figures), and otherwise immersed themselves in a pictorial monosyllabic "culcha" where anything "educational" is extremely uncool.
It looks like this country is going back to the middle ages, where the skills of reading, writing and reasoning were confined to a small elite, while the illiterate masses were told all they needed to know in pictures displayed in churches.
Wojtek