Literacy that isn't

I've been reading a lot of Gene Wolfe lately. In one of his essays (or perhaps it was a transcribed speech) Wolfe talks about the dangers of modern illiteracy. He views the standard understanding of illiteracy as an unwelcome eventuation; that people should learn to read he assumes as a good thing. (I am not so sanguine.) But he notes that he fears even more that people are learning to read and then refusing to do so. They have the knowledge but refuse to use it.

I think that's an interesting point of view. I don't agree that not learning to read and write at all is a bad thing, so it is easy for me to agree that learning to do so and failing to use those skills is worse, but I'm not sure I had considered that previous to this. At least, not in such words. He takes the view that it is more dangerous to give people the ability to read great literature and have them not do so than to have them be unable to do so at all. And I'm not sure he's not right. Too many people are able to read great works of literature, but scorn to do so. It's not that they just don't have time or interest, but that they actively despise doing so and make a virtue of the fact that they spend their time watching Dancing with the Stars or Jersey Shore instead. This active contempt for the finer parts of our civilisation is more of a threat to it than having a multitude that would like to be able to do so and is unable. At least then the great works are valued even if they cannot be fully appreciated.