“Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.”
Author: George Macaulay Trevelyan, British historian and professor born on this day in 1876.

Is this true, or is it just one of those things that sounds witty when you first read it, but turns out to be not really? Obviously, a lot more people know how to read now than in the middle ages or in ancient times. Is the world better off with so many more educated people? In some ways, it is. People are still sinful. “All we like sheep have gone astray . . . ” Education brings with it more possibilities, more “scope for the imagination” as Anne of Green Gobles would say. Of course some of those imaginings and possibilities can be evil or simply not worthwhile, but many books are beautiful and enriching and intimations of the glory of God and His Word. Let’s not bemoan the fact that a vast (but ignorant) population is able to read but rather teach ourselves and our children and whoever else comes into our sphere of influence how to discern that which is pure and lovely and noble and of good report. So teaching them to read is good but incomplete; we must also teach them what to read.