I can't speak for Britain, but I do know some of what's happened in 
the States, or at least in some of the states. It's the collapse of 
the educational system across  much of the country, from grade school 
through PhD programs (no one should have to read as many 
dissertations as my various researches have led me to). (as long as 
I've mentioned PhDs, this past week I met three doctoral candidates 
in English Lit at Buffalo. They have to pass an oral exam on their 
field of specialization, for which they and their advisor have to 
agree on a reading list of 100 books, which in the case of these 
three was contemporary American poetry. That doesn't sound like 
graduate school so much as a prolonged vacation. One of them is 
planning to write her diss about a poet a few years older than 
herself. So much for any sense of history)

In the US there's always been wide educational disparities between 
regions, partly a matter of cultural differences about the value of 
education, but largely because the primary funding source for schools 
is local real estate taxes, which are at the mercy of the voters and 
of local economics. And curriculum is also largely determined 
locally, by elected school boards (in a country where most people 
don't vote and where even those who do usually check off candidates 
for the less-publicized offices without any knowledge of who they are 
and what they stand for).

Before WWII secondary education wasn't required in most parts of the 
country, and a high school diploma was considered an achievement, 
earned by perhaps a quarter of the population. This wasn't entirely a 
matter of class, tho that enters into it. After the war the schools 
were hit by a succession of tidal waves of new students, because of 
changes in laws governing educational requirements, and because of 
the baby boom and immigration. The schools were overwhelmed, tho 
schools in the larger cities had been dealing with this since the 
turn of the century, when the children of the immigration wave of 
1885 to 1924 hit the classroom. I know something about the curriculum 
in what we call in the US public schools from my parents' high school 
textbooks. I want to emphasize that my parents were working class 
aspiring to middle class, and their high school was mostly working 
class children of immigrants. They were taught a great deal of 
poetry--their American poetry anthology (long lost, alas) was about 
five inches thick, and included a lot of early modernism (not 
Pound--largely unknown in this country). As adults my parents owned 
only a couple of individual books of poetry--I remember a volume of 
Sandburg--but at least two thick anthologies--a Romantic Poetry from 
college (they attended the then-free university of the city of New 
York) and the Untermeyer Modern British and American Poetry, 1944 
edition, which my mother must have picked up while my father ws still 
fighting the Japanese. The Untermeyer, which had plenty of Eliot, 
Pound, Williams, Cummings, was a fixture of literate households--a 
perennial best seller. Big thick novels were also scattered 
about--War and Peace, Dos Passos, Look Homeward Angel, and thinner 
volumes of Hemingway and Faulkner. My mother was a grade school 
teacher and my father a businessman. I don't think they were atypical 
of their class and place.

None of this made it any easier for them to accept that, as my father 
put it, I was farting around with poetry. But it did mean that when I 
was a small child my mother read me the entirety of the Ancient 
Mariner while my eyes glazed over. And that the books were there for 
me to devour.

The post WWII increasing demands for education and its 
democratization led, in the absence of funding and the lack of a 
tradition of education, not to more literacy but to a progressive 
dumbing down of the schools. Here's an example. In the 60s (I don't 
know if this is still true) state colleges in North Carolina were 
required by law to take the top 75% of graduates of high schools in 
their catchment areas. By law 75% of those students had to receive 
diplomas. Of those, 75% had to be accepted at local teachers 
colleges, etc., and they would go on to staff the local high schools. 
A mathematically-determined decline and fall.

So now the US has one of the lowest rates of book buying in the 
industrialized world.

The influx of immigrants has strained educational systems everywhere 
it's happened, and Brits and French people regularly complain about 
the decline in quality. Hey, a bac isn't what it used to be. As a 
USian I giggle when I hear this stuff. I mean, sure, but you don't 
know how much worse it can be.

Best,
Mark

At 04:37 AM 9/28/2009, you wrote:
>Yes - why is that? I've been trying to fathom it for years.
>
>Tim A.
>
>On 28 Sep 2009, at 00:08, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>>The chasm between readers and poets seems to be largely an English
>>language thing.