I’m sorry but this article really rubs me the wrong way. The example used (the intro to Bleak House by Charles Dickens) doesn’t seem like it would have a whole lot of cultural relevance to the sample of students tested who were from public colleges in Kansas. If you’re the kind of person who already reads Dickens and/or watches British period dramas like Downton Abbey, you’ll probably perform much better in this exercise, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you are functionally illiterate or lack reading comprehension skills in a general sense. If the reading sample in question was something like Trainspotting, would it mean that Scottish readers have a unique talent for reading that others don’t have? Of course not. It just means the others aren’t Scottish.

A better example imo would have been something more universally difficult, like… A Clockwork Orange or Finnegan’s Wake, but in reality it’s hard to remove cultural bias completely. Or… You know what? Fuck it. Everyone should just be forced to read Hegel and be considered illiterate unless they can completely understand each and every sentence. How does that sound?