Socrates wasn’t wrong, though. He and his forefathers trained their memorization abilities to be able to record and recall vast amounts of information. We simply don’t need to do that, and now we can’t. If you forget the details, just look it up. Easy.

If that applies to all human knowledge and learning instead of just memorization, that becomes a problem. In the US specifically children are, in fact, learning and memorizing fewer things. Reading and math scores are at record lows. SAT scores are down and falling further. Literacy itself is on the decline, people not only read less but they’re also worse at retention and comprehension.

The pandemic lockdowns were half a decade ago, we can’t just keep blaming them. Something is hurting our ability to learn.