Habsburg-maxxing: What an inbred Spanish king taught me about our cultural literacy crisis

There’s a famous episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” I often think about these days. Entitled “Darmok,” it finds Captain Picard stranded on a planet with only an alien named Dathon for company. Naturally, they don’t speak each other’s language.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, thanks to Picard’s 24th-century computer translator. Except that Dathon is a Tamarian, a people whose language is entirely metaphorical and based on stories and cultural allusions you have to be Tamarian to get. So Picard must try to make sense of translated phrases like, “Shaka, when the walls fell.”

As pleasant as Star Trek’s liberal utopian dream can be, we live in reality.

Make it so ... difficult

When I encounter Americans younger than I, I often identify with Picard. This is not just because the average Zoomer’s struggle with basic English grammar and diction makes me feel like the Shakespeare-trained Patrick Stewart by comparison.

Another, less discussed result of our literacy crisis — the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress report reveals that only one-third of fourth-grade students read at the “proficient” level — has resulted in young people who are also ignorant of the kind of cultural background knowledge and history that used to allow adults to talk and joke with each other across generations.

Of course, changing fashion, technology, and entertainment always produce a gap between generations. But there’s always remained enough of a shared culture to form a bridge. Not anymore. With the coming of the Millennials and Generation Z, the gap became a vast, impassable canyon.

So maybe it’s Dathon, not Picard, I identify with. I make some historical or cultural reference I’ve always assumed was common knowledge, and suddenly I’ve got a young person looking at me as if I’ve just said, “Temba, his arms wide.”

Meme me up

I had a moment something like this on X recently. I came across some video of Rachel Zegler, the patriarchal-prince-hating star of Disney’s disastrous live-action “Snow White” reboot, hobnobbing with her fellow “beautiful people” at the Met Gala. The weird way she was mugging for the camera, repeatedly jutting out her jaw as if subject to some drug-induced tic, reminded me of something. So I posted the following:

I thought it was pretty funny. I still do, even though I’m about to make a bore of myself by explaining my own joke. Because while lots of people got it, lots of people didn’t get it too, and I suspect far fewer people “get it” in 2026 than they would have even 20 years ago.

Wit snit

I thought Zegler looked like she was imitating a well-known portrait of a member of the most famously inbred family in the world, the Habsburg dynasty of Austria.

The guy on the right is Charles II, King of Spain from 1665 to 1700. He was one of many Habsburgs who endured mockery for their “Habsburg jaw” or “Habsburg lip.”

If any readers didn’t get the joke, that’s OK, and I’m not trying to castigate individuals. I’m pointing out that what you might call “walking around cultural-historical knowledge” is disappearing. While knowledge of European royal courts was never universal for the average American, it’s simply true that a greater number of everyday adults would have gotten the reference 20 or 40 years ago.

And if they didn’t, they would simply assume there was an easily correctible gap in their collective knowledge — rather than reacting with bored incomprehension or hostility.

How many young people today understand the phrase “tilting at windmills?” How many know that “to tilt” means “to joust with a lance as a knight”? How many would even recognize the book title “Don Quixote”?

RELATED: How to be bored — and 4 more real-world skills you can give your kids

Ernst Haas/Getty Images

Cursing cursive

It’s not just the normal knowledge turnover. We’re not talking about current slang or technology that goes out of date in 10 years. We’re talking about basic knowledge about modern Western civilization (the 1600s were in what is called the modern period) that’s not supposed to have the built-in obsolescence of an iPhone.

The problem is not restricted to “high culture” knowledge either. Many young people in America are not even getting the basic instruction in how to live as an adult from their parents. Anyone 40 or older has seen it. Kids who can’t read analog clocks. Students who can’t read cursive handwriting, which means American kids who cannot read letters written by their own grandmothers.

Here’s a video of a schoolteacher attempting to teach cursive to what looks like a room of fifth graders. Notice the student reactions — they’re giggling in embarrassment and covering their faces after showing off their struggle to form cursive letters. This kind of scene would be unbelievable to any of us who grew up in the ’80s or ’90s if we couldn’t see it for ourselves.

The problem is worse than a lack of skill — the kids in this age set think they “can’t” learn what are, in truth, simple things. Writing in cursive is not “hard,” but it does take practice. Reading an analog clock is not “hard” — it can be learned by a child in a couple of lessons, or by an adult in just a few minutes. We can see what happens to student skill levels and confidence in their own ability to learn when we take away that early instruction.

Washing out

I’m afraid it gets even worse. Too many young people did not get basic chore lessons from their parents. This video from a young woman in that position touched my heart as I was contemplating this topic. It’s not like most other “car videos” in which a young person complains and whines in an unsympathetic way. This young lady is frustrated and in tears because she understands that she should know how to do laundry at her age, but no one in her family cared to teach her.

She’s not crying because she doesn’t know how to do laundry. She’s crying because she never got the parenting and family connection that would have taught her how to do basic adult tasks. Sure, you can say, “Just look it up on YouTube or ask ChatGPT,” but that misses the point. AI and instructional videos can teach tasks, but they can’t fill a hole inside that’s supposed to contain love from family.

With the usual Star Trek optimism, the writers of “Darmok” have Captain Picard and Dathon conversing with each other in Dathon’s language by the end of the episode. But as pleasant as Star Trek’s liberal utopian dream can be, we live in reality.

What are we to do about our own failure to communicate? That’s hard to answer, as these are problems that are best dealt with by avoiding them in the first place. And the way we avoid these problems is by properly parenting our children. For millions like that young woman in the laundromat, that ship has sailed.

But young people like the girl in the laundromat can be helped because they know that they don’t have skills that they should have. What sets this “crying car video” apart from others is that this girl wants to learn, and she’s not blaming other people for embarrassing her. It’s clear that she’s capable of learning and willing to do it.

How can we help her and the rest of her struggling cohort?