Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

Trevelyan’s remark distinguishes basic literacy from cultivated judgment. He suggests that modern education can succeed at producing readers in the mechanical sense—people who can decode print—while failing to form taste, critical discrimination, or moral/intellectual standards for choosing and evaluating texts. The implied target is a mass reading public shaped by expanding schooling and cheap print, vulnerable to sensationalism, propaganda, or triviality. The line also reflects an older humanist ideal: education should not merely transmit skills but initiate students into traditions of thought and criteria of excellence, enabling them to weigh evidence, recognize quality, and read with purpose rather than consumption.