It is hardly necessary for me to cite all the evidence of the depressing state of literacy. These figures from the Department of Education are sufficient: 27million Americans cannot read at all, and a further 35 million read at a level that is less than sufficient to survive in our society.
But my own worry today is less that of the overwhelming problem of elemental literacy than it is of the slightly more luxurious problem of the decline in the skill even of the middle-class reader ,of his unwillingness to afford those spaces of silence, those luxuries of domesticity and time and concentration, that surround the image of the classic act of reading.
后面这段不懂,哪位高手能解释并且分析一下句子,that 和 it代指什么?