Every English class ever

Beatty mentions how firemen aren't even supposed to read any of the books they burn, which makes them incapable of selection in their duty.

"At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh?"

Through exposing that he knows of the books and their contents, he uses that to lure Montag in and causes Montag to lose his temper, killing Beatty. Beatty is very clear that, in this world, it is literacy and the formation of ideas that they are eliminating.

"We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon."

that is not what a natural disinterest in books and education looks like. Thats a government actively working its butt off to keep books and their content from being learned by individuals for the purpose of control.

This is humanity becoming domesticated and becoming afraid of ideas, disinterested. The TV is only to occupy their minds so they don't have to think without the books.

"Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!... Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did."

Bradbury's world has specifically come to fear books and the ideas they contain. This is made even clearer in his other short stories set in the same universe. Usher II, found in Martian Chronicles, and The Exiles, found in Illustrated Man, are directly concerned with this topic about fear and the complete dissolution of literacy.

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