'Most people are visually illiterate"

'Is what we see really what we see? Or do we see only what we want to see?'

In his original documentary, Peter Greenaway, famous film director and Baroque painting enthusiast, argues that in our text-based society, most of us are visually illiterate. He says that very few people read paintings the way they read text, devoting time and intelligence to the process. Why is that so? Greenaway blames our educational systems as they value text over image. But because we have eyes, doesn't mean that we can see and we need to learn to see just like we learn to read text.