I’ve been getting the same criticism for 20 years.
It happened again last week. I was writing about the importance of keeping communication simple. Using simple phrases and short sentences. When I received this strong objection:
You’ll end up with uneducated and lazy readers…writing about serious ideas can’t be written like a first grader.
It sounds plausible doesn’t it? If you are writing heavy content it’s hard to see how it can be boiled down to easy-to-read, simplistic phrases. Readers need to work hard if they are serious about learning. Won’t I be seen as an intellectual lightweight if my sentences are short? No writer wants to dumb down their content.