For about the last 300 years, and especially from the introduction of universal public education in the late 19th century, western culture has  been dominated by text and writing.  Elizabethan culture, by contrast, was primarily oral:  Shakespeare, for example, wrote his plays to be performed not to be read, and did not even bother to arrange definitive versions for printing.  

One instance of the culture-wide turn from speech to text was a switch from spoken to written mathematics tests in the west which occurred at Cambridge in the late 18th century, as I discuss here.  There is nothing intrinsically better about written examinations over spoken ones, especially when standardized and not tailored for each particular student.  This is true even for mathematics, as is shown by the fact that oral exams are still the norm in university mathematics courses in the Russian-speaking world; Russia continues to produce outstanding mathematicians.

Adventurer and writer Rory Stewart, now an MP,  has an interesting post about the oral culture of the British Houses of Parliament, perhaps the last strong-hold of argument-through-speech in public culture.  The only other places in modern life, a place which is not quite as public, where speech reigns supreme, are court rooms.