© Sebastien Thibault‘We need to cultivate a new kind of brain: a “bi-literate’ reading brain’
As work in neurosciences indicates, the acquisition of literacy necessitated a new circuit in our species' brain more than 6,000 years ago. That circuit evolved from a very simple mechanism for decoding basic information, like the number of goats in one's herd, to the present, highly elaborated reading brain. My research depicts how the present reading brain enables the development of some of our most important intellectual and affective processes: internalized knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference; perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of insight. Research surfacing in many parts of the world now cautions that each of these essential "deep reading" processes may be under threat as we move into digital-based modes of reading.
This is not a simple, binary issue of print vs digital reading and technological innovation. As MIT scholar Sherry Turkle has written, we do not err as a society when we innovate, but when we ignore what we disrupt or diminish while innovating. In this hinge moment between print and digital cultures, society needs to confront what is diminishing in the expert reading circuit, what our children and older students are not developing, and what we can do about it.
Comment: Another counterintuitive solution that just goes to show the depth psychologists were right all along: we are strangers to ourselves. A great and somewhat ironic example of the above dynamic is Tony Robbins, who became successful by telling other people how to become successful. People tend not to take care of themselves as they should, and they also tend not to enjoy being hypocrites. By forcing yourself to give advice, you adopt a position of responsibility, and tend to become a little more responsible in the process. But keep the caveat in mind: you have to know what you're talking about.