We have to move into the 21st century, but we should do so with great care to build a 'bi-literate' brain that has the circuitry for 'deep reading' skills and, at the same time, is adept with technology.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of developing both traditional reading skills and technological proficiency in the modern age.
Maryanne Wolf's quote highlights the necessity of evolving our cognitive abilities as we transition into the 21st century. It argues for a balanced development of skills, promoting the cultivation of deep reading comprehension alongside technological adeptness, suggesting that both are crucial for navigating the complexities of the modern world effectively.
In practice
During a seminar on modern education, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for a balanced curriculum.
Digital technology can be a great resource, but it can also be a pernicious one, so it's how we, as a society, really study the cognitive impact of that and use evidence-based research to go after the technology designers to do a better job of dealing with the problems of memory and attention we are seeing.
In reading, we are both scientists and poets.
The acquisition of literacy is one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. To our knowledge, no other species ever acquired it.
The quality of our reading is not only an index of the quality of our thought; it is our best-known route to developing whole new pathways in the cerebral evolution of our species.
There's a richness that reading gives you, an opportunity to probe more than any other medium I know of. Reading is about not being content with the surface.
The attention span of children may be one of the main reasons why an immersion in on-screen reading is so engaging, and it may also be why digital reading may ultimately prove antithetical to the long-in-development, reflective nature of the expert reading brain as we know it.
If you can help a child, you don't have to spend years repairing an adult.
The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.
Education is a slow moving but powerful force
Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing.
In raising children, we need to continuously keep in mind how we can best create the most favorable environment for their imitative behavior. Everything done in the past regarding imitation must become more and more conscious and more and more consciously connected with the future.
We are storytelling creatures, and as children we acquire language to tell those stories that we have inside us.
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