The acquisition of literacy is one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. To our knowledge, no other species ever acquired it.
Interpretation
Literacy is a vital achievement that sets humans apart from other species.
In this quote, Maryanne Wolf emphasizes the significance of literacy as a remarkable development in human evolution. It highlights how the ability to read and write is not only a crucial skill for communication but also a unique characteristic that distinguishes Homo sapiens from all other species on Earth, underscoring the intellectual and cultural advancements made possible through literacy.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of education in society.
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 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.
There's no question that our children's attention and memory is changing when they are reading too long, too much, too early on digital screens.
By asking a novel question that you don't know the answer to, you discover whether you can formulate a way of finding the answer, and you stretch your own mind, and very often you learn something new.
There is so much we can learn from TV. It's a window on the world.
I think books are like people, in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them.
If you pay a child a dollar to read a book, as some schools have tried, you not only create an expectation that reading makes you money, you also run the risk of depriving the child for ever of the value of it. Markets are not innocent.
I hope that you have re-read the Constitution of the United States in these past few weeks. Like the Bible, it ought to be read again and again.
A lot of parents today are terrified that something they say to their children might make them 'feel bad.' But, hey, if they've done something wrong, they should feel bad. Kids with a sense of responsibility, not entitlement, who know when to experience gratitude and humility, will be better at navigating the social shoals of college.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.