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.
If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? - not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?
Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind.
A great book seeks to explain causality, not correlation. It works to point out the circumstances in which it works, and where it doesn't. And in so doing, it is broadly applicable.
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