In reading, we are both scientists and poets.
Interpretation
Reading combines analytical and creative thinking.
Maryanne Wolf's quote highlights the dual nature of reading, where one engages both the scientific aspect of critical analysis and the poetic aspect of imagination and emotional expression. It suggests that through reading, we not only acquire knowledge and understanding like scientists, but we also explore feelings and creativity as poets.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literacy, one can use this quote to emphasize the value of reading.
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.
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.
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.
Good teachers never say anything. What they do is create the conditions under which learning takes place.
I lived in a world where social arrangements were taken for granted and assumed to be timeless. A child's obligation was to learn these usages, not to question them. The complexities of racial deportment were of a piece with learning manners and etiquette more generally.
Islam tells us every girl and boy should be educated. I don't know why the Taliban have forgotten it.
I cannot imagine life without books any more than I can imagine life without breathing.
Teaching is a profession in which capacity building should occur at every stage of the career - novices working with accomplished colleagues, skillful teachers sharing their craft, and opportunities for teacher leadership.
Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom.
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