Ask Them To Read. Otherwise They Are Doomed
To understand how important reading is for a human being, we must look at the history of human evolution. The truth is that reading is not natural like seeing and speaking. Because, we are born with the neural circuits to see and speak, but not to read.
Notably, writing is too recent (around 50000 years). Over the years, the brain developed a dedicated reading center. Interestingly, Even reading this article activated circuits in your brain that took thousands of years to develop. While reading, people co-opting and connecting existing networks that were originally designed for vision, auditory processing, language, attention, and emotion, which are not the case in seeing and speaking.
According to leading cognitive neuroscientists and literacy experts, reading is a whole brain process, activating a distributed web of pre-existing visual, auditory, language, and sensory networks across all four cortical lobes. Prominent cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Stanislas Dehaene says brain learns to read by hijacking and repurposing older neural systems built for visual object tracking and spoken language because reading is an evolutionary invention.
One of the earliest writing systems in the world is thought to be Sumerian cuneiform, dating back to around 3300 BC. Around the same time, Egyptians began developing hieroglyphics. Those early symbols evolved over time. The more humanity read and wrote, the more sophisticated they became, eventually becoming the letters and characters we recognize today.
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According to experts, learning to read physically alters brain activity, structure, and connectivity. Whatever the language, reading not only impacts the brain but affects us on a physical level as well. We might literally feel in our guts the nervousness or pain of a character. This is because the anterior insula, which is responsible for gastromotoric movement and feelings of nausea and pain, is also the part of the brain associated with many empathic processes.And the brain is very adaptable.
Evidence suggests it is already changing as a result of new technologies. Reading on a phone or tablet is generally passive scrolling, often interrupted by messages and alerts. When we read on screens, we tend to skim, and when we skim, we become more susceptible to misinformation. We need to be able to think critically about what we are reading, because that ability to analyse and think deeply about information is fundamental to a democracy.
Researchers now points out that early digital exposure predicts negatively affects attention in children. Children with early exposure to digital tools reportedly experience attention struggles, executive function, and academic performance. Constant distraction creates a need for ever-quicker stimulation, leading to boredom offline.
To regain the attention and brain development, experts advices parents to immerse their children in reading and give them a reading life. Researchers urges parents and teachers to read out to their children and make them love reading themselves. This is likely to have benefits far beyond the individual reader.
‘When we read deeply, we change our brains and we change who we are, and that process of changing the minds and hearts of individuals changes society and allows us to build bigger, more beautiful futures, the experts advices.
