My YouTube feed threw up a video that caught my attention. It’s entitled Why Everyone Stopped Reading by Jared Henderson.[1] This YouTube video profiles an article that appeared in The Atlantic by Rose Horowitch entitled The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books. Henderson effectively tells us that “whole book reading” is on the decline. According to Horowitch’s research, college freshman are turning up at elite colleges, like Columbia, unable to read complete books. This is not to say that students cannot read, they can, however, they are not able (or do not wish) to read whole books. As an example, Henderson tells us that there is a required class at Columbia that on average assigns a book a week to students. Students are reporting to their professors that they cannot read a book a week because they were never expected to read an entire book during their four years at public high school.
In the body of Henderson’s video he points to two main causes for the decline of whole book reading: the shift from teaching phonics to teaching whole language learning starting in the late 1960s; and the rise of screen devices and their ability to access web pages in the last twenty years or so. Henderson mentions a survey that indicates that today only 17% of educators use whole books as a part of their lessons. I’ll leave you to view Henderson’s video to get his take on the decline of whole book reading. In the rest of this post I’d like to present what I would call a neuropsychological take on the decline of whole book reading. In truth, I have told this story several times before, so I will be brief leaving out many of the usual quotes and references I typically use to tell this story.
One of the main themes in Nicholas Carr’s 2010 book The Shallows—What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains is the decline of what Carr calls “deep reading.” Carr presents a great review of how deep reading got its start in the first place. Apparently it’s a developmental psychological process that took centuries to complete as the oral tradition of ancient times slowly gave way to the practice of reading silently to one’s self in peaceful and secluded settings. (In his video, Henderson points out that he likes to read in his backyard.) I would suggest that the advent of deep reading was one of the events that marked the rise of the upper brain along with its Executive Function (EF) skills such as appropriately shifting focus, mental modeling, empathy, spatial cognition, running what if scenarios, perspective-taking, and mental time travel such as our sense of past, present, and future. Students who report that they are not able to read whole books also report that they cannot maintain focus, are easily distracted, and, generally, are not able to imagine the conceptual world the author is trying to convey. In essence, they are not able to take on the perspective of the author or, for that matter, the perspectives of the characters developed in the book they are attempting to read. My point here is simple: without EF skills, one will have a very difficult time engaging in deep, whole book reading. So, the decline of whole book reading is a proxy for the decline of EF skills in students (and many adults according to Henderson). From a neuropsychological standpoint students are reading out of their middle brain in large part because educators (unwittingly) are keeping students away from developing their upper brains and EF skills. Why? Well, Carr offers up an explanation that I think is well worth considering. Here’s what I wrote in a post in August of this year:
— o O o —
Writing in his 2010 book entitled The Shallows—What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, social commentator and science writer Nicholas Carr talks about how the introduction of HTML (hypertext markup language), along with the hyperlinks it facilitates, was enthusiastically embraced by progressive educators. “The academic enthusiasm for hypertext was … kindled by the belief, in line with the fashionable postmodern theories of the day [the early to mid-1980s], that hypertext would overthrow the patriarchal authority of the author and shift power to the reader,” writes Carr. I would suggest that this is a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, hyperlinks allowed for the digital dissection of books, articles, and other printed works. However, reading books, articles, and other printed works as “a whole” from start to finish allowed for what Carr calls “deep reading.” Deep reading is a chief way of developing the brain’s Executive Function skills such as empathy, reflection, critical thinking, appropriately shifting attention. Are we not throwing out the “deep reading” baby (and, in the process, access to EF skills) with the “authority of the singular white male” water? At the risk of being glib, this seems like a case of cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face. Progressive educators [those who advocated for not only whole language learning as well as, latter, Common Core according to Henderson] are big advocates of developing critical thinking. However, this digital iconoclastic behavior seems bent on closing off the developmental pathways to EF and critical, reflective thinking.
— o O o —
Much of progressive education is informed by what is known as emancipation psychology. The goal of emancipation psychology, which informs much of feminism in general, is to release or emancipate any and all from any and all forms of oppression. As Carr points out, the “patriarchal authority of the [single-minded] author” was viewed as a form of oppression that acted to oppress young, developing minds. Ironically, by releasing the mind of the young student from single-minded authorship and whole books, young minds were cutoff from their upper brain and EF skills, those same EF skills required to develop critical thinking skills. This has set up a negative feedback loop that results in students who simply cannot read nor take pleasure in whole book reading.
The key to any theory or model informed by emancipation psychology is to ask, “emancipation toward what?” Emancipation for emancipation’s sake is risky business. This is why, in my opinion, Dr. King made it a point to have a dream for all of us. To have a dream is centrally about having the EF skills to imagine that dream, to see one’s self in that new reality the dream holds out for us. I would argue that college and university life is all about imagining and working toward the future, a future as a doctor, lawyer, architect, social worker, or scientist. A student who reports to his or her professor that they cannot read a whole book is essentially saying that they cannot imagine their future. Henderson ends his video by simply saying that he has no idea how to go about helping students who never learned to engage in deep reading. It really is a neuropsychological crisis.
At the risk of tooting our own horn, our Foundation has made reading one of its central focuses. Back in the mid-2010s, we partnered with Imagination Library of Grant County in New Mexico. Imagination Library is a project of the Dolly Parton Foundation. Imagination Library is about getting books into households with small children. Imagination Library also encourages parents to read to their children. From a Bowlbian attachment theory perspective, the process of parents reading to their young children plays a pivotal role in developing early safe and secure attachment relationships. Further, early safe and secure attachment relationships are the royal road toward developing robust Executive Function skills later in life. In 2015, we made a grant to Imagination Library of Grant County to in part support the work of education researcher Dr. Ann Harvey at Western New Mexico University. Harvey’s work[2] provides data in support of the idea that parents who read to their children not only strengthen attachment relationships but also help to develop a foundation upon which EF skills rest.
Like many of you I have been reading “post election reports” in an attempt to make sense of things. One group of pundits[3] have an interesting take on what happened. They point out that people are desperate to find community again, to find a shared sense of national identity. They report that the meteoric rise of neoliberalism and globalization has served to erode community and a shared sense of national identity. Apparently there is this message out there that in order for one to join in on the prosperity of neoliberalism and globalization, one must have a college degree: pay (tuition) to play.[4] It would appear that emancipation models (of which DEI is one) are increasingly pushing young people toward the atomistic worlds of postmodernism, neoliberalism, and globalization. This has created “blowback” in the form of a desire for community and a shared sense of national identity, nationalism I guess you could say. As neurobiologist and attachment researcher Louis Cozolino writes in his 2013 book entitled The Social Neuroscience of Education, “While science has long appreciated the complexity of the brain, it is just awakening to the ways in which brains are woven together into families, communities, and tribes.” He continues, “Relationships are our natural habitat.”
I’m in favor of emancipation where appropriate. However, any emancipation project will be of a systems nature, and it is key to ask the systems question “emancipation toward what?” Without asking such a systems question, any project centered on emancipation may bring about blowback, like the blowback in education we are seeing in forms such as students who cannot read whole books, who feel detached, who cannot imagine their own futures. Unfortunately, emancipation projects have the potential to erode our natural relational habitat unless they take great pains to make sure that new relational habitats quickly appear. The election results tend to suggest that new relational habitats are nowhere to be found. Students and adults are upset and with good reason. Viewed using a context centered on increasing anomie, nationalism seems like a predictable response, a return to a relational context, any relational context.
If you are a parent with small children, please, set aside an hour each day without any distraction and read to them. And if you do not have access to age appropriate books for children, contact your local Imagination Library chapter. You can find a local chapter by doing a search at the web site for Imagination Library.
Everyone have a great Holiday Season! I’ll be back after the holidays.
Postscript: Apple is running a commercial for its version of AI or artificial intelligence called Apple Intelligence. The commercial, called Catch Up Quick, opens with a group of professionals sitting around a conference table. The head of the group calls on Lance and asks him to go through a prospectus for the group. Lance slowly rolls his chair out of the room, pulls up the prospectus on his laptop, and hits the Key Points feature of Apple Intelligence. He rolls back to the conference with a look of confidence on his face as the music plays a chorus of “I Am Genius.” Apple is essentially delivering the message that, heck, you don’t even have to engage in shallow reading; let Apple Intelligence read for you and tell you what you need to know. This use of AI makes hypertext look like child’s play. And why this commercial is not generating huge blowback baffles me. Let’s changes things a bit. What if the commercial opens with a group of doctors and other technicians standing around an operating table. And then the lead doctor calls on Lance and asks him to start the procedure. Lance slowly backs out of the operating room while he pulls out his iPhone and clicks on Key Points. I hardly think there would be a chorus of I Am Genius playing. Perhaps I Am Fraud would be more appropriate. Where does this Catching Up Quick end? Do we really want students, professionals, skilled workers, lawmakers, etc., catching up quick? Man, the slope just got a bunch more slippery, and steep too.
Notes:
[1] – Here’s the link to Jared’s video:
[2] – Here’s the reference to this work:
Harvey, A. (2016). Improving Family Literacy Practices. Sage Open, 6(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016669973
[3] – Here’s an example, one that influenced my thinking here:
[4] – In his 2007 book entitled The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America, social commentator Daniel Brook suggests that it was President Clinton who was the first to widely deliver the pay (tuition) to play message. According to Brook’s research, it was Clinton who effectively said that the age of “back power” was over and that we (in the mid-1990s) were entering the age of “brain power.” Apparently Clinton, taking the lead from President Reagan, did much to bring about neoliberal economic policies. In the video linked to above, Micael Sandel points out that, today, Democrats are the party of educated elites while Republicans are the party of the working class. I would suggest that this “reversal of tectonic proportions” began with Clinton’s pay (tuition) to play message and his embrace of neoliberalism and its blowback effects of detachment, disintegration of national identity, and loss of community and connection. When you mess with attachment patterns whether personal or national, expect blowback or unintended consequences.
