The President Who Doesn't Read
George W. Bush Tried to Suppress Publication of PISA Data
Maryanne Wolf: Human beings were never born to read.
On Brain Plasticity
The Sapient Paradox
The Guttenberg Parenthesis
The End of Civilization as we Know It
George W. Bush Tried to Suppress Publication of PISA Data
Maryanne Wolf: Human beings were never born to read.
On Brain Plasticity
The Sapient Paradox
The Guttenberg Parenthesis
The End of Civilization as we Know It
Orality and Literacy
the Gutenberg Parentheisis
The Withering Away of Mind
The President Who Doesn't Read
from Maryanne Wolf, Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (HarperCollins, 2018), pp. 151-2
Human beings were never born to
read. The acqusition of literacy is one of the most important
epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. . . . The act of
learnng to read added an entirely new circuit to our hominid brain's
repertoire. The long developmental process of learning to read
deeply and well changed the very structure of that circuit's
connections, which rewired the brain, which transformed the nature of
human thought.
"The President Who Doesn't Read," The Atlantic, January 5, 2018
Ironically,
it was the publication of a book this week that crystallized the
reality of just how little Donald Trump reads. While, like many of the
tendencies described in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, Trump’s indifference to the printed word has been apparent for some time, the
depth and implications of Trump’s strong preference for oral
communication over the written word demand closer examination.
“He didn’t process information in any conventional sense,” Wolff
writes. “He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that
for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.”
from Jonathan Bernstein, "Where Does Trump Get His Odd Ideas?" (Bloomberg Opinion, May 28, 2019)
The reporting is pretty
clear: Trump doesn't read briefings, on politics or anything else. He
doesn't appear to have absorbed the basics of public policy, whether on
health care or national security or even issues, like trade, that he
cares about. Instead, he seems to pick up fragments of information in
conversation or, more often, from cable television. Often, it's
partisan talking points, which isn't surprising since much of what airs
on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC consists of partisan talking points.
from David R. Olsen, "History of Writing, History of Rationality," in Eurasia at the Dawn of History (Cambridge, 2016)Quotes
Ong: "Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think
as it does. . . . More than any other single invention, writing
has transformed human consciousness." (48)
David R. Olsen, The Mind on Paper: Reading, Consciousness, and Rationality (Cambridge, 2016)
to
understand the cognitive implications of literacy it is also necessary
to see writing not only as a tool for solving problems but rather as a
generalized means or medium for repesentation and communication that
give rise to those unique forms of human competence we in modern
society define as intelligence and rationality.
1.2 George W. Bush Tried to Suppress Publication of PISA Data
from How Pisa became the world's most important exam, BBC.com, 26 November 2013 (emphasis added):
Among
the starkest revelations has been the decline of the US school system.
This former education superpower has been caught up and left behind by
many other countries, particularly in Asia.
This was distasteful medicine and Mr. Schleicher says that the U.S. administration was deeply unhappy with the 2006 results and was trying to apply pressure on the OECD.
The U.S. politician who intervened to defend the importance of publishing the results was Ted Kennedy, says Mr. Schleicher. Kennedy, who had chaired the senate committee on education, had become very supportive of the Pisa project.
This was distasteful medicine and Mr. Schleicher says that the U.S. administration was deeply unhappy with the 2006 results and was trying to apply pressure on the OECD.
The U.S. politician who intervened to defend the importance of publishing the results was Ted Kennedy, says Mr. Schleicher. Kennedy, who had chaired the senate committee on education, had become very supportive of the Pisa project.
"It was Senator Kennedy who saved my life at the OECD," he says.
This article appeared about two weeks before the release of the 2012 results (on Dec 7, 2013), and thus was based on the 2003, 2006 and 2009 evaluations. As can be seen in Figure 1, since then U.S. scores have plunged.
Human beings were never born to
read. The acqusition of literacy is one of the most important
epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. . . . The act of
learnng to read added an entirely new circuit to our hominid brain's
repertoire. The long developmental process of learning to read
deeply and well changed the very structure of that circuit's
connections, which rewired the brain, which transformed the nature of
human thought.
Every national and international index of how well US children are doing in reading indicates that, despite all the nation’s wealth, they are failing in droves and performing considerably behind children in both Western and Eastern countries. We cannot ignore what this portends for our children or for our country.
only one-third of twenty-first century American children now read with sufficient understanding and speed at the exact age when their future learning depends on it. The fourth grade represents a Maginot line between learning to read and learning to use reading to think and learn.
More disturbing altogether, close to half of our children who are African-American or Latino do not read in grade four at even a “basic” reading level, much less a proficient one. This means that they do not decode well enough to understand what they are reading, which will impact almost everything they are supposed to learn from then on, includiing math and other subjects. I refer to this period as the “vanishing hole in American education” because if children do not learn to read fluently before this time is over, for all educational purposes, they disappear.
Every national and international index of how well US children are doing in reading indicates that, despite all the nation’s wealth, they are failing in droves and performing considerably behind children in both Western and Eastern countries. We cannot ignore what this portends for our children or for our country.
only one-third of twenty-first century American children now read with sufficient understanding and speed at the exact age when their future learning depends on it. The fourth grade represents a Maginot line between learning to read and learning to use reading to think and learn.
More disturbing altogether, close to half of our children who are African-American or Latino do not read in grade four at even a “basic” reading level, much less a proficient one. This means that they do not decode well enough to understand what they are reading, which will impact almost everything they are supposed to learn from then on, includiing math and other subjects. I refer to this period as the “vanishing hole in American education” because if children do not learn to read fluently before this time is over, for all educational purposes, they disappear.
The literary brain did not
evolve, in the Darwinian sense. Humans evolved as a species long
before external symbols came into existence, and thus the brain could
not have evolved specifically for their use. Moreover, literacy
is neither natural nor universal. Humanity was illiterate until a
few thousand years ago, and more than 90 percent of existing human
languages have no indigenous form of literacy. Yet the children
of all human cultures are able to acquire literacy if given a
chance. This shows that the neural demons of literacy, in all
their exquisite complexity, are entirely cultural in origin.
Literate culture has capitalized on untapped cerebral potential and
reprogrammed the human brain in its own image. (p. 304)
Mind, 304Human beings were never born to
read. The acqusition of literacy is one of the most important
epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. . . . The act of
learnng to read added an entirely new circuit to our hominid brain's
repertoire. The long developmental process of learning to read
deeply and well changed the very structure of that circuit's
connections, which rewired the brain, which transformed the nature of
human thought.
Every national and international index of how well US children are doing in reading indicates that, despite all the nation’s wealth, they are failing in droves and performing considerably behind children in both Western and Eastern countries. We cannot ignore what this portends for our children or for our country.
only one-third of twenty-first century American children now read with sufficient understanding and speed at the exact age when their future learning depends on it. The fourth grade represents a Maginot line between learning to read and learning to use reading to think and learn.
More disturbing altogether, close to half of our children who are African-American or Latino do not read in grade four at even a “basic” reading level, much less a proficient one. This means that they do not decode well enough to understand what they are reading, which will impact almost everything they are supposed to learn from then on, includiing math and other subjects. I refer to this period as the “vanishing hole in American education” because if children do not learn to read fluently before this time is over, for all educational purposes, they disappear.
Every national and international index of how well US children are doing in reading indicates that, despite all the nation’s wealth, they are failing in droves and performing considerably behind children in both Western and Eastern countries. We cannot ignore what this portends for our children or for our country.
only one-third of twenty-first century American children now read with sufficient understanding and speed at the exact age when their future learning depends on it. The fourth grade represents a Maginot line between learning to read and learning to use reading to think and learn.
More disturbing altogether, close to half of our children who are African-American or Latino do not read in grade four at even a “basic” reading level, much less a proficient one. This means that they do not decode well enough to understand what they are reading, which will impact almost everything they are supposed to learn from then on, includiing math and other subjects. I refer to this period as the “vanishing hole in American education” because if children do not learn to read fluently before this time is over, for all educational purposes, they disappear.
1) What we may term the
‘speciation phase’ of human evolution (Renfrew 2006, p. 224, 2007a, p.
94), the period when biological and cultural coevolution worked
together to develop the human genome and the human species [Wrangham
2019], as we know it, was fulfilled already 60 000 years ago. This
implies that the basic hardware—the human brain at the time of
birth—has not changed radically since that time.
That brings us to the sapient paradox.
2) There seems to have been a long—in fact, inordinately long—delay between the emergence of anatomically modern humans and our later cultural flowering. Both genetic and archaeological evidence converge on the conclusion that the ‘speciation’ phase of sapient humans occurred in Africa at least 70 000–100 000 years BP, and possibly earlier, and all modern humans are descended from those original populations.
the ‘tectonic’ phase
2) Renfrew labels a later period, extending from 10 000 years ago to the present, as the ‘tectonic’ phase. This has been a period of greatly accelerated change, stepping relatively quickly through several different levels of social and material culture (but see James C. Scott, Against the Grain: a Deep History of the Earliest States; Yale, 2017), including the domestication of plants and animals, sedentary societies, cities and advanced metallurgy. It has culminated in many recent changes, giving us dramatic innovations, such as skyscrapers, atomic energy and the internet. The paradox is that there was a gap of well over 50 000 years between the speciation and tectonic phases. The acceleration of recent cultural change is especially puzzling when viewed in the light of the hundreds of thousands of years it took our ancestors to master fire, stone tool making and coordinated seasonal hunting.
That brings us to the sapient paradox.
2) There seems to have been a long—in fact, inordinately long—delay between the emergence of anatomically modern humans and our later cultural flowering. Both genetic and archaeological evidence converge on the conclusion that the ‘speciation’ phase of sapient humans occurred in Africa at least 70 000–100 000 years BP, and possibly earlier, and all modern humans are descended from those original populations.
the ‘tectonic’ phase
2) Renfrew labels a later period, extending from 10 000 years ago to the present, as the ‘tectonic’ phase. This has been a period of greatly accelerated change, stepping relatively quickly through several different levels of social and material culture (but see James C. Scott, Against the Grain: a Deep History of the Earliest States; Yale, 2017), including the domestication of plants and animals, sedentary societies, cities and advanced metallurgy. It has culminated in many recent changes, giving us dramatic innovations, such as skyscrapers, atomic energy and the internet. The paradox is that there was a gap of well over 50 000 years between the speciation and tectonic phases. The acceleration of recent cultural change is especially puzzling when viewed in the light of the hundreds of thousands of years it took our ancestors to master fire, stone tool making and coordinated seasonal hunting.
1. Colin Renfrew,
"Neuroscience, evolution and the sapient paradox: the factuality of
value and of the sacred," Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2008 Jun
12; 363(1499): 2041–2047.); Colin Renfrew, The Sapient Paradox: Social
Interaction as a Foundation of Mind (Video. 2016 Duke U. seminar)
2. Merlin Donald, "The sapient paradox: can cognitive neuroscience solve it?," in Brain. A Journal of Neurology. First published online: 2 December 2008
2. Merlin Donald, "The sapient paradox: can cognitive neuroscience solve it?," in Brain. A Journal of Neurology. First published online: 2 December 2008
Tina Brown: You said in an interview that you don’t think novels are going to be read 25 years from now. Were you being provocative or do you believe that to be true?
Philip Roth: I was being optimistic about 25 years really. No, I think it’s going to be cultic. I think always people will be reading them, but it’ll be a small group of people—maybe more people than now read Latin poetry, but somewhere in that range. . . . To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. . . I think that that kind of concentration, and focus, and attentiveness, is hard to come by. It’s hard to find huge numbers of people, or large numbers of people or significant numbers of people who have those qualities.
If the intrinsically plastic
human brain undergoes constant change subject to various developmental,
environmental, and cultural factors, it cannot simply be assumed that
“anatomically modern human intelligence” refers to a fixed and stable
speciation event. As we saw in chapter 3, for Material Engagement
Theory the hallmark of human cognitive evolution is metaplasticity—that
is, ever-increasing extra-neural projective flexibility that allows for
environmentally and culturally derived changes in the structure and
functional architecture of our brain.
.
. . the great question of history's constitutive role in the formation
and transformation of our cognizing powers is now largely ignored . .
.
from “Naval Collision Adds to Fears About U.S. Decline in Asia” (NYT 8-22-17)
"It drives home growing worries
about a competence deficit within American organs of power under the
increasingly besieged Trump administration,” said Richard Javad
Heydarian, a political analyst at De La Salle University in Manila.
from https://math.berkeley.edu/~frenkel/Frenkel-Wu-WSJ.pdf,
Mathematical education in the U.S. is in deep crisis. The World
Economic Forum ranks the quality of math and science education in the
U.S. a dismal 48th. This is one of the reasons the 2010 report "Rising
Above the Gathering Storm" by the National Academies warned that
America's ability to compete effectively with other nations is fading.
. . . the current lock-step march to the bottom of international
student performance in math and science
from Yrjö Engeström and Reijo Miettinen, "Activity theory and individual and social transformation," in Reijo Miettinen, and Raija-Leena Punamaki, Perspectives on Activity Theory (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 25-6:
Differences
in cognition across cultures, social groups, and domains of practice
are thus commonly explained without seriously analyzing the historical
development that has led to those differences. The underlying
relativistic notion is that we should not make value judgements
concerning whose cognition is better or more advanced--that all kinds
of thinking and practice are equally valuable. Although this
liberal stance may be a comfortable basis for academic discourse, it
ignores the reality that in all domains of societal practice value
judgements and decisions have to be made everyday.
1.2 George W. Bush Tried to Suppress Publication of PISA Data
from How Pisa became the world's most important exam, BBC.com, 26 November 2013 (emphasis added):
Among
the starkest revelations has been the decline of the US school system.
This former education superpower has been caught up and left behind by
many other countries, particularly in Asia.
This was distasteful medicine and Mr. Schleicher says that the U.S. administration was deeply unhappy with the 2006 results and was trying to apply pressure on the OECD.
The U.S. politician who intervened to defend the importance of publishing the results was Ted Kennedy, says Mr. Schleicher. Kennedy, who had chaired the senate committee on education, had become very supportive of the Pisa project.
This was distasteful medicine and Mr. Schleicher says that the U.S. administration was deeply unhappy with the 2006 results and was trying to apply pressure on the OECD.
The U.S. politician who intervened to defend the importance of publishing the results was Ted Kennedy, says Mr. Schleicher. Kennedy, who had chaired the senate committee on education, had become very supportive of the Pisa project.
"It was Senator Kennedy who saved my life at the OECD," he says.
This article appeared about two weeks before the release of the 2012 results (on Dec 7, 2013), and thus was based on the 2003, 2006 and 2009 evaluations. As can be seen in Figure 1, since then U.S. scores have plunged.
For presidential hopefuls, simpler language resonates: Trump tops GOP field while talking to voters at fourth-grade level, (Boston Globe,
August 20, 2015).
McMaster Mocked Trump’s Intelligence At a Private Dinner (Buzzfeed, November 20, 2017)
H.R. McMaster reportedly thinks Trump is an “idiot” with the brain of a “kindergartner” (Vox, Nov 20, 2017)
Trump’s latest big interview is both funny and terrifying (Vox, Oct 23, 2017)
Trump’s latest big interview is both funny and terrifying (Vox, Oct 23, 2017)
Clubbable, but in the Worst Way (NYT 1-18-18) Fascism
McMaster Mocked Trump’s Intelligence At a Private Dinner (Buzzfeed, November 20, 2017)
H.R. McMaster reportedly thinks Trump is an “idiot” with the brain of a “kindergartner” (Vox, Nov 20, 2017)
Trump’s latest big interview is both funny and terrifying (Vox, Oct 23, 2017)
Trump’s latest big interview is both funny and terrifying (Vox, Oct 23, 2017)
Clubbable, but in the Worst Way (NYT 1-18-18) Fascism
1.1 Emotion and cognition
from Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Antonio R. Damasio, “We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education,” in Emotions, Learning, and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience (W. W. Norton & Company, 2015)
Quotes Ong: "Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does. . . . More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness." (48)
from Almudena Herndando, "The Impact of Social Differentiation on Identity," in Eurasia at the Dawn of History
In this context read The President Who Doesn't Read: Trump’s allergy to the written word and his reliance on oral communication have proven liabilities in office (David A. Graham, The Atlantic 1-5-18).
from Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Antonio R. Damasio, “We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education,” in Emotions, Learning, and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience (W. W. Norton & Company, 2015)
.
. . learning is dynamic, social, and context dependent because emotions
are, and emotions form a critical piece of how, what, when, and why
people think, remember, and learn. (p. 17)
In general, cognition and emotion are regarded as two interrelated aspects of human functioning. (p. 36)
In general, cognition and emotion are regarded as two interrelated aspects of human functioning. (p. 36)
from David R. Olsen, "History of Writing, History of Rationality," in Eurasia at the Dawn of History (Cambridge, 2016)
[
Quotes Ong: "Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does. . . . More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness." (48)
from Almudena Herndando, "The Impact of Social Differentiation on Identity," in Eurasia at the Dawn of History
Research on
the contrast between orality and literacy unanimously confirms that
writing individualizes people. . . . writing allows subjects to
establish abstract, more rational connections with phenomena outside
their own personal experience, whereas in oral societies only that
which can be experienced in person may be processed as part of
reality." (58)
In this context read The President Who Doesn't Read: Trump’s allergy to the written word and his reliance on oral communication have proven liabilities in office (David A. Graham, The Atlantic 1-5-18).
from Sophia Rosenfeld, A Revolution in Language: the Problem of Signs in Late Eighteenth-Century France (Stanford, 2001), pp. 150-51
"As the Abbé
Grégoire warned his fellow deputies, 'this inevitable poverty of
language, which confuses the mind, will mutilate all your addresses and
decrees.' In a political system built upon a series of mental
abstractions, popular linguistic confusion, according to this
reasoning, was and would continue to be one of the principal sources of
political and civil discord.
How did these well-placed intellectuals know that many ordinary people failed to comprehend the language of the Revolution? For the Abbé Grégoire, it was a matter of common sense. Like the savages of late eitheenth-century travel literature, peasants--the often illiterate speakers of foreign idioms, dialects, and ungrammatical French--were widely thought to have great difficulty generalizing their ideas or forming clear conceptions of abstract, nonmaterial terms. Indeed, Voltaire's conclusion that 'more than half of the habital world is still populated by two-footed animals who live in a horrible condtion approximating the state of nature. . . barely enjoying the gift of speech' retained its force. Consequently, even when the population in question was the vast rural citizenry of France, its ability to understand the key debates and decrees of the Revolution was assumed to be extremely limited. As the Abbé Sernin bluntly states before the Convention, 'Artisans and people in the countryside, although elevated by the law to a new level of Liberty and destined to fill the most important positions in the State, these men are, for the most part, still deaf and mute' when it came to any public functions that they might be called upon to play.
. . . reports . . . often contained ominous tales of public incomprehension of the formal language of France's laws and constitution. A correspondent from the department of Seine-et-Oise, for example, wrote to express his fear that the young children he regularly heard reciting the Declaration of the Rights of Man from memory did not actually understand what they were saying: "I am sadly convinced by questions which I have posed to the oldest among them that they understand the significance of none of the words used in it. I have reproached their fathers in a fraternal way for not bothering to explain these words to their children. They have replied that they do not understand any more than their children and that they themselves need someone to explain these words to them as well." Similarly, a schoolmaster from Fourny wrote to La Feuille villageoise to say that every Sunday he read this journal aloud to the local peasants and answered, to the best of his abilities, their frequent questions about vocabulary that they did not comprehend. But, he complained, he was afraid that he was spoiling the journal's lessons and deceiving his disciples, because "I often encounter words that I know only a little or badly." Unfortunately, the words that the schoolmaster failed to grasp ranged from "democracy" and "coalition" to "analysis" and "metaphor."
How did these well-placed intellectuals know that many ordinary people failed to comprehend the language of the Revolution? For the Abbé Grégoire, it was a matter of common sense. Like the savages of late eitheenth-century travel literature, peasants--the often illiterate speakers of foreign idioms, dialects, and ungrammatical French--were widely thought to have great difficulty generalizing their ideas or forming clear conceptions of abstract, nonmaterial terms. Indeed, Voltaire's conclusion that 'more than half of the habital world is still populated by two-footed animals who live in a horrible condtion approximating the state of nature. . . barely enjoying the gift of speech' retained its force. Consequently, even when the population in question was the vast rural citizenry of France, its ability to understand the key debates and decrees of the Revolution was assumed to be extremely limited. As the Abbé Sernin bluntly states before the Convention, 'Artisans and people in the countryside, although elevated by the law to a new level of Liberty and destined to fill the most important positions in the State, these men are, for the most part, still deaf and mute' when it came to any public functions that they might be called upon to play.
. . . reports . . . often contained ominous tales of public incomprehension of the formal language of France's laws and constitution. A correspondent from the department of Seine-et-Oise, for example, wrote to express his fear that the young children he regularly heard reciting the Declaration of the Rights of Man from memory did not actually understand what they were saying: "I am sadly convinced by questions which I have posed to the oldest among them that they understand the significance of none of the words used in it. I have reproached their fathers in a fraternal way for not bothering to explain these words to their children. They have replied that they do not understand any more than their children and that they themselves need someone to explain these words to them as well." Similarly, a schoolmaster from Fourny wrote to La Feuille villageoise to say that every Sunday he read this journal aloud to the local peasants and answered, to the best of his abilities, their frequent questions about vocabulary that they did not comprehend. But, he complained, he was afraid that he was spoiling the journal's lessons and deceiving his disciples, because "I often encounter words that I know only a little or badly." Unfortunately, the words that the schoolmaster failed to grasp ranged from "democracy" and "coalition" to "analysis" and "metaphor."
from James R. Flynn, What is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect (Cambridge Univesity Press, 2009):
Our
ancestors in 1900 were not mentally retarded. Their intelligence
ws anchored in everyday reality. We differ from them in that we
can use abstractions and logic and the hypothetical to attack the
formal problems that arise when science liberates thought from concrete
situations. Since 1950 we have become more ingenious in
going beyond previously learned rules to solve problems on the
spot. pp. 10-11
The scientific ethos, with its vocabulary, taxonomies, and detachment of logic and the hypothetical from concrete referents, has begun to permeate the minds of post-industrial peoples. This has paved the way for mass education on the university level and the emergence of an intellectual cadre without whom our present civilization would be inconceivable. 29
Science altered our lives and then liberated our minds from the concrete. This history has not been written because, as children of our own time, we do not perceive the gulf that separates us from our distant [circa 1900] ancestors: the difference between their world and the world seen through scientific spectacles. . . . As use of logic and the hypothetical moved beyond the concrete, people developed new habits of mind. They became practiced at solving problems with abstract or visual content and more innovative at administrative tasks." 172-174
The scientific ethos, with its vocabulary, taxonomies, and detachment of logic and the hypothetical from concrete referents, has begun to permeate the minds of post-industrial peoples. This has paved the way for mass education on the university level and the emergence of an intellectual cadre without whom our present civilization would be inconceivable. 29
Science altered our lives and then liberated our minds from the concrete. This history has not been written because, as children of our own time, we do not perceive the gulf that separates us from our distant [circa 1900] ancestors: the difference between their world and the world seen through scientific spectacles. . . . As use of logic and the hypothetical moved beyond the concrete, people developed new habits of mind. They became practiced at solving problems with abstract or visual content and more innovative at administrative tasks." 172-174
Differences in cognition across cultures, social groups, and domains of
practice are thus commonly explained without seriously analyzing the
historical development that has led to those differences. The
underlying relativistic notion is that we should not make value
judgements concerning whose cognition is better or more advanced--that
all kinds of thinking and practice are equally valuable. Although
this liberal stance may be a comfortable basis for academic discourse,
it ignores the reality that in all domains of societal practice value
judgements and decisions have to be made everyday.