Education, Books and the Digital Age
I have no doubt that the new mediums will accomplish many of the goals we have for the reading brain, particularly the motivation to learn to decode, read and experience the knowledge that is available. As a cognitive neuroscientist, however, I believe we need rigorous research about whether the reading circuit of our youngest members will be short-circuited, figuratively and physiologically.
For my greatest concern is that the young brain will never have the time (in milliseconds or in hours or in years) to learn to go deeper into the text after the first decoding, but rather will be pulled by the medium to ever more distracting information, sidebars, and now,perhaps, videos (in the new vooks).
The child’s imagination and children’s nascent sense of probity and introspection are no match for a medium that creates a sense of urgency to get to the next piece of stimulating information. 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.
I could make a cultural argument about the tactile pleasure of book reading. Or the intrinsic role of books as the cornerstone of cultivating a “life of the mind” . Or that book-bound literacy is a two thousand year old element of Western civilization that is worth preserving for its own sake – which it is. However, such cultural arguments are not politically persuasive, because if you understand them already then they do not need to be made. And if you do not understand them from firsthand experience, then you cannot grasp the argument’s merit from a pious secondhand lecture.
Which leaves us with an appeal to utilitarianism; bookless schools might result in students who read poorly, which wastes money, time, opportunities and talent. Online mediums should be a regular part of a student’s diet of literacy but without books as a component of reading, a digital environment may not make for a literate people.
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T. Greer:
March 24th, 2010 at 5:44 am
Indeed. From personal experience, I can affirm that I never have the same attention span on a computer as I do when I read a book on the hand. To take one example — I have been trying to read the TIMN Rand publication for a good two months now (’bout 40 pages), and never can get a page or two in without feeling the need to open up another tab. It is still unfinished. I think I have read upwards of five thousand paper pages – at least ten books – during the same time period.
Cheryl Rofer:
March 24th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
I like books.
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Another downside of the internet: when I travel, the internet is always the same. Drains a bit of the feeling of being somewhere else.
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But I wouldn’t give up the communication capabilities of the Web for anything.
zen:
March 24th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Agree with both of you. As with a lot of things in life, it is less either-or than having an intelligent and useful combination of both.
J. Scott:
March 24th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Our nine year old daughter loves paper, glue, and ink. She tried the ebook thing and decided it was more fun to crawl up with a real book. Her library is vast for her age and her love of books reassuring. For me, I love books because I write in them as I read (something I can’t do with an ebook) and go back later to review. I love electronic media/resources, but hope that books remain–at least through my lifetime! Great post, Zen!
Schmedlap:
March 25th, 2010 at 12:22 am
There is some value in the physical presence of books. If a large part of a home or a building is set aside to store books for easy access, this demonstrates some reverence for the knowledge contained therein. The amount of disk space consumed by e-books doesn’t have the same effect.
zen:
March 25th, 2010 at 2:33 am
Hi Scott –
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I think our daughters would hit it off very well. I too like the scribbling, underlining, how to read a book habits and the scrawling of marginalia. Left that out ’cause these are school library books and that is strictly verboten ( though as they are throwing out books, like these, there won’t be any left to write in anyway).
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Hi Schmedlap,
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Totally agree. Children learn from what we do not what we say we do. If they see books are important, that Dad and Mom value reading, enjoying the library or the bookstore, it sends a powerful message.
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BTW, loved Dr. Tyrell’s post that you highlighted today – great catch
onparkstreet:
March 25th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
I love actual "real" books as objects of art, but that is a personal aesthetic choice and others will differ….
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Do children today still read more dead-tree books than they might have in the past because of the relative abundance of books, despite the e-learning?
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One difference I note when reading actual "real" books – they do look nice when arrayed on bookshelves or in those arty decorative shapes arty bookstores manage, don’t they? – is that I seem to get into kind of dream state when reading a work of fiction. I don’t recall entering that kind of dream state when reading non-fiction, and certainly not when I read online. I mean, I’m transported with all three and forget time, but it’s not that deep contemplative place where ideas seem to bubble up? Anyone else notice that?
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Well, it’s either that or I’m just busier with all the adult responsibility of an adult life and am taking it out on online reading. I am more likely to miss typos reading online than proofreading dead tree stuff, that’s for sure.
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Our medical center is in the process of getting rid of its library and going all digital ( I pilfered and begged some books to send out to Afghanistan and the like) but they haven’t subscribed to many of the online versions of journals for reasons of cost. So everyone is very grumpy. Digital is only as good as what you can get your hands on.
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– Madhu
onparkstreet:
March 25th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Oh, and I noticed the same thing with various nieces and nephews: they love the actual paper of a book and all the stuff they can – potentially! – do with it, from scribbling to ripping to glueing, glittering, and crayoning. But we won’t tell anyone about that….
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– Madhu
Chris:
March 25th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
This reminds me of Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End. One of the ancillary plot points is that a company is digitizing an entire university library; unfortunately, the method chosen requires that the books are destroyed.
As an aside (but one relevant to the post below this), it is a similar book to Daemon. Both are near future explorations of 4/5GW. I would recommend Rainbows End as highly as Daemon. Both are well done.
Semper Fi,
Chris
zen:
March 26th, 2010 at 4:42 am
"Do children today still read more dead-tree books than they might have in the past because of the relative abundance of books,"
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No, because of the relative increase in wealth.
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"is digitizing an entire university library; unfortunately, the method chosen requires that the books are destroyed"
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Sounds like a dystopian variant – recall Farenheit 451. Will check out Vinge.