Campus Review Volume 29 Issue 1 January 2019 | Seite 29

Technology
campusreview.com.au
Popular neuroscientist Susan Greenfield has found that reading
stories helps to expand children’s attention spans, encourage
sequential thinking, and link cause, effect and significance.
So it’s pretty amazing research. But is technology now changing
our reading brain?
Maryanne Wolf notes that reading “changed the very
organisation of our brain, which in turn expanded the ways we
were able to think”.
“The present reading brain enables the development of some
of our most important intellectual and affective processes:
internalised knowledge, analogical reasoning and inference;
perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the
generation of insight.”
But, she warns, we are now in an age where technology is
encouraging new ways of reading – particularly ‘skimming’ – and
the “neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is
subtly, rapidly changing”.
Wolf also points out the positive influences of technology, such
as improved task switching. However, she is one of many who fear
that essential and complex ‘deep reading’ processes “may be under
threat as we move into digital-based modes of reading”, which tend
to process information quickly and in brief bursts.
There is also interdisciplinary concern about the loss of cultural
knowledge, and the loss of knowledge about language and its
diverse structures.
This all inhibits the development of deep literacy, that essence
of literacy – communication of meanings – which grows out of
deep and contemplative reading, and helps us not only to think
subjunctively (‘How would I feel were that me?’) but to develop the
insight and empathy that acknowledges and values ‘the truth of the
other’ (‘This is how she feels because she is she’).
Deep literacy nurtures the imaginations and minds that generate
civil societies.
So the way we now read is causing concern, but so too is the
way we remember. In his book Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua
Foer describes how the technologies (iPhones, software, etc) that
have made our modern world possible, have also changed us, not
only culturally but cognitively.
He says we have forgotten how to remember. Foer’s book
is influenced by the work of British educator and memory
crusader Tony Buzan, who in 1991 founded the World Memory
Championships for ‘mental athletes’ – ‘warriors of the mind’.
Neither author is advocating mindless rote learning. As Buzan
argues, both are talking about the idea of igniting learning through
the power of connection and connectedness, the power of story
(Buzan picks up Leonardo’s idea of mind mapping and both he
and Foer describe the ancient practices of the ‘story palace’ as part
of the art of memory), and the creative and determined power of
the imagination.
So we are living through a period of crux, change, perhaps crisis.
This follows on from the period of a plethora of multiliteracies.
They have perhaps had their day: most related not as much to
communicative meaning-making as to actual content knowledge.
However, the concept did repopulate elemental terms such
as ‘language’, ‘texts’, and ‘reading’. Language traditionally meant
words, texts traditionally had words, and reading traditionally meant
reading words.
Now ‘text’ has expanded to include any communication involving
language, ‘language’ has expanded to include anything that is
communicative (graphics, illustrations, still and moving images),
and ‘reading’ has expanded to include the reading of images.
This has also helped Western understandings of the mystical
and spiritual richness of the Australian Indigenous concept of
‘reading country’.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
So what can educators and parents do? What learning habits
(predispositions) can be encouraged and nurtured? Or, for that
matter, what can we do for ourselves?
• Observe, and teach observation. Look, see, watch, think. I love
having a treasure chest of poetry that helps me see deeply and
give words to the seeing. One of my friends, a music researcher,
has songs she can break into.
• Model and encourage looking at details by modelling, not telling:
“Wow – I think there’s still dew on this leaf – look! Feel!”
• Encourage curiosity. Why? How? Teachers know that the more
connections to children’s prior knowledge and experience,
the more new ideas and knowledge will stick. And try to
de‑compartmentalise. Increasingly, research suggests that
general intelligence is determined by a network of regions across
both sides of the brain; rather than intelligence residing in a
single structure, the brain works as a distributed system. Reading
encourages connections across disciplinary boundaries.
• Wonder, question, imagine. “The dew looks like water, doesn’t
it – but it’s in little tiny spots – I wonder how it got there and why
it disappears later in the day?”
• Compare, consider similarities and differences. Versions such
as this: “It’s cohesive – it sticks together in tiny droplets; but it’s
also sticky in another way – it’s adhesive (like a band-aid): it sticks
to surfaces – dew on a leaf sticks there until it dries out”).
• Encourage a sense of wonder. Wonder as questioning and
asking why (verb, as above), and wonder as awe (noun): “Isn’t
that amazing?’ ‘What a beautiful bird!” And articulate the wonder
of words.
• Exercise and practise thinking and its articulation. Talk to
children and young people about the brain and its amazing
plasticity of design. Tell them that although it’s not a muscle, it
can act like one. It likes exercise.
• Encourage a sense of play. Play is incredibly creative.
I remember reading years ago that Steve Jobs, when he first met
Jony Ive (now chief designer at Apple), told him to ‘play’.
• Above all, encourage reading. Reading is community, past
and present. Model reading. Brain scans increasingly show the
physical impact of reading – it can activate many parts of the
brain as well as engage the capacity to identify with characters’
thoughts and feelings – ‘the truth of the other’ (empathy) that is
at the heart of deep literacy.
And in a tangled and sometimes angry world, where bullying
seems to have spread, deep literacy encourages a generosity of
spirit that is mindful and respectful of others, that is subjunctive
in orientation (‘Were this my sister, how would she feel?’), that
matters, and is much-needed.  ■
Rosemary Ross Johnston is a professor of education
and culture at the University of Technology Sydney. She
is the author of Australian Literature for Young People
(Oxford University Press).
27