masterwordsmith-unplugged

Barbie dolls, Cabbage-Patch dolls, talking dolls and whatever type of dolls every girl dreams of were most definitely NOT my childhood toys. Instead, I grew up on a staple diet of action figurines, guns, cars and more importantly a variety of comics (which by now are regarded as collectors’ items) and a range of literature which molded my character and perspective of life. Of course I am not saying that I was some child prodigy in reading and writing. Far from it.

Apart from being every mother’s nightmare with my usual dose of temper tantrums and unreasonable demands, I just had an undying passion for books, books and more books. I went through stages in my insatiable hunger for knowledge from kindergarten to the present. Each time, my papa brought home a book or a comic for me, after “Thanks, Papa” would be “When can I get another one?”

Now, as I approach middle age, I cannot help but smile because I am just the same. While many women would go crazy and splurge on designer clothes, watches, shoes and handbags, nothing would please me more than hours and hours spent at BORDERS, Kinokuniya, MPH, Popular and other bookshops.

The million dollar question remains.

Why read at all?

Why is it that we have a generation that balks at reading? Is our society witnessing the slow painful death of reading culture? For baby boomers like me, our main forms of entertainment as children were reading, watching television and playing games such as seven stones, snakes and ladders, badminton, hide and seek etc. For Penangites like me, a real treat in the 1970s would be a trip to the popular Juniors Restaurant, Eden, Tip-top or Top Top restaurants. If I were to make such an offer to a teenager today, they would probably look at me strangely as though I am from a different planet.

Ask any teenager or primary school pupil this question: Have you heard of E.B. White? They would probably say, ‘Nope. Don’t know that singer/actor.” The response would be different if you asked them, “Have you watched Stuart Little?’ A positive response would most likely be the case. Yet, few would know that E.B. White is the author of Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, Trumpet of Swans etc.

Now, the worrying fact is that while mass media has a considerable impact on reading, the more exacerbating and disconcerting fact is that electronic communication has a detrimental impact on reading and learning. Please don’t click the close tab right away and dismiss my take on this issue. Do give me a chance to say my piece, thank you.

Let me ask you one simple question.

Compared to the time when you were young, do you find that these days, there is a greater tendency to skim when reading a book, newspaper/magazine? For those of us who do not read as much, we might even feel that our ability to probe, analyze or assess what we read seems to be diminishing merely because we are either in a hurry or we get bored or even, it is far too tiring a mental exercise!

Maryanne Wolf, is a cognitive neuro-scientist and professor at Tuft University whose book “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain”provides fascinating insights on the impact of digital media, especially the Internet, on reading, thinking and the cognitive development of children as a whole. She believes that the reading brain, formed over the past 5,000 years since the acquisition of reading is being endangered - an unforeseen consequence of the transition to a digital age that is affecting every aspect of our lives including the intellectual development of children.

Citing Socrates, Wolf explained that the philosopher found himself at a similar crossroads, when writing emerged as an alternative to oral communication. Socrates was against the acquisition of literacy and the core of his arguments rested on his fears that young people would mistake the absorption and understanding of written information for the cultivation of true knowledge. He believed that the seeming permanence of the printed word would delude the young into thinking they had accessed the heart of knowledge rather than simply decoded it. To Socrates, only the arduous process of probing, analyzing and ultimately internalizing knowledge would enable the young to develop a lifelong approach to thinking that would lead them ultimately to wisdom and virtue.

In the digital world, Socrates’ concerns for the young have new relevance. “How many children today are becoming Socrates’ nightmares, mere decoders of information who have neither the time nor the motivation to think beneath or beyond their googled universes? Will they become so accustomed to immediate access to escalating on-screen information that they will fail to probe beyond the information given to the deeper layers of insight, imagination and knowledge that have led us to this stage of human thought?” she asked.

Personally, having been in the education industry for more than two decades (please stop calculating my age, thank you ;) , I am also deeply concerned with the plight of the reading habit, especially for those who are growing up in this technologically rich society where instead of citing Dickens, Tolstoy, Frost, Atwood, Pamuk, the minds and habits of children (even teens and adults) today are being taken over by PSP, Nintendo, DOTA, Maple Story and so on. As each of us grows, we need to have both the time and motivation to think for ourselves and to develop our thinking skills without being taken over or controlled by electronic communication, in particular, the Internet.

While I cannot deny that the Internet has brought obvious benefits to man, I would hate to witness a scenario where the very intellect who created the digital revolution is being destroyed by it. Of course I am not saying that people today read less because of technology, but I hypothesize that today, people are reading less because of social environmental factors and the Internet. As in other areas of our lives, balance is needed. I assert that children’s exposure to the Internet should be monitored and at the same time, be exposed to traditional sources of information such as books, magazines, newspapers, and comics and so on so that their minds can be trained to think, probe and analyze instead of being numbed into passivity through all those electronic games and applications.

No one can pinpoint when reading began but historical records show that it is as old as known civilizations such as cave paintings, Egyptian artifacts, and hieroglyphics and so on. Indeed, man has gone through not just changes in social structure, economic ideology, religious reformation but reading has gone through its own stages as well from pictographs, ideographs, phonograms and finally alphabets. Suffice to say where we go from here in future generations depends on you and me. Don’t you think so?