The quality of our reading is not only an index of the quality of our thought; it is our best-known route to developing whole new pathways in the cerebral evolution of our species.
Interpretation
Reading enhances our thinking and cognitive development, leading to intellectual growth.
This quote emphasizes that our reading habits reflect the clarity and depth of our thoughts. Furthermore, it suggests that engaging with diverse texts not only improves our current understanding but also fosters innovative thinking and intellectual evolution in humanity as a whole.
In practice
In a book club discussion about the impact of literature on society.
Digital technology can be a great resource, but it can also be a pernicious one, so it's how we, as a society, really study the cognitive impact of that and use evidence-based research to go after the technology designers to do a better job of dealing with the problems of memory and attention we are seeing.
In reading, we are both scientists and poets.
The acquisition of literacy is one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. To our knowledge, no other species ever acquired it.
There's a richness that reading gives you, an opportunity to probe more than any other medium I know of. Reading is about not being content with the surface.
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.
There's no question that our children's attention and memory is changing when they are reading too long, too much, too early on digital screens.
The duties of a teacher are neither few nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character.
The job of a teacher is to excite in the young a boundless sense of curiosity about life, so that the growing child shall come to apprehend it with an excitement tempered by awe and wonder.
Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
With no education, you have neocolonialism instead of colonialism, like you've got in Africa now and like you've got in Haiti. So what we're talking about is there has to be an educational program. That's very important.
When someone says to me, 'I love your book - I read it in a day,' I want to tell them to go back and read it again.
I'm sure I am impatient sometimes. I sure do get angry sometimes. I think it's outrageous how hard it is to get this country to feed its children and to take care of its children, to give them a decent education.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.