Maryanne Wolf

“We have to move into the 21st century, but we should do so with great care to build a 'bi-literate' brain that has the circuitry for 'deep reading' skills and, at the same time, is adept with technology.”

“Reading or written language is a cultural invention that necessitated totally new connections among structures in the human brain underlying language, perception, cognition, and, over time, our emotions.”

“I have no doubt that the digital immersion of our children will provide a rich life of entertainment and information and knowledge. My concern is that they will not learn, with their passive immersion, the joy and the effort of the third life, of thinking one's own thoughts and going beyond what is given.”

“If you word-spot James Joyce, you'll miss the entire experience.”

“Literacy is so much entwined in our lives that we often fail to realize that the act of reading is a miracle that is evolving under our fingertips.”

“We need to discern what it is that requires reflection in our lives and in what we read and how we read it.”

“The integration of the simpler and the deeper reading processes is not automatic and requires years of learning by the novice reader, as well as extra milliseconds for any expert to read a more sophisticated text.”

“The same plasticity that allows us to form a reading circuit to begin with, and short-circuit the development of deep reading if we allow it, also allows us to learn how to duplicate deep reading in a new environment. We cannot go backwards. As children move more toward an immersion in digital media, we have to figure out ways to read deeply there.”

“Children need to have both time to think and the motivation to think for themselves, to develop an expert reading brain, before the digital mode dominates their reading. The immediacy and volume of information should not be confused with true knowledge.”

“I don't want technology to replace teachers, but where there are no teachers, or the teachers are overwhelmed, it can be helpful.”

“We humans invented literacy, which means it doesn't come for free with our genes like speech and vision. Every brain has to learn it afresh.”

“There's an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or lose it. It is a very hopeful principle when applied to critical thought in the reading brain because it implies choice.”

“Focused reading is so important, and I'm just as guilty as everyone. I have to force myself to slow down, often printing things out or using print as a medium for things that are most important or for things whose beauty would be lost if I use other modes of reading.”

“We know from research that the reading circuit is not given to human beings through a genetic blueprint like vision or language; it needs an environment to develop. Further, it will adapt to that environment's requirements - from different writing systems to the characteristics of whatever medium is used.”

“The brain is constantly adapting.”

“We human beings were never born to read; we invented reading and then had to teach it to every new generation. Each new reader comes to reading with a 'fresh' brain - one that is programmed to speak, see, and think, but not to read.”

“I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing.”

“I want children to learn to develop deep reading skills in the beginning in print. I believe the physicality of print is much better in the beginning for children, and then help them learn how to use their deep reading skills on digital medium.”

“Deep reading refers to a whole continuum of processes that include some of the most important things about thinking and how we connect thought to what we read - critical analysis, analogical reasoning, how we infer from the text, how do we take another's perspective.”

“When we have any function, whether it's language or vision or cognitive functions like memory, we aren't dealing with a straight line to the brain that says 'This is what I do.' The brain builds a network of connections, a network of neurons that have a particular role in that function.”