We are what we read

Very early on in her book Proust and the Squid, MaryAnn Wolf writes simply that-we are what we read.  That was the hook for me, but the book was a great hook.  Unfortunately, much of the science and references to neurons and brain activity kind of ruined it for me, the non-scientist.  But at least I can now say I have read it and I now understand the context for the title of the book though I am still not sure I understand it either. So here goes.
I was so eager to get into the meat of the book that I skipped over the title completely and on understanding it, there will be much understanding into this topic.  Marcel Proust for whom the book was named was a french novelist who saw reading "as an intellectual sanctuary" and the squid represents the scientific work done in the 1950's  "to understand how neurons fire and transmit to each other (Wolf p. 5-6).  I have never read Proust and know nothing about squids, but I did learn something of the history of when and how we learned to read and was amazed that it was only some 3,000 years ago.  I cannot pretend that I will retain much of this, it was over my head.  My favorite parts were the simple facts and the literary quotes sprinkled throughout.  And the title of this blog "we are what we read" seems most apropos. In reading this article from the Atlantic Monthly it is believed that we read and become more like the characters in the novels we choose.  We read for to escape.  And if we are what we read, what are you reading?  I am reading The House I loved by Tatiana de Rosnay and Yellow Cake by Cathleen Cummins.  What does that say?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/05/what-we-read-matters-so-what-are-we-reading/52304/

I have found this journey into the world of reading very interesting and totally enjoyed the comments of  classmates. I'd like to end this blog with a quote from Proust
I believe that reading, in its original essence, [is] that fruitful miracle of communication in the midst of solitude.

What affects will cellular phones have on our brains in the next century?

I know nothing of the answer to the title of this blog, but I worry.  We have already seen the programming of people who respond to a ring tone, a buzz, or a vibration with such immediacy that it is sure to change the way our brains function.  My father always told me that the sign of maturity is the ability to delay gratification and if this is true, the immediacy with which this generation of youth solve problems, retrieve information, and respond to each other using the cell phone constantly in hand, may change the way the brain acts over the next centuries.  If reading in only 3,000 years old, the cell phone may be responsible for making changes in the brain in the very near future.

In Proust and the Squid, near the end of the book Wolf begins on of the chapters with "every society worries over the future of its youth and the challenges they will face". (212) She quotes Ray Kurzweil whose name i had heard, but I googled him to understand his importance an American author, inventor, futurist, and a director of engineering at Google.  He has suggested that "100 trillion neural connections in our brains extend exponentially through the technological, non biological intelligence we have invented" (qtd in Wolf p. 213).

I am by no means a scientist and I really have no idea what that means, but cell phones may alter brain activity in a very real way.  The title of her chapter is appropriately called "Conclusions: From the Reading Brain to "What comes Next".  I truly wonder this.  What comes next.  Studies have show that "cell phone use was associated with increased brain glucose metabolism (a marker of brain activity)"

Every Kid Needs a Champion

Every educator should watch this seven minute Ted Talk by Rita Pierson. Incredible.  It does not have a lot to do with reading, but it is well worth your time (I never like when people tell me that, but it is short, at least)

Now back to Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf.  I read her words on fluency with interest as my seven year old son is apparently lacking in fluency.  He reads thirteen words fluently and should be reading in the fifty range.  Not being a reading teacher or an elementary teacher, I am not quite sure what this means, but I have determined that the reason why his fluency is so low is because he cannot sit still long enough to focus.  He simply cannot focus long enough to really read and understand before he moves on to the next thing.  Wolf writes that "fluency is not a matter of speed; it is a matter of being able to utilize all the special knowledge a child has about a word-its letters, letter patterns, meanings,grammatical functions, roots and endings-fast enough to have time to think and comprehend" (131).  In her definition of fluency, a child cannot  be considered a reader until they know the meanings of the words.  

So, if we define words and teach them what they mean, they will be better able to decode quickly and thereby have age appropriate fluency.    She attributes fluency to inferences and insights.  In this case, should we be doing DIBELS testing which is a test of fluency by reading unrelated words read quickly and they even read nonsense words.  See definition below from Wikipedia.  

DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a series of short tests that assess early childhood (K-6) literacy.

It is a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of a set of K-6 literacy skills, such as phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, accuracy and fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The theory behind DIBELS is that giving primary school students a number of quick tests, educators will have the data to identify students who need additional assistance and to monitor the effectiveness of intervention strategies.

This formative early literacy assessment was created by Dr. Roland Good and Dr. Ruth Kaminski of the Dynamic Measurement Group. Research about this type of testing was first done at theUniversity of Oregon. DIBELS is used by some kindergarten through sixth grade teachers in the United States to screen for whether students are at risk of reading difficulty, and to monitor student progress and guide instruction.

The DIBELS comprise a developmental sequence of one-minute measures: recognizing initial sounds (phonemic awareness), naming the letters of the alphabet (alphabetic principle), segmenting words into phonemes (phonemic awareness), reading nonsense words (alphabetic principle), oral reading of a passage (accuracy and fluency), retelling (comprehension), and word use (vocabulary).

Wolf ends this chapter by noting that for people to become lifelong readers there must be an emotional engagement and students need encouragement to take on harder and harder material.  

And I will end with a quote from the book (which are may favorite part of this book)

At any age, the reader must come across" the child reader is the most eager and quick to do so;he not only lends to the story, he flings into the story the whole of his sensuous experience which from being limited is the more intense.        -Elizabeth Bowen (Irish novelist and short story writer)

Dyslexia and the Squid

I hope Eldon reads this  post as every time I go to his blog, I feel the need to get right on it.  His blog is very interactive and well researched.

So, I add this ONE hour video by a Harvard professor singing the praises of Proust and the Squid, it may be easier to listen to and much more thorough than my blog.
This is very dry material and as my father, who is a doctor and avid reader who has read every classic, twice just said, "it is a bit boring". Yes, he is correct....
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/197405-1

Mary Ann Wolf devotes a great many chapters in Proust and the Squid to dyslexia and when the brain can't learn to read.  She recounts stories of many successful business people overcame dyslexia to be the heads of major corporations, etc.  She writes of the humility many of these people suffered and her own personal account with a child who cannot learn to read. She calls it a messy enterprise with no clear definition. But since this book is basically about he brain and the inherent challenges and accomplishments that allow us to form words, sentences and meanings, brain abnormalities need to be addressed.

Ah, so I just called it a brain abnormality, and it was a British neuropsychologist who declared that dyslexia is "not a reading disorder" (qtd. in Wolf p. 168).  It is not a flaw in the brain's reading center but in the circuitry of the brain and in one of the cognitive layers of the pyramid. I am sorry this is so small, but here goes, this is the Pyramid of Reading Behaviors.  I will google it and see if I can get a better version.

How am I doing, Eldon?  He is probably not even going to see this....So, In short, dyslexia was a term for "word-blindness" and probably very serious when diagnosed in the early part of the century. I remember having a childhood friend who was very smart, from a very "smart" family yet she had been diagnosed with dyslexia.  I did not understand what it was only to know that it was a very big problem as words were backwards.  Alas no blog on reading would be complete without the arrival of Noam Chomsky, who was a linguist in the 1970's in the emerging field of psycho inguistics, which is not the study of crazy people doing strange things while using big words. but it is the study of the psychology of language. These crazy language people determined that dyslexia was a perceptual and visual based disorder rather than a language based issue (173).  And that is really all for now.

 My brain is full and I can no longer make sense of this! I will leave you with a quote from John Donne

"The way of words, of knowing and loving words, is a way to the essence of things, and to the essence of knowing".

"Twice in your life you know you are approved of by everyone-when you learn to walk and when you learn to read"

The title of this post is quote from Penelope Fitzgerald who was a  was a Booker Prize-winning English novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. In 2008, The Times included her in a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.  (Wikipedia) .  How true.   

This chapter is full of theories and vocabulary important for understanding how we read. It really was not a fun chapter but for the quotes she riddles the chapter with which lead the reader back to the importance of the chapter.
Below is some vocabulary we all need when discussing reading and language.

Semantic and pragmatic development.  I am not sure why semantics and pragmatics are combined into one process.  I think of the expression "it's just semantics". What does that really mean?  What do we mean when we say "semantics" to someone who has just explained something in a way that it is wordy and hard to discern. Semantics is actually the study of meaning.  When someone is being pragmatic, we say that someone is being logical. Phonological development is clearly the development of hearing and decoding sounds.
Syntactic development is the grammatical forms and structures of sentences.  Orthographic development is about the visual aspects of print and letters. Finally, Morphological development, which Wolf says is the least studied of the systems and "prepares the child to learn the conventions surround how words are formed from smaller, meaningful roots and units of meaning or morphemes (113).

Today I will leave you with a final quote from this chapter on the natural history of reading where Wolf writes "as every teacher knows, emotional engagement is often the tipping point between leaping into the reading life or remaining in a childhood bog where reading is endured only as a means to other ends" (132).

I am often awed by those for whom reading is a true love.  There are those for whom, punishment is when a book was taken away as a youngster.  I love books, but I love the covers, the titles are a source of awe for me, the colors and book jacket text make me smile.  I have had a title for my book since the first inkling of being a writer was born.  I envision myself holding them at my book signing, I have chosen the picture that will grace the inside flap, it is a picture of me, seven and toothless, atop an old rocking horse wearing my summer pajamas.

I love books, I just don't always love to read them...

Thirty Two million words

In Proust and the Squid, Maryanne Wolf writes that researchers have found a gap of thirty two million words  by kindergarten as the number that may separate students from impoverished homes from those who have been read to or told stories at an early age (p. 20). All of the research including Gee's theory of primary discourse sets up the notion that children from non-reading families are at such a disadvantage that almost renders them incapable of reading, it is so unlikely that children in poverty can succeed at all.  History says that cross hatched lines on stones over 77,000 years old are the first signs of human effort to read (Wolf p. 24). The brain had to learn what these signs were. This is further evidence that our experience is what decodes the ink blots on the page (a term coined from Louise Rosenblatt).

What do you see?

The Psychology of Blogging

By Googling the question "why do people blog", I unearthed  very interesting data and learned some new terms like blogosphere.  It is considered an American pastime, with data suggesting that" the majority of bloggers today are from the United States (Herring et al., 2005b). Current research on blogging indicates that 8 million US citizens keep a blog (Lenhart & Fox, 2006) and 57 million US citizens report reading blogs."   Most people write blogs  with personal content.  My next questions is why do people read blogs?  Is it easier than doing your own "research" into issues or is it a place for sympathy and solace for issues that plague us?  What are the uses besides the practical use of taking online classes...
So here is a blog called "why do people blog?"
http://iratesassy.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/why-do-people-blog/
One man's answer to why he blogs...why do you blog?