Molly Schuringa

“The most important contribution of the invention of written language to the species is a democratic foundation for critical, inferential reasoning and reflective capacities. This is the basis of a collective conscience. If we in the twenty-first century are to preserve a vital collective conscience, we must ensure that all members of our society are able to read and think both deeply and well. We will fail as a society if we do not educate our children and reeducate all of our citizenry to the responsibility of each citizen to process information vigilantly, critically, and wisely across media. And we will fail as a society as surely as societies of the twentieth century if we do not recognize and acknowledge the capacity for reflective reasoning in those who disagree with us.”
― Maryanne Wolf, Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World

“The road to recovery is not linear. It’s not straight. It’s a bumpy path, with lots of twists and turns. But you’re on the right track.”
― Candice Carty-Williams, Queenie

“...before most of us possess an inkling that babies could be listening to us, infants are making astonishing connections between listening to human voices and developing their language system.

Think how much more can happen in those regions when parents slowly, deliberately read to their children, *just to them*, with mutually focused attention. This disarmingly simple act makes huge contributions: it provides not only the most palpable associations with reading, but also a time when parent and child are together in a timeless interaction that involves shared attention; learning about words, sentences, and concepts; and even learning what a book is. One of the most salient influences on young children's attention involves the shared gaze that occurs and develops while parents read to them. With little conscious effort children learn to focus their visual attention on what their parent or caretaker is looking at without losing an ounce of their own curiosity and exploratory behaviors. As the philosopher Charles Taylor notes, "The crucial condition for human language learning is *joint* attention," which he and others who are involved in studying the ontogenesis of language consider one of the most important features of human evolution.”
― Maryanne Wolf, Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World

“When language and thought atrophy, when complexity wanes and everything becomes more and more the same, we run great risks in society politic-- whether from extremists in a religion or a political organization or, less obviously, from advertisers.”
― Maryanne Wolf, Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf, Harper