In an earlier post, I pointed out how over the course of millions of years of human evolution, reading and literacy have occupied only the last 5000 years of human existence.  Consequently, our brains did not evolve any brain regions specifically for reading, but must make use of preexisting structures of the brain to make...Read More

When I was a kid I used to enjoy Mad Magazine, which I loved for many reasons, the irreverence, the hilarity, the satire, and more. One feature that I remember in particular involved cartoons that spelled out nonsense words as sound effects. For example:  ”Glomp!” “Flaaack!” ”Pffft!” ”Sproing!” (above – a page from Mad with...Read More

I’ve just read an account in the Detroit Free Press, about a program where young kids are being given data-gathering bracelets that keep track of how many words they speak or hear in a given day.  This new technology has emerged out of findings that the number of words a child speaks or hears during...Read More

An opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times really made a deep impression on me as an educator. It was written by Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, and entitled:  ‘‘Books Can Take You Places Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to Go.”  Mattar writes about how books can help us ”stumble upon ourselves in the lives and...Read More