"We shouldn't teach great books. We should teach a love of reading."
- B. F. Skinner
Am currently reading the book "Everything Bad is Good for You: How Popular Culture Makes Us Smarter" by Steven Johnson. Well, it's an interesting enough book, and hardcore gamers will find a lot of reasons to justify gaming other than just improving motor co-ordination. The part that arrests me the most, however, is where the author compares gaming to reading (seeing as reading is often viewed as "good" and gaming as "bad") and argues that perhaps this perception might be different if games are invented before books:
Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of game playing - which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements - books are simply a barren string of words standing on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.
Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. These new "libraries" that have arisen in recent years to facilitate reading activities are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to their peers.
Many children enjoy reading books, of course, and no doubt some of the flights of fancy conveyed by reading have their escapist merits. But for a sizable percentage of the population, books are downright discriminatory. The reading craze of recent years cruelly taunts the 10 million Americans who suffer from dyslexia - a condition that didn't even exist as a condition until printed text xame along to stigmatize its sufferers.
But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can't control their narratives in any fashion - you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. For those of us raised on interactive narratives, this property may seem astonishing. Why would anyone want to embark on an adventure utterly choreographed by another person? But today's generation embarks on such adventures millions of times a day. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they're powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, pariticipatory process; it's a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learnin to "follow the plot" instead of learning to lead.
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I thought that was a very well-written paragraph that would cheer many a non-book lover hahaha.. As for me, well, it made me think of how even people who do not like reading view reading as some sort of sacred intellectual activity.. Especially parents of non-readers!! Growing up, it's pretty weird how my mom's friends would tell her "I wish my son/daughter likes reading as much as your daughter.." and she'd be kind of proud.. They didn't know I used to spend a disproportionate amount of reading time on comics! Guess I got lucky, I was born with a love for books.. Once, my mom asked me, "Please help make your brother love reading too! He needs it for his English!" I was stumped.. How does one make a reader? I think it's no exaggeration to think that it's like trying to make a boy behave like a girl, for these things just cannot be imposed upon someone!
"Books open your mind, broaden your mind, and strengthen you as nothing else can."
- William Feather
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