Is Reading Really Necessary?

This seems like a frivolous question. Surely, it is obvious. As an English teacher I have been teaching the four key skills without questioning why. The basics of the English teacher’s tool box are receptive skills (listening and reading) and productive skills (speaking and writing). If students don’t read, then what do I do in the classroom? 

The digital revolution has taken us to a place where the act of reading is not necessarily the default mode of the thinking person. There are many other ways in which we access information, knowledge and ideas. My own reading habits have changed – influenced by hyperlinks, videos, podcasts, twitter feeds and blogs. All in all, I find myself listening more and reading less in a world of exciting high quality multimodal information out there for consumption.

So I asked myself if we are looking at a future where reading becomes extinct. What do we lose in the process? I went looking for answers and found Maryanne Wolf’s research on the reading brain – and yes, I started with a vodcast.

Maryanne Wolf is a cognitive neuroscientist from Harvard currently working with researchers at the Dyslexia Centre, UC San Francisco and a faculty member at Chapman University. A parent of a dyslexic son, she sets us right on our thinking about dyslexia. She says it doesn’t exist in the way we understand it. Maryanne Wolf’s work has probably been the single most influential research to impact on my teaching practice. I listen to all her lectures obsessively.

The book that I have just ordered to READ is her Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in the Digital World. She discusses deep reading and surface reading in her book – and why it matters that we challenge our brains to engage in deep reading practices and explores the joy of reading in immersive practices that transport the reader to another place and time. And why it matters.

I hope we can continue this conversation once my book arrives and I’ve read it!

Thank you for reading this.

Kavita Mathai

DP Coordinator

teacher of Language & Literature

and Theory of Knowledge

kavita.mathai@preshil.vic.edu.au