The importance of going beyond our comfort zone

 

In a LinkedIn comment, David Chalk said: "Our brains have been wired hundreds of thousands of years to speak and interpret by hearing words, but there is no natural ability to read-attaching sounds to symbols-words."

This is making statements without thinking. He repeats what he has read from others such as Stanislas Dehaene and Pamela Snow. Dehaene does not answer questions asked, and Pamela Snow thinks she becomes invisible when she sticks her head in the sand. She blocked me when she could not answer the questions, I asked her. It is irresponsible to say something on social media and to not respond when relevant questions are asked.

The noted neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene (2018) argues that there is no place or mechanism in the brain to accommodate the learning-to-read process, seemingly adding credence to the reading-is-unnatural assumption. Dehaene and other researchers point out that oral language has been around for 50,000 years, whereas written systems developed much later—as recently as 5,000 years ago.

Brain’s Innate Capacity for Reading

This is a continuation of my post yesterday found here.

Renee Harding asked the following question:

If the majority of kids were somehow figuring out how to read (i.e., stumbling upon, “discovering,” or activating that “innate” ability [that doesn’t exist]), then why are so few students reading proficiently?!

I have said in several of my blog that reading is an innate ability contrary to what the general opinion is. I based this on observation of my students whom I started teaching in 2004 to learn why kids were able to read in Malay but not in English.