Mental Penguins

Subtitled 'the never-ending education crisis and the false promise of the information age', this important study explores the social and educational consequences of digital immersion for modified brain structure and intellectual capacity. The author teaches political science at the American University in Bulgaria and has trawled both neuroscience and educational theory in developing the view that we need to bring back a focus on what he calls 'deep reading' as the way of developing an integral understanding of a particular discipline. Many students arrive at University having never read a whole book, as extracted information is available on the Internet as a shortcut in writing essays. Digital immersion and multitasking are associated with unrelenting overstimulation, resulting in 'continual partial attention' rather than the sustained attention required for deep reading or true listening. This also happens at meetings, as I am sure readers will recognise, as people check emails while participating.

This situation is in fact nothing short of an addiction and its academic implications are just beginning to emerge more clearly, although the issue goes back to the work of Marshall McLuhan on TV (larger screens and HD lead to further overstimulation and desensitisation). Reading proficiency has correspondingly declined, and 40% of incoming first-year students at American colleges have to take at least one remedial class in reading, writing or maths. Given the work of Iain McGilchrist, who endorses the book, it is interesting that the author writes about the chronic overengagement of the analytic network - left hemisphere - and the corresponding withering of the intuitive network - right hemisphere. The result is that many students are caught in concrete thinking detached from any larger frame of reference. As mentioned above, the author's prescription is deep and intensive reading - what he calls reading-centred learning starting in elementary school and leading to an expanding personal frame of reference. He explains how he encourages his students along these lines and reflects that Huxley rather than Orwell was right in speaking about our almost infinite appetite for distractions, and fearing that there would be no reason to ban books as no one would want to read one. This book is essential reading for education departments around the world and anyone concerned with the future of education and the development of our children.