So with locusts, so with humans?

Productivity is the source of human well-being and it took a marked leap upwards back around 10,000 years ago when people settled down, changed from a hunter gatherer life-style and began to have settled agriculture and shortly afterwards to live in small hamlets, villages, towns and eventually cities. Increasing density of human habitation has paralleled yet higher gains in productivity. Larger communities required better capacity to coordinate and cooperate. More coordination and cooperation required reading and writing. It also required our brains to keep evolving and adapting.

Here is a report from BBC News (by Victoria Gill, May 25, 2010, Swarming 'swells' Locusts' Brains) which reports on discoveries of a similar phenomenon in locusts. Brains continuing to evolve to living conditions, not locusts reading.

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

I am always intrigued by cultural continuity, the capacity for ideas or memes to continue on down the generations through stories, songs, and linguistic phrases. I have blogged before on George Washington's The Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation in Published in France, by the Jesuits

Here is another instance. In this close to raw translation of The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, there is almost a feel of The Rules of Civility.

We may phrase it differently today, but many of these injunctions remain alive and well in families near and far.

High population density triggers cultural explosions

An interesting article over at e! Science News, High population density triggers cultural explosions from June 4th, 2009.

High population density leads to greater exchange of ideas and skills and prevents the loss of new innovations. It is this skill maintenance, combined with a greater probability of useful innovations, that led to modern human behaviour appearing at different times in different parts of the world.

It would appear to be analogous to the reading research we are finding that volume of books read and access to books are key determinants to yet further improvement in reading capability.

Turning Fifty - To Kill a Mockingbird

The New York Times has an article (A Classic Turns 50, and Parties are Planned) outlining the celebrations planned for this year to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Loved the story when I was a child, as have each of the kids in their turn. What fascinates me about To Kill a Mockingbird, beyond just being a great tale, is the nature of its attraction and longevity. The article references a million copies being sold each year, implying that at least a quarter of all children today still read this book from two generations ago. Back to the old conundrum of why some books take up residence in our collective psyche while others never find a home. One of life's enduring mysteries.

Books are no more education than laws are virtue

Kate Douglas Wiggin wrote a book, Children's Rights: A Book of Nursery Logic in 1892. A good portion of the book relates to children's stories and children reading. I find it intriguing the relevance of some of her descriptions of what they were concerned about then and what we are concerned about now, more than a century later. From the chapter, What Shall Children Read?

"What we make children love and desire is more important than what we make them learn."

[snip]

I do not wish to drift into a cheap cynicism, and apotheosize the old days at the expense of the new. We are often inclined to paint the Past with a halo round its head which it never wore when it was the Present. We can reproduce neither the children nor the conditions of fifty or even twenty-five years ago. To-day's children must be fitted for to-day's tasks, educated to answer to-day's questions, equipped to solve to-day's problems; but are we helping them to do this in absolutely the best way? At all events, it is difficult to join in the paean of gratitude for the tons of children's books that are turned out yearly by parental publishers. If the children of the past did not have quite enough deference paid to their individuality, their likes and dislikes, and if their needs were too often left until the needs of everybody else had been considered,-- on the other hand, they were not surfeited with well-meant but ill-directed attentions.

[snip]

There has never been a time when the difficulty of making a good use of books was as great as it is to-day, or a time when it required so much decision to make a wise choice, simply because there is so much printed matter precipitated upon us that we cannot "see the wood for the trees."

It is not my province to discriminate between the various writers for children at the present time. To give a complete catalogue of useful books for children would be quite impossible; to give a partial list, or endeavor to point out what is worthy and what unworthy, would be little better. No course of reading laid down by one person ever suits another, and the published "lists of best books," with their solemn platitudes in the way of advice, are generally interesting only in their reflection of the writer's personality.

I would not choose too absolutely for a child save in his earliest years, but would rather surround him with the best and worthiest books, and let him choose for himself; for there are elective affinities and antipathies here that need not be disregarded,--that are, indeed, certain indications of latent powers, and trustworthy guides to the child's unfolding possibilities.

"Books can only be profoundly influential as they unite themselves with decisive tendencies." Provide the right conditions for mental growth, and then let the child do the growing. If we dictate too absolutely, we envelop instead of developing his mind, and weaken his power of choice. On the other hand, we do not wish his reading to be partial or one-sided, as it may be without intelligent oversight.

[snip]

Whatever children read, let us see that it is good of its kind, and that it gives variety, so that no integral want of human nature shall be neglected,--so that neither imagination, memory, nor reflection shall be starved. I own it is difficult to help them in their choice, when most of us have not learned to choose wisely for ourselves. A discriminating taste in literature is not to be gained without effort, and our constant reading of the little books spoils our appetite for the great ones.

[snip]

Knowing, then, as we do, the dangers and obstacles in the way, and realizing the innumerable inspirations which the best thought gives to us, can we not so direct the reading of our children that our older boys and girls shall not be so exclusively modern in their tastes; so that they may be inclined to take a little less Mr. Saltus, a little more Shakespeare, temper their devotion to Mr. Kipling by small doses of Dante, forsake "The Duchess" for a dip into Thackeray, and use Hawthorne as a safe and agreeable antidote to Mr. Haggard? We need not despair of the child who does not care to read, for books are not the only means of culture; but they are a very great means when the mind is really stimulated, and not simply padded with them.

Mr. Frederic Harrison says: "Books are no more education than laws are virtue. Of all men, perhaps the book-lover needs most to be reminded that man's business here is to know for the sake of living, not to live for the sake of knowing."

[snip]

For, to speak in better words than my own, "It is the books we read before middle life that do most to mould our characters and influence our lives; and this not only because our natures are then plastic and our opinions flexible, but also because, to produce lasting impression, it is necessary to give a great author time and meditation. The books that are with us in the leisure of youth, that we love for a time not only with the enthusiasm, but with something of the exclusiveness, of a first love, are those that enter as factors forever in our mental life."

We cannot read an author for the first time . . .

W.H. Auden:

We cannot read an author for the first time in the same way that we read the latest book by an established author. In a new author, we tend to see either only his virtues or only his defects and, even if we do see both, we cannot see the relation between them. In the case of an established author, if we can still read him at all, we know that we cannot enjoy the virtues we admire in him without tolerating the defects we deplore. Moreover, our judgment of an established author is never simply an aesthetic judgment. In addition to anv literary merit it may have, a new book by him has a historic interest for us as the act of a person in whom we have long been interested. He is not only a poet or a novelist; he is also a character in our biography.

The young brain is remarkably plastic and flexible

I have already alluded to Alison Gopnik's article in Your Baby is Smarter Than You Think in the August 16, 2009 New York Times. Read the whole thing.

Part of the explanation for these differing approaches can be found in the brain. The young brain is remarkably plastic and flexible. Brains work because neurons are connected to one another, allowing them to communicate. Baby brains have many more neural connections than adult brains. But they are much less efficient. Over time, we prune away the connections we don't use, and the remaining ones become faster and more automatic. Moreover, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls the directed, planned, focused kind of intelligence, is exceptionally late to mature, and may not take its final shape until our early 20s.

It is worth noting that Gopnik's research supports the importance that Through the Magic Door places on creating an early reading environment. If much of a child's exploration is occurring pre-five years old, it explains why Head Start and other programs are already playing catch-up when children join their programs.