ELO 

When reading "The Importance of Deep Reading", I was immediately struck by the three lives that Aristotle speaks of.  I absolutely agree that the life of contemplation is what is often lacking in our modern, fast-paced era of massive and unprecedented access to information, travel, and communication.  In many ways our society has continued to grow and has benefited by the increased connectedness, but at what expense?

Young brains are still developing the processes needed for deep thinking such as inferential and deductive reasoning, analytical skills, reflection.  Even us as adult learners are vulnerable to losing hard-learned and earned skills of reasoning and reflection.  In my personal and professional life, I often find myself having to remind myself to slow down.  To give myself time to relax and just take-in what I've just seen, read or heard.  "What we read and how deeply we read shape both the brain and the thinker."  Am I providing my students enough opportunities and time to really become or develop their brains so that they will be deep readers?  To give kids opportunities to question and talk about the information they are seeing or hearing.  It's difficult when life seems to push you to move forward quickly and when pressures seem to increase over time rather than decrease.  We ourselves as teachers are under so much pressure stemming from high expectations placed on us by administration, parents, society and even ourselves to effectively teach all students the content and skills that children are expected to master.   I often fear we are pushing students to meet these benchmarks without stopping to provide enough time for reflection. I worry that in pushing my students so hard day after day, I am missing an opportunity to allow them to really focus on and engage in what they are learning.  They may enjoy success, but are they having fun and identifying themselves as lifelong learners?  

I find it interesting that the ancient Greeks argued against learning to read and write for fear that they would lose the oral tradition and the constant quest for knowledge.  For us as teachers that may imply that we have to systematically and strategically throw wrenches into our students lives.  We are responsible for introducing intentional problems for students to see that knowledge is maliable and often changes.  We have all probably heard that now people know less about more.  I am excited and concerned about the fact that people's brains are being re-wired.  I do think that it will be interesting to see how we can change our brains to be more efficient.  How we can work together as a society to tackle problems on a mass scale?  How can we re-wire our brains to make them even more efficient or phenomenal?  The article mentions that reading is a 'new cognitive function', that the very organization of the human brain enables it to go beyond itself.  I think that we are potentially on the precipice of a time that may be marked by amazing human achievement and cohesion.  Conversely, not knowing the direction that we are heading, brings fear that we could be raising children that are disconnected from one another or that perceive a skewed reality.

Technology can allow information to be easily accessible and readily available,  but this leaves us wondering what that means as far as creating next steps or goals as educators and learners.  Where will we go with this information?  How will we extend our knowledge further?  How can we independently explore these topics?  We need to think of how to teach critical thinking skills, how to encourage a questioning or even a wariness of information garnered through the internet.  Online skills need to be explicitly and carefully taught.  Online exploration and research should be taught within a framework and teachers need training on how to use technologies within their classrooms before jumping in.  My biggest fear is that we are fully embracing technology and programs without first being adequately versed in the dangers of these technologies.  Too often we focus on what the solutions will fix rather than on what the cost of these solutions are.