You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
― James Baldwin

Like Baldwin, books have been the primary means through which I’ve walked a mile in others’ shoes. To the extent that a willing reader can experience the pain and heartbreak of others, real and fictional, I have. That is, I’ve given myself over to the stories of those whose trials and failures moved me beyond the walls of my own sensibilities and self-consciousness and into worlds I would only experience through books. And yet, as Baldwin contends, even as a young reader, I realized that the very things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive. I remember closing a book and thinking You, too? Yes, you, too.

Reading became a primary means through which I learned empathy. I lived vicariously through thousands of characters, sharing their joys, their disappointments, their conflicts and pain. In the process, I pushed myself through complex text and remarkably beautiful–and often challenging–language. For most of my life, I’ve been an empath-in-training who’s become increasingly grateful for my rich, literary training ground.

In her article, “Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound” (The Guardian, 2018), Maryanne Wolf writes: When the reading brain skims texts, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings or to perceive beauty. We need a new literacy for the digital age. Wolf, a neuroscientist, researches the reading brain and its influence on the development of some of our primary intellectual and affective processes. She studies the effect on analysis and inference, critical reasoning, empathy, perspective-taking, and the development of insight. Her conclusions are disturbing. She explains that we are not born readers but rather, we need an effective reading environment in which to become good readers. We will adapt, she claims, to the demands of this environment. Currently, however, the dominant digital environment promotes processes that are fast, geared toward multi-tasking, and designed for large volumes of information. And the result, she contends, is that less attention and time will be allocated to slower, time-demanding deep reading processes, like inference, critical analysis and empathy, all of which are indispensable to learning at any age.

In the past few years, I’ve had many conversations with fellow English teachers about the “state of reading” in our schools. Many have confessed that administrators have encouraged (or demanded) that they replace classical texts, which are traditionally challenging and complex, with lighter, more “relevant” choices. Never mind that these classical texts provide us with some of the most valuable insights into human nature. Never mind that the language of these texts–albeit challenging–is exquisitely well-crafted. Never mind that these themes and plots have stood the test of time. Students don’t like them, the powers-that-be argue. They’re too hard, too long, too old.

In her article, Maryanne Wolf cites English literature scholar and teacher, Mark Edmundson, who laments how many college students avoid courses in which they’ll be expected to read the classic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. These students, he claims, don’t have the patience to read such texts. Wolf argues that we should be less concerned with students’ “cognitive impatience” however than by what may underlie it: the potential inability of large numbers of students to read with a level of critical analysis sufficient to comprehend the complexity of thought and argument found in more demanding texts, whether in literature and science in college, or in wills, contracts and the deliberately confusing public referendum questions citizens encounter in the voting booth.

Wolf refers to another researcher, Ziming Liu from San Jose State University, who states that what passes for reading today is often skimming or word-spotting and browsing through the text. When readers skim, they aren’t taking the time or using the skills necessary for deep-reading processes. And failing to spend this time or use these skills, they often struggle or fail to understand complexity, empathize with others, perceive beauty, and generate their own thoughts.

Many of us undoubtedly made New Years’ resolutions to improve our health, to get into better shape. Use it or lose it, we profess as we uncover our treadmills and elliptical machines from under the clothes we’ve hung there to dry. Wolf explains that the same adage is true in neuroscience. This is good news when it applies to reading, she says, for we can recover what we’ve lost (or are losing). We can once again begin to use those reading muscles necessary for deep-reading. She argues that this recovery doesn’t mean that we must reject the digital medium and embrace only the traditional, print medium. Instead, she proposes a new kind of brain: a “bi-literate” reading brain capable of the deepest forms of thought in either digital or traditional mediums. She explains that this issue can’t, and shouldn’t be, reduced to a print vs. digital reading. The most pressing “collateral damage” is [t]he subtle atrophy of critical analysis and empathy that should concern us all.

Recently, I talked with an English teacher who was nearly reduced to tears as she confessed her failure to make her students care. They’d been studying the Armenian and Rwandan genocides when a student interrupted her to ask, Why should we care about any of this? Why, indeed. I suppose one could attempt to explain this away by arguing that adolescents are often ego-centered, happily sheltered in their own world of friends, pleasures, and concerns. Still, I remember the first time I read about and saw an image of Auschwitz. In an instant, I was sleeping four to a wooden bunk, head shorn, the cries and ragged breaths of fellow prisoners filling the room. In an instant, I was contemplating my impending death and fearing that my family members would suffer the same fate. In an instant, I felt my world become so small, so tenuous, that a single crust of bread was life-giving. And I wasn’t alone as I watched the faces of my classmates. Certainly, there were some students who may have been unable or unwilling to empathize, but there were more who were. Then again, when I was in 8th grade, there were no cell phones, no computers or I-pads, no digital medium of any sort. And what I was asked to read in 8th grade was challenging, even by high school standards today.

I’m sure that I didn’t understood all that I read, but I worked at it enough to understand much of it. As I became a better reader, more importantly, I became aware of what it meant to be a better human being and to create a better world. I thought critically about what I’d read, and I felt those things that the best writers believed should torment me because they were the very things that had tormented, and continued to torment, all humans. To the teachers who demanded that I read complex texts and to the authors of these texts, I owe so very much.