The plea to preserve deep reading, with Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D.
- jeanne7629
- May 19
- 2 min read
Updated: May 30
I didn’t even know “the science of reading” was a thing before this podcast. Did you? Turns out it’s been studied for over 20 years. I wish the episode had gone a bit deeper into the research, though maybe that’s intentional - to lead us to buy her book. Fair enough!
What really stayed with me was what Marianna Wolf said about skim reading. I’ve always seen it as a smart way to deal with time pressures. I was even taught to do it at uni. But this conversation made me pause and rethink that. I appreciated that she didn’t dismiss skim reading outright. She recognises its usefulness, but she also makes a strong case for why we need to balance it with deep reading.
She explains that when we skim, we lose three things:
Attention to detail
Appreciation of beauty
The ability to think critically across multiple layers
The below comments felt especially relevant and made me pause and think:
“What is most worrisome to me, is that our public is being anaesthetised by the screen to just get the information. You're just sort of dulled into get it done, get it done, get it done.”
“By skim reading you are short circuiting both critical analysis and empathy.”
Deep reading, she says, isn’t just about comprehension. It is also about empathy, inference, analogy, deduction, perspective taking… We need all of this to understand others and the world in a more nuanced way.
She gives one very practical (and easy) advice: before you start reading, ask yourself why. What is the purpose? speed or depth? Knowing that might help you choose more intentionally between the two.
Comments