Reading Boosts Brain Pathways

"Reading Boosts Brain Pathways, Affects Multiple Disciplines"
by Jenna Zwang
eSchool News
Posted online on May 3, 2011
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/05/03/reading-boosts-brain-pathways-affects-multiple-disciplines/?

This article not only discusses the importance of reading to the brain development in children, but also about how important it is to talk with your kids.  It all comes down to the importance of language in a child's life and how that relates to other areas of a child's brain.  In fact, reading and talking with your child strengthens the connection between the left hemisphere and frontal lobes of the brain that not only kids to do better in reading, but also in social studies, math and science.

They tested this theory on illiterate adults in Brazil by teaching them to read and here were the astonishing results:    
“Lo and behold, their brains changed dramatically in the same way the literate adults who had read their whole lives changed. Their visual perceptual skills improved, their auditory listening skills improved, and their ability to drive this whole left hemisphere symbolic problem-solving way of syncing changed..."

And how is this important to educators?  “The reason [that it's] so important for our educators to know [this] is that educators change brains. They don’t just teach content, they don’t just improve the brain that I already have by giving me information that I hold on to. They actually change the way that the human brain processes information..."  See how important our jobs are?  That is really cool!

And this article is important for all people as it really demonstrates that reading and language are the key to unlocking our learning.  If those skills are not there, then it is really difficult to master other areas.  I remember an old program where reading was being promoted and the catchphrase was "Readers are Leaders".  Its point was people who actively read are going to be the ones who lead the world in doing better things.  Based on this article's information I would say that is pretty true!