Earlier than We Colonize Their Brains With Literacy

A lot of the two-year-olds I’ve ever met might already sing a minimum of a part of the Alphabet Tune. I did not train it to them. It is one thing that folks sing to their youngsters at dwelling, in all probability as a result of it is one of many first songs they themselves discovered.

The tune comes from the mid-18th century and accompanied a number of nursery rhymes together with Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep, whereas the A-B-C lyrics have been first “copyrighted” a century later (are you able to copyright the alphabet?). The straightforward, memorable tune, which was employed by Mozart in his Twelve Variations, has develop into the first means that we train the alphabet in quite a lot of European languages. With few exceptions, each little one I’ve ever identified has had it down by the point they have been three.

For many of human historical past, there was no alphabet. Up till comparatively not too long ago, there have been nonetheless languages on this planet, that’s to say whole cultures, that didn’t translate right into a phonetic alphabet. 

A phonetic alphabet is a strategy to talk by way of language over area and time. In doing so, it vastly simplifies language, lowering it to 26 sounds, a couple of diphthongs, and a few consonant blends, leaving out a lot of the sounds people are able to utilizing to speak. In different phrases, the alphabet tends to limit and simplify. In truth, because the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet by the Greeks throughout the eighth century BC, it is asserted that human language has seemingly develop into much less different and nuanced than in pre-alphabet eras. This, partly, displays considerations expressed by Socrates who was famously against using the alphabet; we all know this as a result of his pupil Plato recorded his phrases utilizing that very same alphabet.

Most languages spoken on this planet at the moment have been translated alphabetically, often using the letters with which anybody studying right here is acquainted. As thinker Marshall McLuhan wrote, “(A)ny society possessing the alphabet can translate any adjoining cultures into its alphabetic mode. However this can be a one-way course of. No non-alphabetic tradition can take over an alphabetic one; as a result of the alphabet can’t be assimilated; it might solely liquidate or cut back.” McLuhan means that it was the adoption of the alphabet that finally lead Western civilization down an inevitable the trail to colonialism.

I usually consider the tradition of younger youngsters as a pre- or non-alphabetic tradition. I imply, we are inclined to dismiss a child’s cry as a sort of “catch all” communication, main frantic mother and father to “strive” every thing within the effort to answer what they’re making an attempt to “inform” us. Typically they’re telling us they’re hungry. Typically we won’t work out what they’re saying. And generally, maybe extra usually than our alphabet formed minds can perceive, they’re expressing one thing we’re merely unable to grasp. Checked out this fashion, one might argue that the alphabet track is a sort of colonial foray of adults into the world of childhood, perpetually liquidating and lowering it.

I am in fact not making an attempt to make the case that we must always cease singing that track, nevertheless it’s additionally necessary, I feel, as adults who work with younger individuals, that we take a second to think about that these minds not but formed like ours. We fear that at the moment’s applied sciences, like smartphones, are altering our brains, and they’re, in the identical means that the phonetic alphabet adjustments our brains. Certainly, any type of literacy — be it technological, social-emotional, or good quaint studying — adjustments our brains. 

McLuhan really predicts (or a minimum of speculates) that the phonetic alphabet, within the broader sweep of existence, could also be on it is means out as expertise permits us to more and more talk by way of area and time with out resorting to the A-B-C’s. Actual world circumstances in level: persons are sending me audio “textual content” messages; e mail is being changed by Zoom; how-to guides have been supplanted by YouTube movies. Sooner or later, will we even want the alphabet?

Our kids’s brains will change, that is what studying is, however I fear about what we lose, what we miss out on, and what hurt we could also be doing after we search to hurry youngsters in direction of literacy. In spite of everything, lengthy earlier than the alphabet, the evolutionary course of created human brains that have been way more like our kids’s than the brains we feature round in our grownup heads. Plainly we must always respect our kids as they’re sufficient to permit them their time earlier than we colonize their brains with literacy. Maybe we must always view these treasured years as a possibility to check what it means to suppose and really feel and know with out letters as an alternative of, as we too usually do, hurry to liquidate and cut back their expertise to 26 letters.

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