In the event that you didn’t see the commentary I’ve embedded from CBS Sunday Morning this morning I wanted to share it with you. It evoked a flood of thoughts in me.
First, I am very proud of what this young man has accomplished.
Second, although thought, cognitive development, language, reason, and literacy are not all the same thing, they are interrelated things. Language and literacy foster cognitive development. Not all languages do so in the same way and the sort of cognitive development any given language fosters depends somewhat on the language. That is not to say that some languages are “better” than others. It is possible to express any concept in any human language. But languages are different. It’s harder to express some concepts in some languages. The cost involved does not categorically prevent speakers of any given language from comprehending certain concepts but it may disincline them from thinking such thoughts. For those keeping score at home that is the “weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” with which I tend to agree as opposed to the “strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” with which I strongly disagree.
And there’s an intimate relationship between literacy and reason. By “literacy” I do not mean the ability to puzzle out words on a page. I mean deriving information from the words written on a page. I am concerned about literacy declining in our culture in favor of more visual methods of deriving and exchanging information. That may have some advantages but improving the level of reasoned discourse is not one of them.
Finally, don’t judge a book by its cover.
