Learning to read (Image: Fabian Gehweiler/Getty)
IN HIS autobiographical Confessions, Augustine of Hippo recounts a strange sight: his teacher, Ambrose, reading to himself. At the time, reading was a public activity; the literate elite, being a rare commodity, would read the Bible aloud to the illiterate masses as a public service. Socrates, many intellectuals’ role model, was in all likelihood illiterate.
Today we are readers. Evidence suggests that reading – which depends on an alphabet, writing materials, papyrus and such – is only about 5000 years old. The brain in its modern form is about 200,000 years old, yet brain…
