A Mind So Rare

"A Mind So Rare by Merlin Donald is beautifully written and quite fascinating. It’s about the evolution of the brain and the way language is probably the thing that, above all, has made us the successful human beings that we are. Being able to talk changes the way that we think. It makes us more powerful thinkers because it gives us the capacity to think in narrative. When you’ve got language you can tap into the social sphere. Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” He saw the question as inside your head but Donald says your conscious happens through language. You wake up in the morning and think, What is my day going to be like? And at the end of the day you have a narrative of what you did. Then we have the whole system of encoding language – writing it down which enables people to have access to what everyone is thinking. I think that it relates to all of us. But, perhaps because boys are less naturally social, the capacity to lock brains with another human, albeit through literature, helps them to develop. Certainly the neuroscientists tell us that it changes the functional architecture of the brain and makes us more civilised. There is evidence from the Literacy Trust that at 14 one of the best predictors of how successful a boy will be is how much he reads. It worries me therefore that so many boys are getting tuned into screens so early. Because screens are immediately gratifying and learning to read and write is quite difficult, there is a danger that some boys’ lives become so screen dominated they don’t get the benefit of literacy. And that leads me to my final book."