Reading: The Ultimate “Life Hack”

Use frozen grapes to chill your wine. Light a candle with a piece of dry spaghetti. Buff a scratch out of your furniture with a walnut.

Life hacks show up constantly online, telling us ways that we can improve our lives by using an object in a way it wasn’t intended. Reading is also a life hack, in that it asks us to use an organ—our brain—in ways it wasn’t intended to be used.

Your brain was not built to read.

Unlike spoken language, reading is not natural. Human beings have been speaking for at least hundreds of thousands of years, and our brains are built for speech. But we only created written language six thousand years ago. Worldwide, reading became common about 200 years ago. Human brains have not evolved to handle this task.

So, as you learned to read, your brain improvised. It recruited regions built for entirely different purposes and wired new pathways between them. An area toward the lower back of your brain, intended for recognizing faces, was repurposed to recognize the shapes of written words. An area on the upper left side that evaluates social situations adapted itself to match sounds with letters. An area toward the front of your brain, designed to control the muscles for speaking, learned to pronounce words mentally as you read, dramatically helping your comprehension and working memory. And deep beneath the surface, you developed thick bundles of nerve “superhighways” to connect these many areas so they can work together as you read.

What occurs every time you read a sentence is one of the most complicated things your brain does:

• It sees groups of letters and converts them into strings of sounds.
• It merges those sounds into words and attaches meaning to each one.
• It holds the series of words in your memory while the sentence continues.
• It analyzes the phrases as though they had been spoken aloud.
• It associates the meanings of the words and phrases with everything you already know about the world.
• It constructs both literal and inferred meaning of the text in a fraction of a second.

With this scientific understanding, it’s not surprising that some people struggle more than others learning to read. We all have an easier time than our peers mastering certain complex skills, and a more difficult time than our peers learning other complex skills. Every person’s brain adapts easily in some areas and with difficulty in others. So, it’s inevitable that some people will struggle mightily acquiring our most complex learned behavior, reading.

What does this mean for a child with learning differences?

When a bright child cannot read at grade level, families are often given explanations that have nothing to do with what is actually happening: the child is not trying, is not paying attention, is not applying themselves, needs more time and practice. The accurate explanation is much more scientific.

Training the brain to read is difficult work. Most students need explicit instruction from teachers to become readers. Some, like those with dyslexia, need extensive support with specialized curriculum and research-informed teaching strategies. This isn’t a failure on the part of the student, and it’s not a reflection of their intelligence or potential. It’s the predictable result of asking the human brain to perform the most complex adaptation we ever request of it.

Let’s be clear: a dyslexic brain is a “normal” brain. It is not defective; it is beautifully designed, intelligent, and creative. This brain design has been a valuable part of humanity’s history since the beginning, producing many of our most influential leaders, artists, and experts. It’s only in a culture that requires literacy that it is disadvantaged. Simply put, one or more brain regions that need to adapt to this unnatural reading behavior are not equipped to adapt easily. It experiences a learning difference that needs a teaching difference.

What kind of instruction is needed?

Students with dyslexia need expert instruction to build skills in several areas of the brain, particularly in areas responsible for processing language sounds, matching letters to sounds, and mapping written words onto oral language that is already known. A deliberately sequenced, specialized curriculum taught by people trained in how reading develops in the brain can help these students build the neural pathways they need to become successful readers.

The process is intricate, but invaluable. At The de Paul School, every teacher is trained in The Science of Reading, which includes crucial skills like phonemic awareness and phonics. The 5 Pillars of Effective Instruction, de Paul’s proprietary, evidence-based and multi-sensory approach, has helped thousands of students find success over the past 56 years. This approach uses the latest brain science, including the Science of Reading, to maximize learning and integrates research in neuroscience, psychology, and education.

Discover more about the 5 Pillars of Effective Instruction

If your child is struggling to read, the key questions are, “Which part of this extraordinary reading process hasn’t been built yet, and who can teach it effectively?” Reading is the hardest thing we ask a brain to do, and some brains need an expert guide to get there.