Not only has it not gotten better, but it tends to get worse. » Michel Desmurget is not very optimistic at the start of Parisian autumn. In 2019, we met him when he published The digital moron factory (Threshold), a book in which he listed all the studies demonstrating beyond any doubt the harmful effect that screens have on academic results and the intelligence quotient of students. Although his book was critically acclaimed, nothing happened. If China has limited Internet games to three hours per week for minors and in Taiwan, parents are liable to a fine if they abandon their children to screens, in our countries, it was dead calm.
Doctor in neuroscience and research director at Inserm, Desmurget has decided to do it again with a book which, this time, does not just describe the crime scene but offers a solution: Make them read! To put an end to the digital moron (Threshold).
“Today, everyone admits that one of the first victims of screens is verbal intelligence,” says Desmurget. We all know that the effect is dramatic on language development, what we call general culture, reading, memorization and academic learning. However, there is no other solution to this drama than books and reading. We need to get children reading and give them a taste for reading again. Without that, we won’t get through this. »
“It’s like learning the violin”
In this work full of the most diverse but accessible studies, Desmurget shows that at the heart of our intelligence is first and foremost language. Oral language, but also written language which is much richer and remains the key to academic success, if not success in general.
“Written and spoken are like two languages. When you master the written word, you master the spoken word. But the opposite is not true. The written sentences are longer, they include relative sentences, the passive voice and tenses such as the simple past and the past anterior. However, if the book is irreplaceable, it is because even in a picture book, we find a richer vocabulary than in any film or cartoon. »
Unfortunately, notes the specialist, our brain is not made for reading. This is because 5000 years have not been enough to shape it to read. If there is nothing natural about it, reading therefore requires learning in the same way as violin, tennis or chess.
“The idea is to hack the object recognition system to make it recognize written words. First letters, then sequences of letters and words. A good reader reads 280 words and moves their eyes 250 times per minute. It has integrated statistical regularities and knows that after a G there can be an E, but not a C. It is a kind of artificial intelligence that has been fed information to recognize words very quickly. »
However, decoding is not understanding. We often confuse the two. A student may know how to decode, but have the greatest difficulty in reading. This is particularly what the English call the fourth-grade slump (THE crash of the 4e). These children know how to decode, but they do not understand what they read.
“This is why shared reading is so essential,” says Desmurget. Reading stories to children allows them to construct written language. When he has learned to decode, he will have enough words and syntactic and grammatical structures to be able to cope with the specificities of writing. Otherwise it will be lost. It is enough to ignore 2 to 3% of the words in a text for it to become incomprehensible. The more words the child knows, the more he understands, and the easier it is for him to deduce words he does not know. »
Long live the paper book!
This is why this father of two emphasizes that you should definitely not stop reading stories to a child who is starting to decode. The more we read with him, the more he will be able to read on his own later. It only takes 20 to 30 minutes a day. “It is a function that the school, with more than 25 students per class, cannot assume. »
And this reading must be done with good old paper books, he maintains. Studies show that not only is reading on screen less concentrated because of hypertext links, but that the more the requirement of the text increases, the more the superiority of the paper book will emerge. “Take students who read a text of around thirty pages. We know that those who read it on paper will have understood better and retained more things. In short, we haven’t invented anything better than the book. »
This is also what Sweden recently understood, which decided to remove screens and return to good old textbooks. “Distributing tablets and putting digital technology everywhere doesn’t work. How many children will it be necessary to sacrifice to realize this? »
The myth of spelling reform
If some people arrive at school with a background of 400 words while others already know 1400, would it be enough to simplify spelling to favor the weakest? The question startles the researcher.
“We can simplify the spelling, but that won’t do anything,” he said, revolted. Because we read with spelling which constantly informs us about what we are reading. Nothing is more difficult to read than a phonetic text. Although it is a little more difficult to learn to read in French and English than in Italian or Finnish, whose spelling is simpler, it is a worthwhile effort that will pay off later. This spelling gives us information that does not exist in more transparent languages and which will allow the little French speaker to go faster without having to, for example, understand the context. He will understand, for example, that a rice mill has something to do with rice. »
In the same way, he concludes, we can delete the agreement of the past participle with avoir, but that will not change anything.
Michel Desmurget especially has it against those he calls the “idolatrous progressives” for whom there are never enough screens, because, they say, the children would learn… “something else”. The problem is that we never define this “something else”.
“A terrifying OECD study recently told us that our children are smarter than we thought, because they are able to control an MP3 player, electronic air conditioning and buy a train ticket on the Internet. It feels like we’re in The best of worlds with the Alpha who have the tools of thought and the Gamma who are performers formatted as closely as possible to the economy and stuffed with entertainment and psychotropic drugs. »
The researcher goes crazy when he hears that, since everything is on the Internet, it would no longer be necessary to acquire knowledge. “Without knowledge, how can we think? We will soon be told that ChatGPT can do this for us. This is the recipe for creating a generation of decerebrates. We are not far from the voluntary servitude of La Boétie. Giving books to a child, whatever their socio-economic background, remains the greatest tool of emancipation there is. »