Ben Carson is a world-famous pediatric neurosurgeon and professor of medicine emeritus at Johns Hopkins. He

… performed the first successful separation of conjoined twins who were attached at the back of the head (occipital craniopagus twins). The operation, which took place in 1987, lasted some 22 hours and involved a 70-member surgical team. Carson also refined a technique known as hemispherectomy, in which one-half of the brain is removed to prevent seizures in persons with severe epilepsy. – Britannica

Carson started out comparatively disadvantaged but his mother made sure he got a good education:

He later became active in politics, serving as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1917–21). But he also retained a longstanding concern for education, especially among minority and other disadvantaged groups. He was interviewed on that topic by one of Dembski’s colleagues, James Barham, in 2015. The reposted* interview is especially relevant today because of Carson’s comments, excerpted below, on the way media saturation can interfere with a child’s learning o basic literacy and numeracy skills.

That topic has received considerable attention recently, partly due perhaps to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s recent bestseller, The Anxious Generation, on captivity to the phone. Also to the fact that some school systems have begun taking various steps to limit cell phones in class.

So here’s Carson on the relationship between media saturation and school performance:

James Barham: You frequently recount how your mother made you and your brother turn off the television and read two books a week. You then had to submit book reports to her, which she pretended to read and grade. In a similar way, you challenge young people today to turn off not only the TV, but also their computers, iPhones, and other electronic gadgets, and pick up a good book. What do you regard as the benefits of reading books? And how would you distinguish the sustained reading required by books from the fidgety reading characteristic of electronic technologies?

Ben Carson: Well, you know, our society has changed quite a bit. Before I retired, I noticed a lot of parents were coming to me, saying, “Should we put our kids on this [drug], because they’ve been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder?” You know, that used to be a rare thing, and now it’s like every fourth kid. And I’d ask them a couple of questions: I said, “Can they watch a movie?”

“Oh yeah, they can watch movies all day.”

“OK. Can they play video games?”

“All day and all night.”

I said, “They don’t have ADD.” I said, “Here’s what I want you to do: wean them off that stuff and substitute time with you, reading a book and discussing it. And then let’s talk about it in three months.”

Almost to a person, they would come back and say “it’s a different kid.” Why? Because nowadays as soon as a kid can sit up, we prop them in front of the TV. And what do you see? Zip, zip, zip; zoom, zoom, zoom.

As soon as they get a little older, and they have some dexterity, we give them the controls for the video games. Zip, zip, zip; zoom, zoom, zoom. Now they’re in school, there’s a teacher up front, not turning to something every few seconds. You think they’re going to pay attention?

Their brain is on “super zoom,” so they’re not going to pay attention. You’ve got to slow it back down, and get it to a point where it can now grasp and digest the material. And you’ll find that reading is actually much more entertaining than the electronic media because you have to use your imagination to create the scenery, and you can create it the way you want, and it’s really a lot more fun. You’ve just got to slow them down long enough to get them involved in doing that.

The interview, which was recorded at the annual awards banquet of the Carson Scholars Fund (May 24, 2015 in Pittsburgh), was taken offline by its original host because it was penalized by Google. Here is Bill Dembski’s explanation:

Google penalizes websites that don’t stay in narrow lanes. It’s been said the riches are in the niches. Google increasingly enforces that maxim as an ironclad rule. As a consequence, websites, to be successful with the search engines, must strive for homogeneity and predictability. This interview didn’t fit the bill. As it is, Google’s AI stinks, and so websites, to play the SEO game, bow to its inadequate reading of their sites, often removing or not even creating content that readers would otherwise find interesting.

That’s helpful to know if we are looking for something other than the standard line.

You may also wish to read: How I Turned My Smartphone Into a “Dumbphone.” I’ve had it being a pawn of Big Tech. At the end of the day, I had to examine the real reasons I had an iPhone, and realized most of them were connected to distraction and entertainment. (Peter Biles)

and

Norway limits phone use in school. Did that truly help students? A Norwegian study says yes but some psychologists dismiss both the study and the limits for conflicting reasons. It’s hard to understand why anyone would doubt that irrelevant messaging from cell phones is a distraction for a student who is trying to learn a concept. (Denyse O’Leary)