- Series on ‘America’s Greatest Idea’: Risk — John Dickerson, Slate
- 47 Doctors Running for Congress, 41 of Them Republican – John Fritze, USA Today
- The Story of Public Unions’ Grip on California – Steven Malanga, City Journal
- Meet the Gainers: Bloggers Who Chronicle Their Quests to Become More Obese – Wency Leung, The Globe and Mail
- Multitasking Brain Seems Able to Handle 2 Tasks at Once, Maximum – Katherine Harmon, Scientific American
- Why Good Theater Should Never Be Confused With Journalism – David Hare, The Guardian
- “I Can’t Read 10 Pages of Steinbeck Without Throwing Up”: 50 Author vs. Author Putdowns
April 21, 2010
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A Home Library’s Educational Edge
Andrew Councill for The New York Times Learning environment?
A Home Library’s Educational Edge
Today’s idea: Home libraries, and the fostering of learning they represent, correlate with extra years of educational attainment and better odds of finishing college, a study says.
Education | Now they tell you, just when you’ve sold the old Harvard Classics on eBay, hauled the Britannicas down to the dump and signed up Junior for online SAT prep. Tom Jacobs reports for Miller-McCune:
Andrew Councill for The New York Times Learning environment?After examining statistics from 27 nations, a group of researchers found the presence of book-lined shelves in the home — and the intellectual environment those volumes reflect — gives children an enormous advantage in school.
“Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s occupational status and other family background characteristics,” reports the study, recently published in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. “Growing up in a home with 500 books would propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average, than would growing up in a similar home with few or no books.
“This is a large effect, both absolutely and in comparison with other influences on education,” adds the research team, led by University of Nevada sociologist M.D.R. Evans. “A child from a family rich in books is 19 percentage points more likely to complete university than a comparable child growing up without a home library.”
Of course, ours is a society where even local libraries are scrapping books en masse. Then again, maybe that’s where you go to stock up cheap.
[Miller-McCune]More Recommended Reading:
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