Owning Two of a Certain Object Indicates Your Kids Will Do Well in School. Can You Guess What It Is?

core77 ^ | 6 13 13

[InvisibleChurch]

In the original Miami Vice television series, Detective Zito is murdered in Season Three. After learning of his death, co-cops Crockett, Tubbs and Switek visit his house, where they discover Zito's collection of snow globes. They look at them in bewilderment, and the clear message delivered by their faces—in as ham-fisted a way as only '80s American television can do it—is "Wow, I guess we didn't really know this guy at all." Cue violins. An as hackneyed as that moment was, it was the first time your adolescent correspondent understood the usage of physical objects as a narrative device in storytelling.

Years later in ID school, professors who apparently knew each other as well as Zito and Switek delivered conflicting messages on this front. One professor would tell you that "Objects exist to tell stories—they tell us about ourselves!" while others said objects were mere intermediaries that we should design to be unobtrusive; the whole "People don't want a toaster, they just want toast" mentality.

It's easy to see the ... that a child from that family would do well in school.

Any guesses as to what that object is? A computer? A television? An iPad?

What if we told you it's a piece of furniture?

[QualityMan]

I do the same thing. One can equate a bookshelf to a mental pantry....bread for the head, so to speak.

I fully expect my guests to scan my bookshelves, also...sadly, most dont.

I am currently looking for a higher grade of guest to visit my home.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

Are you telling me there are people out there who don’t have bookcases in their home?

There are people who don't have books in their home.

[freedomlover]

Owning Two of a Certain Object Indicates Your Kids Will Do Well in School. Can You Guess What It Is?

---

Two of his schoolteachers?

[QualityMan]

good thread idea....

[ro_dreaming]

I’ve got 6 in the library/office area. My oldest daughter (11) has 4 in her room. I also have one in my bedroom, so we’ve only got 11 total in the house. Although, my younger two daughters share a room and have a nightstand (with books in it, should that count?). Essentially, we have thousands of books around the house.

But the most important one is the Holy Bible - and we’ve got several iterations/versions of that one.

[mkboyce]

Skittzles and ice teees...biatch!

[Last Dakotan]

A blog to pimp - what every child needs.

[Razz Barry]

If it didn't say “Owing”, I'd guess two parents. I don't know if one owns their parents. I'm going to guess books. I know I'm wrong.

[Wyatt's Torch]

We probably have about 20 bookshelves... But then again I gave away all of my books and have >2,000 books on iPad. the kids now have dozens on Kindles.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

It is essential that all children get evaluated and keep getting evaluated on their reading skills all through elementary school. Interference with reading can happen for many reasons, but its effect is often crippling to their entire education. Developmental reading disorder (DRD) is the most common learning disability.

Strabismus, the most common form of “lazy eye”.
Uncorrected vision problems.
Dyslexia and related conditions.
Scotopic sensitivity syndrome.
Dyscalculia, or “math dyslexia”.
Milder forms of Austism spectrum disorder.
Attention Deficit Disorder.

Whole Language English. Created by Noam Chomsky, it has ruined the education of more children than all the other problems combined.

[Scarpetta]

I’m game.

[mjp]

it is the input of bookish or well-read parents that make all the difference in a child's education.

Bookcases filled with books is the materialization and the effect of the attitude of parents which is the cause.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

My daddy never turned an encyclopedia salesman away. You could make payments and the books would come in 1 or 2 at a time. Then he would start again with another set.

[wideawake]

King James Bible
Federalist Papers
Shakespeare
Dante's Divine Comedy
Homer's Odyssey
The Roman Catechism
Machiavelli's Discourses (far better than The Prince)
Ulysses S. Grant's Memoirs
Augustine's Confessions
Bonaventure's Breviloquium
Fowler's King's English
Newman's Apologia
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
Caesar's Gallic Wars
Montaigne's Essays
Waugh's Edmund Campion
O'Connor's Wiseblood
Wittgenstein's Investigations
Blanchot's Literary Space
Barzun's Dawn to Decadence

[RikaStrom]

I have 14, some of them are only a couple of shelves though, that's when I realized I had to get into the eBook thing, because I've run out of room!

LOL, now granted some of them are oooolddd, but I am OCD when it comes to an author I like, I have to go and try to find their entire booklist if I'm able to.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Condition of the books also matters. Have they been read (and re-read) or are they merely a purchased book collection to show his “intellect”.

Or, like me, it can mean person who is careful with his books and takes care of them. A girlfriend of mine way back when was sitting next to me reading a paperback, and when she cracked the spine, she said it looked like I'd gotten an electric shock. I was horrified.

As for the main theme of this story, I'll tell an anecdote about some friends whose high school-age son wasn't doing well in school. They asked me how to encourage him to read more and I told them to have a house full of books. What I really wanted to say was that they need to demonstrate that they value reading, instead of watching sports on TV, which was basically all they did with their son.

[markman46]

geez you sound like me, i have one book on my kindle right now and 4 paperbacks waiting to be read.

[mware]

The reading list that serves as the core of the St. John’s College curriculum had its beginnings at Columbia College, at the University of Chicago, and at the University of Virginia. Since 1937, the list of books has been under continued review at St. John’s College. The distribution of the books over the four years is significant. Something over 2,000 years of intellectual history form the background of the first two years; about 300 years of history form the background for almost twice as many authors in the last two years.

The first year is devoted to Greek authors and their pioneering understanding of the liberal arts; the second year contains books from the Roman, medieval, and Renaissance periods; the third year has books of the 17th and 18th centuries, most of which were written in modern languages; the fourth year brings the reading into the 19th and 20th centuries.

The chronological order in which the books are read is primarily a matter of convenience and intelligibility; it does not imply a historical approach to the subject matter. The St. John’s curriculum seeks to convey to students an understanding of the fundamental problems that human beings have to face today and at all times. It invites them to reflect both on their continuities and their discontinuities.

FRESHMAN YEAR

HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes, Ajax
THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War
EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae
HERODOTUS: Histories
ARISTOPHANES: Clouds
PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
EUCLID: Elements
LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things
PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, Solon
NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic
LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry
HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood
Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust

SOPHOMORE YEAR

HEBREW BIBLE
THE BIBLE: New Testament
ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
APOLLONIUS: Conics
VIRGIL: Aeneid
PLUTARCH: “Caesar,” “Cato the Younger,” “Antony,” “Brutus”
EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
TACITUS: Annals
PTOLEMY: Almagest
PLOTINUS: The Enneads
AUGUSTINE: Confessions
MAIMONIDES: Guide for the Perplexed
ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
AQUINAS: Summa Theologica
DANTE: Divine Comedy
CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
KEPLER: Epitome IV
RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
MONTAIGNE: Essays
VIETE: Introduction to the Analytical Art
BACON: Novum Organum
SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and Sonnets
POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
HAYDN: Quartets
MOZART: Operas
BEETHOVEN: Third Symphony
SCHUBERT: Songs
MONTEVERDI: L’Orfeo
STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms

JUNIOR YEAR

CERVANTES: Don Quixote
GALILEO: Two New Sciences
HOBBES: Leviathan
DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
MILTON: Paradise Lost
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes
LA FONTAINE: Fables
PASCAL: Pensees
HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
ELIOT: Middlemarch
SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise
LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
RACINE: Phaedre
NEWTON: Principia Mathematica
KEPLER: Epitome IV
LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
SWIFT: Gulliver’s Travels
HUME: Treatise of Human Nature
ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
MOLIERE: Le Misanthrope
ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations
KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
MOZART: Don Giovanni
JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
DEDEKIND: “Essay on the Theory of Numbers”
“Articles of Confederation,” “Declaration of Independence,” “Constitution of the United States of America”
HAMILTON, JAY AND MADISON: The Federalist
TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
WORDSWORTH: The Two Part Prelude of 1799
Essays by: Young, Taylor, Euler, D. Bernoulli, Orsted, Ampere, Faraday, Maxwell

SENIOR YEAR

Supreme Court opinions
GOETHE: Faust
DARWIN: Origin of Species
HEGEL: Phenomenology of Mind, “Logic” (from the Encyclopedia)
LOBACHEVSKY: Theory of Parallels
TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America
LINCOLN: Selected Speeches
FREDERICK DOUGLASS: Selected Speeches
KIERKEGAARD: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
WAGNER: Tristan and Isolde
MARX: Capital, Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
DOSTOEVSKI: Brothers Karamazov
TOLSTOY: War and Peace
MELVILLE: Benito Cereno
O’CONNOR: Selected Stories
WILLIAM JAMES; Psychology, Briefer Course
NIETZSCHE: Beyond Good and Evil
FREUD: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON: Selected Writings
DUBOIS: The Souls of Black Folk
HUSSERL: Crisis of the European Sciences
HEIDEGGER: Basic Writings
EINSTEIN: Selected papers
CONRAD: Heart of Darkness
FAULKNER: Go Down Moses
FLAUBERT: Un Coeur Simple
WOOLF: Mrs. Dalloway
Poems by: Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Valery, Rimbaud
Essays by: Faraday, J.J. Thomson, Millikan, Minkowski, Rutherford, Davisson, Schrodinger, Bohr, Maxwell, de Broglie, Heisenberg, Mendel, Boveri, Sutton, Morgan, Beadle & Tatum, Sussman, Watson & Crick, Jacob & Monod, Hardy

[wideawake]

The Irish author Brian O'Nolan wrote a comic essay about a service in which poor university graduates would get paid handsome sums by wealthy businessmen to assemble a library for them and to then read the books, put some wear and tear on them, make notes in the margins in the employer's handwriting etc. - to give the library an authentic feel.

[Scarlet7]

parents