Don’t forget to turn the record player on too.
Wow, a sociologist that’s correct for a change. I certainly agree. I grew up with books, magazines and newspapers and so did my children. I’ve also have seen evidence based on the No Cild Left Behind testing and demographics on what made the best performing schools. The best performing schools in every state had one key demographic: the highest percentage of parents with a college degree. I’d boil that down to on thing, parents that cared about academics. It also helps to have parent to re-teach subjects that screw up teachers didn’t teach well.
My parents had plenty of books in their home, but for some reason, I have way more.
My grandmother would agree. She gave me lots of books as presents when I was a kid. She was a school teacher. Shockingly none of the books were about my sexual orientation either.
“”Being a sociologist, Evans was particularly interested to find that children of lesser-educated parents benefit the most from having books in the home.””
I placed a lot of Encyclopedia sets with children’s books into low-income homes, a whole lot of them, in multiple states.
I was well aware of the fact that if there are books in the house, many children will discover them and change their lives.
We always had books and my dad taught me to read before I was six years old. I could actually read novels by then. That was back when you learned to read by “sounding out” syllables. Made it really easy.
Just adding books to a home won’t solve the problem. The family needs to have the attitude that it’s worthwhile to read books and to learn something and to act “xxxxx” (name of the race that’s blamed for all the evil in the world)
Helps if the following are not in the home: drugs, excess booze, TikTok.
Just out of curiosity, I wonder if just having the books is enough, whether the kid reads them or not. Just seeing a library of 500 books every day is formative in itself. It telegraphs to the youngster that there is a lot of wisdom and information to be attained in the world. They may later choose to pay more attention just from that tiny kernel of information gleaned from living in the same home with a decent library.
I learned to read via comic books. My parents never complained about me buying them. I had a large wicker basket full of them. Our house had books and I used the public library too.
No kidding.
The best thing any parent can do with their child is sit them on their lap every day or evening and read to them. There is almost no better way to bond with them than giving them that kind of one on one attention.
Even when I had three little ones, I would sit them, one on each side and one in my lap and I made sure to switch who got the lap every day so I could not be accused of playing favorites.
Of course, they do reach an age where they don’t fit on you lap, but that still leaves a lot of years in their early childhood for that expeience.
James Joyce, Ulysses, is the foundation for any and every literate human being.
You can’t work this backwards though.
I mean if you bought a 500 book library and installed it in a no book neighbor household that wouldn’t do it.
The point is that books are valued and reading is a habit practiced regularly in front of and with the kids. The parents make the time and effort and spend the money to have lots of books for the whole family. And they read, a lot, individually and together.
It’s not an artificial presence of books.
We probably had 500 books on our shelves.
Four kids. One is an expert on children’s literature. Another is a book editor. Another is an engineer.
The trucker doesn’t read much but he does have a Tom Clancy book hollowed out to hold a pistol.
The editor lives in an upstairs apartment. She has so many books no one will help her move.
We did not have lots of books...BUT my mother took us to the Library where there WERE lots of books that we could check out. I read to my younger siblings...do not recal my parents reading to us. I am known as the bookworm of the family...and now have my own “library.” (Kindle doesn’t cut it.)
Are some people intelligent because they read, or do they read because they are intelligent?
I suspect parents with over 500 books have a higher IQ than those who don’t.
Ben Carson is a perfect example of this.
Yes the 2 biggest predictors of school success are the presence of books in the home and the presence of a single desk in the home. Just one desk. I didn’t realize that 500 books was the magic # and that might change with Kindle etc.
I definitely have 500+ books in my home and all my kids were successful in school. Very much so.
Now I should get off FR and go read a book!
bttt
Let me guess. The smug NPR listeners who LOVE abortion will brag about how many Noam Chomsky books they have while saying books are racist because “people of color” don’t have easy access to books.