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Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#11

Post by ThetaOneOne »

Insanity wrote: post #3
fhood wrote: post #2

I grew up in a household that had passed that 350 book mark, and beyond all of the actual meaningful improvements it has made to my life, it also meant that reading comprehension on standardized testing was laughably easy. So teach your kids to love books, and enjoy reading. It doesn't have to be high-brow intellectually challenging shit, just make sure that they associate books with fun.

I think that last part is especially true. Due to school and forced reading assingments, reading gets associated too often with work or boring assignments.

Yeah, I strongly believe that all books carry significant value. You don’t need high level concepts to gain value. We sometimes over focus on the best case scenrerio ignoring what we can get kids interested in.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#12

Post by arkitaip »

wedge14 wrote: post #5
wedge14 wrote: post #4

How would growing up in a household with only ebooks, or a household with only physical books make a difference? (Assuming an equal number of both)

Perhaps completely irrelevant as long as an equal number are read?

Maybe, maybe not. These social studies are so poorly executed that you're just waiting for them to be debunked.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#13

Post by drb91 »

ldiracdelta wrote: post #7

Or it could be only a correlation. Smart parents have books, but they also have smart children.

Maybe.... natural predilection is no replacement for experience, though, and reading is a type of experience. Arguably a high quality one.

Also, there are obviously countless examples of seemingly intelligent people having kids which aren’t.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#14

Post by nsomaru »

wedge14 wrote: post #4

How would growing up in a household with only ebooks, or a household with only physical books make a difference? (Assuming an equal number of both)

We had a room in the house that had a whole wall of books. There was a carpet on the floor. As a child I would wander in and become slowly transfixed by covers and just the pattern of the whole thing. I tried and failed many times to read books there, often falling back to simpler children’s encyclopedias. With perseverance I became able to infer word meanings through context (a skill that remains today), and slowly but surely titles were conquered one by one. Im eternally grateful to my grandfather for reading so much to me as an extremely young child and to my father who stocked that study with the equivalent of the best wine available. I don’t think that experience would have been possible with the kindle I now own :)

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#15

Post by codethief »

> Respondents, who ranged in age from 25 to 65, were asked to estimate how many books were in their house when they were 16 years old. The research team was interested in this question because home library size can be a good indicator of what the study authors term “book-oriented socialization.” Participants were able to select from a given range of books that included everything from “10 or less” to “more than 500.”

In order words, they just used the number of books as an indicator that very likely correlates with how much people used to read as kids, how many books their parents could afford and how much their parents cared about education and so on. If you accept this correlation, the results of the study become somewhat trivial.

It's amazing how the people at Smithsonian Magazine maganaged to spin this as a causal relationship, though, in the sense of "Just surround yourself with books and it'll have a powerful, lasting effect on your mind." Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/552/

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#16

Post by bobcostas55 »

I liked how Matt Yglesias summarized the quality of this research: "Kids who grow up in households with lots of pants suitable for tall adults grow up to be tall as adults."

Making causal claims without accounting for genetic confounds is simply pseudoscience, there are no excuses.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#17

Post by [deleted] »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #16

I liked how Matt Yglesias summarized the quality of this research: "Kids who grow up in households with lots of pants suitable for tall adults grow up to be tall as adults." Making causal claims without accounting for genetic confounds is simply pseudoscience, there are no excuses.

[deleted]

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#18

Post by izzydata »

I grew up in a house that had a library with 1000+ books. Unfortunately I didn't read much of any of them. Nobody ever tried to get me to read them. However, I blame myself for not reading much as a kid.

My point being that the mere presence of books is not enough.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#20

Post by Symbiote »

sna1l wrote: post #9

I am unable to read the actual study (paywall) and this article doesn't really talk about the methodology, but did they account for socioeconomic factors? I would assume on average that the more books your family could afford, the more money they have.

Here's the paper: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2018.10.003
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