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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

#91

Post by Izkata »

JackFr wrote: post #73
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.

On top of that, the factor under consideration was self-reported: '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.' It's very likely that avid readers will overreport the books, while reluctant readers are likely to underreport.

And then there's those of us where the metric is invalid anyway because we checked them out from the library instead, having a different set of books every week.

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

#92

Post by darkerside »

izzydata wrote: post #18

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.

Why does that point follow? Do you feel your literacy, numeracy, and technical skills are lower than the average population?

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

#93

Post by Izkata »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #86
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.

>> it also meant that reading comprehension on standardized testing was laughably easy I'm actually curious to hear how various HNers have done on on standardized reading comprehension tests. I grew up with massive bookcases in the house, I've now populated my own, I read a lot, get a lot out of it, and enjoy it. On the ACT I had perfect scores on every category but a literal 0 on reading comprehension. As far as I'm…

We were explicitly taught to read the questions first, then scan for the question's keywords in the text, and pick the answer based on the best match for that sentence alone.

I agree; I typically finished a book a week just reading between classes in highschool (and more at night), and was one of the only ones who could fully read the passage and still have time to answer all the questions. They were weirdly analytical and overly-literal, not something that made any sense in a "comprehension" test.

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

#94

Post by Izkata »

xvector wrote: post #25
izzydata wrote: post #18

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.

I don’t think it makes sense to blame yourself. It is absolutely the job of parents to encourage their kids to read from a young age. To kids, reading looks terribly boring, until they actually find a book they like - then they devour everything in sight. How much I miss the combination of childhood imagination and fantastic stories!

> To kids, reading looks terribly boring, until they actually find a book they like - then they devour everything in sight.

So important and always ignored. My mom read to us often, and I and my brothers hated reading. Later I encountered an Animorphs book and that was my gateway. One of my brothers, several years after that, discovered Redwall, and that did it for him.

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

#95

Post by testvox »

131012 wrote: post #64
Alex3917 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making causal claims without accounting for genetic confounds is simply pseudoscience, there are no excuses. This study was done in response to the Scarborough and Dobrich paper that found that how much parents read to their children (generally) isn't correlated with children's future reading ability, but how many books are in their household is a positive predictor of future reading ability. It's one of the most f…

It is ethically impossible to ask for DNA samples to every participants in a social science study. Parent OP comment is equivalent than stating that social science is impossible. As any opinion, it can be held, and yet some people may find it ludicrous. As for the conclusion of the study, it is rather mild and has been known for a while: social class has impacts on people, especially on education related outcome.

No one mentioned DNA samples. The standard way to control for genetic differences is to use genetic twins separated at birth and reared apart.

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

#96

Post by geebee »

bluGill wrote: post #56
geebee wrote: post #40

This particular instance of correlation and causation has always been fascinating to me. Is it possible to have a non causal correlation that is impossible to bring about without increasing (causing) the effect. For instance suppose you tried an experiment of getting 500 books into a household with a new infant and zero books. Let’s say you did this with no special attempt to produce the cause, but made no attempt to…

Books are cheap. I'd get 500 books from a used bookstore and put them in a hut in some primitive village. Note that books would not be in the native language, and nobody in the village can read anyway. My hypothesis is that books will make no difference. An interesting and useful experiment would be to place books in the homes of poor people who can read but don't. Turns out cities all over the US are doing this expe…

Sounds like they’re running the experiment. The first scenario you described is a good illustration of the kind of effort it would take to ensure no effect. The second? I’d be interested in knowing how they find families and decide what books to include. I’d expect (and I admit I hope) it will have a measurable efect.

I’ll search for it but please post a link if you have one.

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

#97

Post by ip26 »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #86
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.

>> it also meant that reading comprehension on standardized testing was laughably easy I'm actually curious to hear how various HNers have done on on standardized reading comprehension tests. I grew up with massive bookcases in the house, I've now populated my own, I read a lot, get a lot out of it, and enjoy it. On the ACT I had perfect scores on every category but a literal 0 on reading comprehension. As far as I'm…

I read a ton as a kid, and I always struggled a bit on reading comprehension tests. To me it generally seemed like the "reading comprehension" questions would focus on minutia I didn't consider important, and simply didn't bother to remember. It's been a long time since then, but I want to say I'd read a story about a kid sledding on a hill with his friends, and then later to test your reading comprehension they'd ask you what color his shirt was.

Maybe that is reading comprehension and I am just bad at it, but to me shirt color was unimportant.

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

#98

Post by sp332 »

wenc wrote: post #46
jondubois wrote: post #19

I never enjoyed reading fiction. Fiction trains your mind to look for fictitious narratives in real life; it distorts your perception of life and makes the world a worse place for others who don't follow those narratives.

Fiction certainly can have that downside. But good fiction is also one of the most effective ways--apart from deep listening--of training empathy because it lets you step into someone's inner life. Rarely do we get a chance to see the world through someone else's eyes for long stretches. If you're not an immigrant, you can vicariously live the life of one through fiction and see what they have to deal with. If you're…

I might think that of biography, or autobiography. But fiction writers often don't know what it's like to be that sort of person, they just make it up.

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

#99

Post by bluGill »

geebee wrote: post #96
bluGill wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books are cheap. I'd get 500 books from a used bookstore and put them in a hut in some primitive village. Note that books would not be in the native language, and nobody in the village can read anyway. My hypothesis is that books will make no difference. An interesting and useful experiment would be to place books in the homes of poor people who can read but don't. Turns out cities all over the US are doing this expe…

Sounds like they’re running the experiment. The first scenario you described is a good illustration of the kind of effort it would take to ensure no effect. The second? I’d be interested in knowing how they find families and decide what books to include. I’d expect (and I admit I hope) it will have a measurable efect. I’ll search for it but please post a link if you have one.

https://1000booksbeforekindergarten.org/

They claim studies support the idea, but I'm not able to figure out which

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

#100

Post by thrower123 »

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.

They tend to try to make reading excruciating, particularly before high schools. I don't know if they still do this, but for some reason it was a big trend when I was in grade school to break up into "reading groups", and you'd go around in a circle reading a paragraph at a time out loud. I still despise reading aloud for that reason; I always got a rash of shit for being a few chapters ahead when my turn came up again and having to page back to find the right spot.
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