Do Woodstock families keep books around the house? According to Laura Miller from Salon there is a direct correlation between having books in the house as a kid and education success.
A study recently published in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility found that just having books around the house (the more, the better) is correlated with how many years of schooling a child will complete. The study (authored by M.D.R. Evans, Jonathan Kelley, Joanna Sikorac and Donald J. Treimand) looked at samples from 27 nations, and according to its abstract, found that growing up in a household with 500 or more books is “as great an advantage as having university-educated rather than unschooled parents, and twice the advantage of having a professional rather than an unskilled father.” Children with as few as 25 books in the family household completed on average two more years of schooling than children raised in homes without any books.
GOOD blog goes on to question whether electronic format reading creates the same benefits. Do iPhones, iPads, laptops, Kindles, etc… also generate education success just by having access to literature? or is it the physical books lying on a shelf that matter more? I’m going to guess it matters more to have actual books on a shelf, especially at an early age. Maybe later in life the digital format will be just as valuable, but I know neither my wife nor I have ever cuddled up with our little wolverine and read him a bedtime story from our iPhone (yet, anyways).
What are your thoughts on this?
If you fall into the real books category, then remember to stop by your local Woodstock bookstore and pick up a new book and be sure to keep it around the house for the kids to pick up.
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