Parents Who Own Bookshelves Raise Kids Who Do Better in School
Over on Core77, Rain Noe discusses a sweeping international study by a team of Stanford and University of Munich researchers, who looked at all sorts of questions about how economics, school conditions, and parents end up affecting education. But one of the most interesting tidbits concerned the fact that a child’s achievements at school are correlated to whether his or her parents own a very simple object.
That object? A bookshelf. Two, actually. According to the study’s authors, the educational achievements of British children whose parents owned two bookcases differed from children whose parents didn’t by 1.15 standard deviations. In plain language, that’s three times the amount of what the average kid learns during a year of school.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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3 Replies to “Parents Who Own Bookshelves Raise Kids Who Do Better in School”
Did they have to have books on them? I read but my bookshelf has become virtual…which my husband loves.
That’s a great question which I don’t think they considered. However, my gut reaction would be to say no, since the children won’t see that you have books. I think the visual nature of seeing that they’re available might have something to do with it.
Over on Core77, Rain Noe discusses a sweeping international study by a team of Stanford and University of Munich researchers, who looked at all sorts of questions about how economics, school conditions, and parents end up affecting education. But one of the most interesting tidbits concerned the fact that a child’s achievements at school are correlated to whether his or her parents own a very simple object.
Did they have to have books on them? I read but my bookshelf has become virtual…which my husband loves.
That’s a great question which I don’t think they considered. However, my gut reaction would be to say no, since the children won’t see that you have books. I think the visual nature of seeing that they’re available might have something to do with it.