I've heard of Freakanomics but not read it. I have a 9 hour flight in two weeks so that could be a good opportunity!

I think the Telegraph conclusion is plausible. If there are books in the house it's probably because parents themselves are interested in finding out about things whether or not they went to university. There will tend to be more books in university educated households but there are also those that could/would have gone to university but didn't have the opportunity or desire for some reason and have the books.

I think the point (certainly the point made by Levitt & Dubner in Freakonomics) is that just having a house full of books isn't enough: it's the engagement of the parents in the process of encouraging their kids to read that really matters. There are two related but not identical arguments here:

1. It's probably a safe generalisation that the kind of people who have a house full of books probably tend towards the kind of engaged parenting that will find the time to read to and with their kids.

2. As you point out, there is not an absolute correlation between household book count and level of education, but there are numerous other studies that show the most significant indicator of the likely educational attainment level of a child is the education of his or her parents.

So a child of a household where the parents are educated, literate, engaged and encouraging of that child's desire to read, is likely to be better able to read than a child of a household where none of those factors pertain. As somebody else said up-thread, that's not exactly a surprise, but it's sometimes useful to prove "obvious facts."

btw, I'd endorse the recommendation for Freakonomics - and also their second collaboration, Super Freakonomics.

I think all of this is fair enough. In terms of education of the parents there are studies that show an even more refined conclusion in that it is the education specifically of the mother that has the closest correlation with the attainment of the children. Seems to make sense as the reality is the mother is more closely involved especially at a young age.

Changing the subject slightly the cost of books in Canada seems to be very much higher in Canada then the UK, both in stores and internet retailers.

Not necessarilly true:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...on/8468351.stm

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/200...44536106.shtml

My son would argue against those two articles.

He just spent four and a half days up in Edmonton marking Social Studies diploma exams.

He said the quality writing in the essay portion was atrocious.

I don't think that simplifying spelling helps at all.

You can understand the meaning of many words if you have learned the roots, suffixes, and prefixes used in building a word. This is particularly true for medical words. I recently had to take a medical terminology course and the teacher did not know that pediatrics and pedal had different roots. Retaining the 'a' in paediatrics means that it's recognisable as word whose meaning is to do with children.

Spelling is easy enough if you know the rules. It also becomes more interesting to learn if you have some background.

I wonder if the north American phenomenon that is the spelling bee helps with this. You often hear the contestants enquiring as to the root and language of origin of a word.

Do you? I've never watched one. They would be F'd if the word was paed/ped then

I find something strangely compelling about them to watch ........

There are all sorts of rules about what they are allowed to ask and all kinds of things

I sit there amazed at the vocab these kids have. I've maybe heard of one word in five let alone know how to spell them .

I'm not university educated & I have over 2,000 books in my house ranging from fine art monographs through to Robert Heinlen pulp Sci Fi.
My kids (12 & 13) can take & read anything as long as they ask (I've never yet had to say a book wasn't "suitable"). They both use the local library fortnightly & my eldest daughter recently won a reading competition at school, she read (& I mean read & comprehended, not skimmed) over 500 books in 7 months.
The biggest factor in the decline of literacy in England is lazy parenting by the over entitled, avaricious me generation..

Piss poor parenting moves freely through class barriers, there are as many selfish middle class morons as there are Wayne & Waynettas.

The vast majority of my middle class friends wouldn't tax themselves with anything more challenging than Harry Potter or the Twilight series. One of my oldest & most avowedly working class friends is currently teaching himself Astronomy.

Parents want holidays & jet skis, if they've had two holidays that year & the kids aren't smack addicts or knocked up by the age of 16 they consider their parenting a success. One of those holidays may even include the kids..

I agree if you have the books there and the kid has a thirst for knowledge they will seek to expand their minds. If there are no books they won't have the opportunity to read them irrespective of if they wanted to or not. Simple really.

Is that correlation or causation?

Sure the quality of writing is appalling, but is it more appalling than 10 years ago? And are the ppl who txt spk producing the worst material? 'Cos how would the exam marker know who is and who isn't?

One of the disappointing things with the number of poor social studies essays at diploma level is that since grade 7 Alberta kids learn to write the social studies type essay. They start with paragraph writing and move to the essay format in grade 7 and continue to practice for the next 5 years.

It doesn't seem to help.

My spelling has become worse recently and the only difference I can think of is that I am becoming used to the bad spelling and grammar used around me. Lowest common denomator phenomenon.

He seemed to think it had deteriorated just in the past year. It's not just he writing itself but the whole thought process doesn't seem to be there in many of the essays. Calling some of them essays would be a stretch.

Which might speak a bit about the course content as well and how it was taught in different locales.

Out of interest was it Social 33 or 30 that your son was talking about?

When I taught social (to Junior High and Senior High kids) there were some grade 7 kids whose essays were better than the average grade 12 Soc 33 kids. It's the thought process that counts.

Teaching people to think and argue coherently shouldn't be this difficult.

Especially in a litigious age!

BTW I can't imagine going to Edmonton to mark drivel after having taught all year! Though the teachers that do remark that they have a bit of a party atmosphere going on.