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Converging and possibly not unrelated, strictly speaking: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/6

Converging and possibly not unrelated, strictly speaking: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-eli... Ivy admissions standards may continue to conform to the mean literacy level, if subtly and gradually. The students described in the article would have been in the bottom-third of a prep school class in the 1990's. Their options would have been limited to State schools or lesser but expensive Liberal Arts colleges with lax admissions standards. It doesn't square not to be able to read a better book, within a restricted period, and to have higher verbal intelligence. The former is the primary training method for the latter. Literacy and verbal intelligence development requires training that can't be duplicated outside of book reading. Most quality students will have been devouring (any) books since primary school. The Calvin and Hobbes enjoyer in third grade, or earlier, is the LoTR enjoyer in seventh. Is then the Crime and Punishment reader in secondary. That type of literacy progression is generally impossible to skip. Circling-back to the cited problem of the Op: the infant who is frequently read and spoken to is the early Calvin and Hobbes enjoyer. I think that state-funded packages of age-appropriate books, annually delivered to all parents perhaps until their child is in pre-school, would be a better than normal use of welfare funds. As it would widely benefit society. A trick to the continuity of such a program would be to keep partisans away from demanding that the books be in any way politicized content.

rahimnathwani 2y ago
Regarding your last paragraph: availability of books doesn't seem to be the bottleneck. San Francisco's public libraries are well funded (~$200 per resident per year). Popular children's books usually have plenty of copies available. The library even gives away brand new books, e.g. whenever there is a street fair or Halloween event ot whatever. According to state standardized tests administered from grades 3 to 11, half the kids in San Francisco cannot read at grade level. The real proportion may be lower, as these tests are taken only for those who attend government-funded schools.
- mrangle 2y ago
  Totally, I get it. With respect, I'd offer that you may be underestimating how literacy-avoidant the households of illiterate adults were likely to have been. Their parents were almost certainly to have been illiterate as well, or at least very low literacy. They didn't include library visits in the child's culture. My suggestion has its own challenges, but the basic premise is that doing everything that we can to put books in the laps of these parents and children is the best avenue. Consider that literacy training doesn't even begin with reading. Just having a book in the household that the parent and child can leaf through, and look at the pictures within, is the start of literacy and story grammar (the floor-level basics of reading). A child inventing a story that they tell themselves or their caregivers, predicated on the pictures that they see in the book, would be a massive literacy win. As well as one for cognitive development. Ideally, after which the child starts to request books and request being either told an invented story or read to.
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    I'm not sure dropping a book or ten books or even 100 books into what you call 'literacy-avoidant' households would have any impact. Is there any evidence that an intervention like this, without any other change, has any impact?
    - mrangle 2y ago
      What are you trying to avoid, exactly? The cost? Consider that inner city schools are often massively over-funded per child to virtually no metrics benefit. My suggestion is to allocate some such (relatively minimal) funding earlier in life, in line with cognitive development, so that children may be more successful in school in spite of later funding. Ideally, reducing the later funding that is needed to help children achieve. Whether you're aware of it or not, you're asking for research with a very specific set of variables. Whereas I'm making a suggestion, as a Speech and Language Pathologist, which is in line with child development best practices that are predicated on more general child development research. The latter which has formulated a long standing set of child-development best practices. One of the most primary being that the child must hear as much language as possible, and much of it should come from reading stories to and with the child. I'm unsure of your first statement as well. Either look for such a study yourself, or if one doesn't exist then one may need to be done including those very specific variables. What I am sure of is that absence of household books guarantees a negative outcome. And therefore it would be considered to be unethical, in research or more generally, to keep households deprived of books. As doing so would both make success more or less impossible, generally, as well as more specifically deprive children who are cognitively dispositioned to pick up a book on their own despite their parents.
wrp 2y ago
Children model the behavior of their parents. It is very hard to compensate for an unhelpful home environment. I think any effective intervention has to go far beyond simply making resources available.

rahimnathwani 2y ago

Regarding your last paragraph: availability of books doesn't seem to be the bottleneck. San Francisco's public libraries are well funded (~$200 per resident per year). Popular children's books usually have plenty of copies available. The library even gives away brand new books, e.g. whenever there is a street fair or Halloween event ot whatever. According to state standardized tests administered from grades 3 to 11, half the kids in San Francisco cannot read at grade level. The real proportion may be lower, as these tests are taken only for those who attend government-funded schools.

mrangle 2y ago
Totally, I get it. With respect, I'd offer that you may be underestimating how literacy-avoidant the households of illiterate adults were likely to have been. Their parents were almost certainly to have been illiterate as well, or at least very low literacy. They didn't include library visits in the child's culture. My suggestion has its own challenges, but the basic premise is that doing everything that we can to put books in the laps of these parents and children is the best avenue. Consider that literacy training doesn't even begin with reading. Just having a book in the household that the parent and child can leaf through, and look at the pictures within, is the start of literacy and story grammar (the floor-level basics of reading). A child inventing a story that they tell themselves or their caregivers, predicated on the pictures that they see in the book, would be a massive literacy win. As well as one for cognitive development. Ideally, after which the child starts to request books and request being either told an invented story or read to.
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  I'm not sure dropping a book or ten books or even 100 books into what you call 'literacy-avoidant' households would have any impact. Is there any evidence that an intervention like this, without any other change, has any impact?
  - mrangle 2y ago
    What are you trying to avoid, exactly? The cost? Consider that inner city schools are often massively over-funded per child to virtually no metrics benefit. My suggestion is to allocate some such (relatively minimal) funding earlier in life, in line with cognitive development, so that children may be more successful in school in spite of later funding. Ideally, reducing the later funding that is needed to help children achieve. Whether you're aware of it or not, you're asking for research with a very specific set of variables. Whereas I'm making a suggestion, as a Speech and Language Pathologist, which is in line with child development best practices that are predicated on more general child development research. The latter which has formulated a long standing set of child-development best practices. One of the most primary being that the child must hear as much language as possible, and much of it should come from reading stories to and with the child. I'm unsure of your first statement as well. Either look for such a study yourself, or if one doesn't exist then one may need to be done including those very specific variables. What I am sure of is that absence of household books guarantees a negative outcome. And therefore it would be considered to be unethical, in research or more generally, to keep households deprived of books. As doing so would both make success more or less impossible, generally, as well as more specifically deprive children who are cognitively dispositioned to pick up a book on their own despite their parents.

wrp 2y ago

Children model the behavior of their parents. It is very hard to compensate for an unhelpful home environment. I think any effective intervention has to go far beyond simply making resources available.