So yesterday was “Book Thursday.” I read the entirety of Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. It was freakin’ awesome.
My favorite chapter was the one on parenting. To all you obsessive parents out there: stop. You don’t make ANY DIFFERENCE! Just be yourself. Everything has already been determined for your baby based on your socioeconomic status, intelligence, education, etc., etc., etc.
Okay, it’s not that bleak. You just have to read it. One factoid that interested me: there is a positive correlation (read: NOT CAUSATION!) between the number of books in a child’s home and his test scores (possibly because people with lots of books generally value reading/learning/education and this is reflected in their children) (ref: p. 172-3).
So I counted how many books we had in our shelves (and a few other places, but I’m sure I missed a couple). Do you think 286 books bodes well for Hayden’s future test scores? Gosh, the more I think of it, the more it sounds like a lot. It’s not entirely bragging: a lot of them are textbooks that we never sold back.
Also, today, I ensured that I overcame the bleak statistic that Dr. Kerry Soper (I think) cited a year ago at my graduation: most college graduates do not read a single book in the five years following graduation. Don’t know if I believe that one, but at least I didn’t live it out.
(I’ve read other books in the last year, too. . . . Just mostly parenting ones!)
One reply on “Freakin’nomics”
I’m glad you have so many books in your home. Someday, in some way, Hayden will thank you for it. I think it was Mark Twain who once said “the man who doesn’t read books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” Or something like that.