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Owning Two of a Certain Object Indicates Your Kids Will Do Well in School. Can You Guess What It Is?

By Rain Noe - June 13, 2013

in Object Culture | design.edu

In the original Miami Vice television series, Detective Zito is murdered in Season Three. After learning of his death, co-cops Crockett, Tubbs and Switek visit his house, where they discover Zito's collection of snow globes. They look at them in bewilderment, and the clear message delivered by their faces—in as ham-fisted a way as only '80s American television can do it—is "Wow, I guess we didn't really know this guy at all." Cue violins. An as hackneyed as that moment was, it was the first time your adolescent correspondent understood the usage of physical objects as a narrative device in storytelling.

Years later in ID school, professors who apparently knew each other as well as Zito and Switek delivered conflicting messages on this front. One professor would tell you that "Objects exist to tell stories—they tell us about ourselves!" while others said objects were mere intermediaries that we should design to be unobtrusive; the whole "People don't want a toaster, they just want toast" mentality.

It's easy to see the "Objects tell us about ourselves" bit as a bunch of hooey, as with iPhone and Android users—upon spotting the competing product on an acquaintance's desk, they'll tiresomely begin projecting qualities of the most vociferous proponent of that product onto the user. Ditto Mac and PC users. But it does fascinate me that some objects tell tales we never see coming. Case in point: Stanford economist Eric Hanushek, and his research partner Ludgar Woessman from U. of Munich, put together a study where they found a specific object in certain family's homes that served as a reliable indicator that a child from that family would do well in school.

Any guesses as to what that object is? A computer? A television? An iPad?

What if we told you it's a piece of furniture?

Yes, it's a bookcase. Specifically, two of them.

For example, in England the difference in educational achievement between children of families with more than two bookcases of books and children of families with only very few books at home [is] more than three times what students on average learn during a whole school year.

On a materials level it makes no sense, that a series of particle-board slats named Billy would, just by their very existence in the living room, mean a child living in the same structure would do better in school than kids whose families lacked that product. But parents buy bookshelves for a reason, of course, and when they own two bookshelves or more it indicates that they like to buy books and presumably read them, and as it turns out, folks who like to read are more predisposed to see to it that their children do well in school.

The point of the study is not that parents should all run out and buy bookcases and lots of books to fill them. The relationship from bookcase to A-student isn't causal, it's symptomatic. "Books at home are the single most important predictor of student performance in most countries," writes Woessman. And the reason is that regardless of background, ethnicity, school funding, immigrant status, etc., it is the input of bookish or well-read parents that make all the difference in a child's education.

The original study can be downloaded here [PDF]. For those interested in the topic, I came across it while reading a Charles Kenny article called "The Real Reason America's Schools Stink."

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J

10 years ago

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It's not owning or storing books, it's reading them!!! One of my childhood memories is each member of the family with a book, lying on a sofa during those lazy and long summer afternoons.
Why we were reading instead of playing video games? Nobody told us to read, but you copy what your family do.
Said that, yes, I've always been sourrounded by more than one bookcase. Easy access to books encourages reading, kind of obvious, don't?
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Jennifer R

11 years ago

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I wonder how much of it is the fact that if you are willing to buy books instead of getting them from the library, you revere knowledge more? Lots of people don't have the space for two bookshelves -- or the money to buy that many books -- unless they rid themselves of other things, such as comfy couches or large screen TVs.
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DD

11 years ago

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People who own lots of books are smarter than people who do not. Intelligent people have smarter children than stupid people.

Did the study control for that?
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judi

11 years ago

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dmarcy is exactly right. We are a low income family but we accumulate books like crazy. We scour yard sales, use paperback book swap, thrift stores and freecycle to obtain books and liberally use the public library. That is because we value learning and gaining information. That value is what predicts success in school. Handing a low income family some free books doesn't give them that value. If they don't have that value they won't pass it on to their children even if they're convinced to read to their kids every day and that means they're children are less likely to do well in school.
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NaDell

11 years ago

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Libraries are wonderful if you don't want to purchase hundreds of books! You can even keep them on your bookcase for three weeks until they are due and your child will always have something new to learn and to challenge their mind.

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DMarcy

11 years ago

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Commenter Jeff seems to be saying that money ("the ability to buy the books") is what makes the difference here. But in fact, many families (including the one I grew up in) make significant sacrifices in order to have two or more bookshelves full of books. We did not have a TV when I was growing up, until my aunt felt sorry for us when I was 9 and gave us a tiny black-and-white 9-inch - but we had books, because we valued knowledge. We didn't buy store-bought cereal; sometimes we qualified for free lunches; we wore hand-me-down and thrift-store clothes (almost never new) - but we had books, becausebooks and learning and knowledge were important.

Those families who were given books had books, but they didn't value knowledge, so the books had no effect on the kids' success n school. How many of those homes had TV's? How many had video games?

As my parents used to tell us, it's not about how much money you have; it's about the choices you make about what you do with that money. Those choices are based on and reflect your family's values - and those values have a lot to do with how well the kids do in school.
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Namo

11 years ago

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Yes, we have lots of books. More than we have bookshelves. But we also have other interests - drawing, painting, making stuff, gardening, playing, music...but I do not insist on the children performing well at school, since I think the emphasis in the education system is skewed, and I'm very sure they'll do well in whatever interests them...
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John Halbig

11 years ago

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The funniest thing about this article is that I actually OWN a few "Billy" bookcases.

But I get it -- the idea that, if you think books are important enough that you need bookcases to hold them, then you value reading in some way. Learning to read (and, by indirect inference, learning to write) involves a lot of the skills that can be applied to almost any learning discipline.
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Jeff Milner

11 years ago

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"as it turns out, folks who like to read are more predisposed to see to it that their children do well in school."

There are no studies that indicate actually reading the books is important. Just being able to buy the books is the important part.

It is possible for parents that value knowledge and are successful in life to afford books but don't necessarily need to read them to their kids in order for their kids to grow up to be successful and value knowledge (just like their parents).

There was a study in the states where low-income families were given free books and it made no difference whether the families read the books to the kids or not, they still didn't fair any better in school. (See the book Freakonomics or check out their blog post on the topic: http://www.freakonomics.com/2007/06/15/the-benefits-of-reading-to-children-tested-by-a-data-pool-of-one/)
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Paul

11 years ago

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Commenter Zack should rethink his question in terms of physical objects, like e-readers and tablets, something that a person would have with them vs on a bookshelf. And consider the value of books, as with vinyl records, of a historical narrative of a person or a family through generations. If I have books on a shelf that belonged to my parents or theirs, as well as my own accumulation of books, that tells a different story than a technology that's less than a decade old.

As someone pointed out to me the other week, e-readers won't make all books obsolete. They will replace the titles of the moment, the best sellers or compulsive reads like pulps and serial fiction. But there will always be some titles that will have to exist in the physical world, left open on a table or browsed regularly.
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Lorry Man

11 years ago

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damn I guessed Whiskey and Ferret.
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Zack

11 years ago

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I'm interested in seeing if this relationship would hold true for ebooks, as it seems those may slowly replace the traditional style of books.
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