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Children who read books daily score higher in school tests, vast new study states:
What children choose to read outside school directly influences their academic performance, according to a major new study led by the University of Malaga and UCL, and published in the peer-reviewed journal Oxford Review of Education.
Using longitudinal census data to look at more than 43,000 students, aged 10 to 11 and then again when they were 13 to 14, the research provides substantial evidence that pupils who enjoy reading high-quality books daily score higher in tests.
The average marks of pupils who read books rose by 0.22 points overall, which is the equivalent of 3 months' worth of additional secondary school academic growth.
The study demonstrated no similar advantage for children's reading daily newspapers, comics or magazines, and only marginal benefits from short stories.
The findings have important implications for parents, teachers and policymakers, and the international research team is recommending that young people devote their reading time solely to books.
"Although three months' worth of progress may sound comparatively small to some people, it equates to more than 10% of the three academic secondary school years measured—from when these young people are aged 11 years old to 14, which we know is a hugely developmental period," explains co-author Professor John Jerrim, from the UCL.
"In an increasingly digital world, it's important that young people are encouraged to find time to read a good book.
The author does note however,
The findings of this study should be interpreted in the context of some limitations and the need for further research. These include the research being carried out in one particular region within Spain, and the focus upon academic progress made during the early teenage years. At this point, reading skills are already quite well-developed—there is no data for younger children.
John Jerrim, Luis Alejandro Lopez-Agudo & Oscar D. Marcenaro-Gutierrez (2020) Does it matter what children read? New evidence using longitudinal census data from Spain, Oxford Review of Education, DOI: 10.1080/03054985.2020.1723516
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 29 2020, @11:59AM (16 children)
Kids who read books, learn things. Comics and such? We knew that decades ago too - they don't teach much. Short stories? I'd argue with that, in many cases. Short stories can be pretty educational. More so, if the kid is reading an author who has a common theme throughout several stories. The genre that the kid takes a liking to has a lot to do with how much he learns. I think all young males who like to read have hit the westerns. Most of that is trash, in that fictitious characters go to fictitious places, and engage in fictitious adventures, with zero basis in fact. Then, there is the rare Louis Lamoure, who actually researches the people, places, and history he writes about. The man offers a semi-decent education through his books, which can be improved on if the reader is interested enough to follow up on the stories.
Pulp sci-fi? I read tons of it. Sorry, most of it isn't any better than run-of-the-mill westerns. On the other hand, the masters who write real novels can educate a kid very well.
But, reading almost anything is better than nothing. Some stories do instill an interest in something worthwhile. Given a library, and some basic research skills, an interesed reader can look up whatever it was that sparked his interest.
Kids who don't read miss out on all the entertainment value, plus all the education available from books.
And, again, all of that was obvious decades ago.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:12PM (2 children)
Yeah, my first reaction to the title was "Duh?". Exposure is everything with kids, if you expose them to more words and more sophisticated sentence structures, they will be reading and comprehending what they read better than those who weren't exposed. The same applies to anything else. I've been pissed about GWB's No Child Left Behind bullshit since I was in middle school and our shop class got shut down because of it - how are kids who might not have access to this stuff or people willing to teach them supposed to learn it now?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:19PM (1 child)
I refer to it as "No retard left behind". It looked good on paper, I suppose, and maybe sounded good in speeches, but FFS, it proved worthless in real life.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:39PM
My mother was a teacher when No Child Left Behind came out. She described it as "No Child Gets Ahead" because of the way it led to cancelling all the advanced placement programs and "optional" classes like music, drafting, shop, woodworking, physical education, etc...
The second most unexpected thing it did was it incentivized pushing out all the under performers. Troubled students were suspended and expelled instead of getting counseling assistance or being given second chances. That was the easiest way to raise scores from the bottom up. They couldn't get the straight A students to go higher, so they cut off all the D students by forcing them out.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:38PM (1 child)
Disagree about short stories in and of themselves. They are often very one dimensioned, by nature wrapping up quickly, rarely leading to more depth of character or thought. Great to try out new authors, explore a singular idea or link two longer stories. But to instil a truly nuanced and dynamic landscape, much longer reads really are necessary. This applies as much to fiction as factual texts, even to instructional books, which do lend themselves better to modular chapter and verse referencing, but kind of missing the point if these do not link concepts and subjects together for a greater understanding.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @04:40PM
I don't think it's so much about what's being read that's helpful (so much as it's not nonsensical or inane) but rather the process itself. Visualizing ideas and notions within ones head and retaining and developing a story in your mind is something anybody who regularly reads can do extremely trivially, but it's really not trivial. Think about how many people in discussion these days cannot even accurately parse a couple of sentences written by somebody else.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Booga1 on Saturday February 29 2020, @02:40PM
For a famous author inspired by those pulp sci-fi stories, check out the back cover of the dust jacket [abebooks.com] for Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov.
I would say the best option is to find what the kid will read, anything at all. Do your best to steer them, but get them to read something that will keep their interest the whole way through. Something that gets them to think about things they wouldn't normally think about is a bonus. Even if that means starting out with simple stuff like The Mouse and the Motorcycle, perhaps one day it will lead to I, Robot [wikipedia.org] and bigger stories with deeper subjects to think about.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:40PM (1 child)
I learned to read with comic books in the early 1960s.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday February 29 2020, @04:39PM
In the early 1960's? That was when Marvel started telling real stories rather then the cardboard characters that DC had been using. (There is, of course, market segmentation, and Marvel stories weren't that deep, given the length limitations. But they had *some* humanizing elements.)
OTOH, I wouldn't recommend "Jude the Obscure" even for college students...but it was required reading. Turned me off to most "recommended books", so I read "Lord of the Rings" instead.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 29 2020, @05:20PM (7 children)
Scoring higher in test scores, and especially school grades, is more a matter of conformance/compliance than raw intelligence/ability. Reading books, particularly for tick marks in a study, is excellent practice at toe-ing the line - doing what is expected - documenting your "achievements." Very valuable in some segments of society, and very valuable to segments of society who take advantage of the sheep.
Doing - trial and error - varied experiences, that's what trains the wet-neural-net and develops skills generalizeable to things related to the training experiences. If you want to be good at something - anything - practice doing it as much as you can, with as much expert guidance as you can get. If what you want to be good at is "book learning" and school scores, by all means: read.
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(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Saturday February 29 2020, @09:19PM (1 child)
The whole article basically comes down to 'people that read books are booksmart'. And school testing is geared for testing 'booksmarts'.
Testing at school is done in a form that penalises kids that my be very gifted in verbal, social, creative and analysis skills, but aren't so good when it comes to visual 'book' testing.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Sunday March 01 2020, @11:00PM
Maybe they're not testing the booksmarts that also coincide with streetsmarts. [theonion.com]
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday February 29 2020, @11:05PM (4 children)
Being able to figure out the conformance that the test is demanding is part of being intelligent, and recognizing that getting good grades is important socially is also part of being intelligent. Being rebellious is not in and of itself a sign of intelligence.
I'm sorry to break it to you, but if you can't figure out the answer that the test is expecting, in almost all cases, it's because you're not intelligent. (There are some tests/teachers who are just plumb retarded, but that's not the norm thanks to standardized testing.)
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday March 01 2020, @03:55AM (2 children)
Very true for the majority of society. However, the rich and powerful are (by definition of the wealth pyramid) not the majority, and the skills they use to further their positions are, often as not, quite different from getting good grades. It's not about rebellion, it's about recognizing what you want and how to get it. One of the most important "leadership" skills is delegation, and that is frequently developed by people who lack innate abilities but recognize how to get others to make up for their own deficits. Not the kind of thing that one typically learns in a book, nor demonstrates on a standardized test.
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday March 01 2020, @01:58PM (1 child)
You mean, nobody has ever written books about such people? I strongly doubt that.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday March 01 2020, @02:21PM
The books are certainly written, though rarely with an honest, practical and transferable "this is how they really made it happen" approach. I've gotten a small amount of first and second hand CEO tales from the trenches, including bar conversations with the likes of Richard Branson in the Virgin Islands - he's a classic case of position + luck + deficits = massive success. A recurring theme, from very different approaches, is that the key to top level success is all about the people underneath you - another recurring theme is that controlling the quality of the people underneath you is somewhat akin to herding cats whilst blindfolded, gagged and bound to a chair. And the unspoken yet critical social grace is: don't make the people underneath you feel inferior, whilst always maintaining superiority.
The lie of the educational system is that it cannot groom everyone for top level success, because top level success is only available to a very small minority. Even if you max-out all the metrics in standardized tests, social graces and perception, etc. that's only putting you in the running for the brass ring, and most of the people who get, and hold, a brass ring are nowhere near those academic outliers. Point of fact, if you max out the metrics too far, you're actually hurting your chances for overall success.
Returning to TFA: certainly, reading is good and the masses don't do enough of it, they should do more - it would be good for everyone especially those who do more reading. Just don't expect revolutionary results.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @08:05AM
Neither of which actually requires much intelligence at all, as demonstrated by the hordes of moronic Jeopardy! geniuses our disastrous schooling system churns out.
Correct.
But here's the key: The tests are so poorly designed that even being able to answer the questions correctly does not mean you even remotely comprehend the subject. So while someone being unable to answer the questions almost certainly means they don't understand the material, being able to answer the questions does not necessarily mean - and, indeed, frequently does not mean - that you do understand the material. Not encouraging critical and innovative thinking is a mistake.