After examining statistics from 27 nations, a group of researchers found the presence of book-lined shelves in the home — and the intellectual environment those volumes reflect — gives children an enormous advantage in school.
“Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s occupational status and other family background characteristics,” reports the study, recently published in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.
“Growing up in a home with 500 books would propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average, than would growing up in a similar home with few or no books.”
you are (or the authors of the study you mentioned) are confusing cause and effect.
think about it.
I could line the walls of a room with 1 million books from birth and it wouldn’t make a group of retarded children smart.
The real truth is that smart people are more likely to own books, and when those smart people have children, those children are more likely to be smart like their parents. The presence of the books wasn’t what was important.
I am guessing that smart people probably make their beds more often than dumb people. Would you believe the results of a study that shows that children that live in homes with their beds made are on average more intelligent? Would you then start encouraging dumb parents to start making their beds to increase the intelligence of their children?
"correlation does not mean causation"
How about an Obamabook program ?