How the media distorts the story on education, literacy, intelligence: what they leave out

[Hannah Bell]

Recently this story made the rounds:

Breastfeeding your baby could help them achieve academic success by the age of 10, a study has found.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8212529/Breastfeeding-could-make-boys-more-intelligent.html


What the media left out:

A recently published Australian study on the impact of early breastfeeding on school test performance at age 10 captured the interest of the media, but the most important results for educators (& the public) were typically not included in these reports...

Inspection of their data shows, however, that other predictors were much more powerful, including family income, mother's education, and whether the mother and child read together when the child was five years old.

Family income and mother's education are related to access to books in the home, school and community (Krashen, 2004).

These results are very important for educators. They are a strong confirmation that access to books and reading to and with children are powerful means of insuring high levels of literacy, a commonsense view that is well supported by previous research (Krashen, 2004) but nearly completely ignored by policymakers.

Of interest to educators is how much breastfeeding added to the power of income, mother's education, and reading together in predicting test scores. Unfortunately, the authors did not perform a hierarchical analysis, but looking at their results (table 4), my guess is that it did not count for much.

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1885§ion=Article

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. reading is very important.

Most kids don't read and they don't learn to do things with their hands. Like cook or sew or check the tires.

All they seem to do is play video games.

Sad.

[cali]

2. It is sad. I feel so lucky

that as my child was growing up (he's 24) we lived in a place that supported those things.

[Atman]

3. Pretty weak link

It could be that better educated mothers/parents understand the importance of breast feeding, so they tend to breast feed more, and it is already clear that children who are read to and who come from homes where education is valued do better in school. The causal link is tenuous at best. But it's still interesting.

[Reader Rabbit]

4. Again with the unrec-cing? What are you people afraid of?

DU really needs to update the unrec feature so that people cannot do it anonymously. If you care enough to rec or unrec a thread, then you should be willing to do so in full view.

[seabeyond]

5. my oldest was entertained with books from the youngest of age.

i love it worked that way in our family setting precedent. books are the only thing i will spend my money on for the kids, during the year, other than christmas or bday. their room is filled with books

now that they are teenagers we have three magazines delivered. times, smithsonian and national geographic. they sit on dining room table for whomever to sit and read.

excellent stuff that pulls the kids off computer regularly.

couldnt recommend stronger, than a passion of books from youngest of age.

i have had parents tell me i dont let my kids be kids, or boys be boys because we encourage and applaud their reading.

[w8liftinglady]

6. my mom read to my sister and I,and we read to each other

it's a great thing for kids.Even now(although my sons LOVE video games), I turn the tv off for an hour so they can read. It usually ends up staying off longer.
You did a good thing for those babies!

[seabeyond]

7. usually ends up staying off longer.

exactly.

you too. :hug: