Reading to kids is unfair advantage

[civvver]

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...onoured-practice/story-fni0cx12-1227335151442

So uh, I'm not really sure whether to laugh or cry when I read this.

Apparently this radio host in Australia had an academic on his program to discuss how reading to kids at a young age makes them much more likely to succeed academically. Well my first though was wow, people pay you to come up with those deductions? That's some amazing analysis there! But then the radio host went so far as to say this:

"This devilish twist of evidence surely leads to a further conclusion that perhaps — in the interests of levelling the playing field — bedtime stories should also be restricted."

When confronted later about it he said he just took an angle to generate attention. But he never said he didn't really feel that way either...

I guess my question is should this be taken seriously at all? Do people truly believe that?

I suppose we can discuss the merits of the idea if someone wants to play devil's advocate here but I don't know how anyone could win that discussion. There is absolutely zero reason to say child x doesn't receive this advantage at home therefore we need to ensure no child can receive that advantage at all. At the very least it should be child x doesn't receive this advantage at home, therefor we need to be creative in finding other ways to help that child x succeed.

To me this kind of thinking just stems from control issues, taking away all responsibility from parents so the state can have complete control over your children and their education.

 

[Borachio]

Well, plainly reading to kids gives them an advantage over kids who aren't read to.

But so does giving them 3 meals a day, and making them feel loved and secure.

Is it an unfair advantage? I wouldn't say so. I'd say it's an unfair disadvantage for the kids who aren't read to.

Instead of levelling the playing field down, we could try levelling it up.

 

[BvBPL]

I'm pretty sure this was just tongue in cheek means of drawing attention to the importance of reading to children rather than a serious claim that bedtime stories should be regulated.

Gelonesi responded online: “This devilish twist of evidence surely leads to a further conclusion that perhaps — in the interests of levelling the playing field — bedtime stories should also be restricted.”
Contacted by The Daily Telegraph, Gelonesi said the bedtime stories angle was highlighted by the ABC “as a way of getting attention”.

Huzzah for reading comprehension.

 

[Thedrin]

No, it shouldn't be taken seriously. Nobody believes that this is something that should be done (or if anyone does, you can safely assume that they are part of a lunatic fringe movement).

However, I fully expect that at some point I will hear of a self-confessed independent who genuinely believes that "liberals" want to enact such a policy.

 

[warpus]

Okay, it's an advantage, but how is it "unfair" ?

This isn't news, this is just crap they came up with to get clicks.

 

[MacAttack]

This is just an attention grabbing scheme.

 

[civvver]

Well that's what I thought too at first. But there's a lot of crazy people in education out there so I wouldn't put it that far past them.

 

[BvBPL]

Frankly, I disagree with MacAttack. There IS something to see here. Reading to children is wicked important. More attention should be brought to the subject and more parents should read to their children.

The framing of this issue could be weirdly effective. All the knee-jerk anti-gov't people may well read to their children because the framing makes it look like Gelonesi wants the opposite.

 

[Narz]

Anyone who doesn't want to give their kids an unfair advantage is an unfit parent.

 

[plarq]

Being alive is an unfair advantage to the dead people.

 

[Narz]

Someone once mentioned something about "thin privilege" in a post about me. I told him, "Don't forget I'm tall too. "

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Being alive is an unfair advantage to the dead people.

I strongly oppose leveling the playing field either way on this one.

 

[sophie]

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...onoured-practice/story-fni0cx12-1227335151442

So uh, I'm not really sure whether to laugh or cry when I read this.

Apparently this radio host in Australia had an academic on his program to discuss how reading to kids at a young age makes them much more likely to succeed academically. Well my first though was wow, people pay you to come up with those deductions? That's some amazing analysis there! But then the radio host went so far as to say this:

Studies like this aren't so much about determining whether or not performing an obviously beneficial action is beneficial (although sometimes you'll be surprised by how counterintuitive reality can be) but rather quantifying, specifically, just how beneficial it is.

 

[Arwon]

Just so the OP knows, Tim Blair is a frothing lunatic. Here, his overbearing hatred for the ABC (our public broadcaster) has him getting all bent out of shape about a philosophy show exploring questions of meritocracy and advantage.

You'd be better off linking to the original piece from the philosophy show instead of the hack pundit trying to make it about his hatred of the ABC.

 

[Narz]

Studies like this aren't so much about determining whether or not performing an obviously beneficial action is beneficial (although sometimes you'll be surprised by how counterintuitive reality can be) but rather quantifying, specifically, just how beneficial it is.

Do you need to know exactly how beneficial reading to your kid is before you do it?

People always waiting for approval & confirmation before taking a course of action will always necessarily be behind the curve.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Do you need to know exactly how beneficial reading to your kid is before you do it?

People always waiting for approval & confirmation before taking a course of action will always necessarily be behind the curve.

I think the need for knowing how beneficial it is comes from wondering how far society should go to help it happen. If someone came along and demonstrated that no one who grew up with a story at nap time ever became a criminal then providing story readers in day care centers would immediately be a real good idea. Not that it isn't a good idea anyway, but it would step up the priority quite a bit.

 

[Narz]

Makes sense I suppose but how many studies do you really need before you fine tune your recommendations?

Most common sense findings are not going to change (reading to your kids = good, sticking them in front of the TV, including so called baby-educational stuff = bad, fruit & veg = good, cheap processed crap = bad). The gray areas of child rearing aren't ones the govt./educators/etc. should be having a stance on anyway.

Less effort should go into "proving" stuff & more into convincing people/parents to have the time/energy/wherewithall to actual implement what they "should" do.

Pretty much everyone knows exercise & eating healthy are good. Yet most people don't do as much as they should. Its not from lack of knowledge. I guess there are folks who think a gallon of soda-water a day is ok but you're probably not gonna reach those types anyway.

 

[classical_hero]

Just so the OP knows, Tim Blair is a frothing lunatic. Here, his overbearing hatred for the ABC (our public broadcaster) has him getting all bent out of shape about a philosophy show exploring questions of meritocracy and advantage.

You'd be better off linking to the original piece from the philosophy show instead of the hack pundit trying to make it about his hatred of the ABC.

Did the person or not say "that it is an unfair advantage to be reading to children at night"?

 

[Arwon]

Blair acts as though it's ABC policy as part of their nefarious cultural subversion agenda, not an exploration of the concepts of meritocracy and equality of opportunity, by philosophers, on a philosophy radio show. Bloody hell you people are boring with your quaint moral panics.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...onoured-practice/story-fni0cx12-1227335151442

So uh, I'm not really sure whether to laugh or cry when I read this.

Apparently this radio host in Australia had an academic on his program to discuss how reading to kids at a young age makes them much more likely to succeed academically. Well my first though was wow, people pay you to come up with those deductions? That's some amazing analysis there! But then the radio host went so far as to say this:

"This devilish twist of evidence surely leads to a further conclusion that perhaps — in the interests of levelling the playing field — bedtime stories should also be restricted."

When confronted later about it he said he just took an angle to generate attention. But he never said he didn't really feel that way either...

I guess my question is should this be taken seriously at all? Do people truly believe that?

I suppose we can discuss the merits of the idea if someone wants to play devil's advocate here but I don't know how anyone could win that discussion. There is absolutely zero reason to say child x doesn't receive this advantage at home therefore we need to ensure no child can receive that advantage at all. At the very least it should be child x doesn't receive this advantage at home, therefor we need to be creative in finding other ways to help that child x succeed.

To me this kind of thinking just stems from control issues, taking away all responsibility from parents so the state can have complete control over your children and their education.

Whether or not it was meant as a joke or a hypothetical or completely seriously, it's a really dumb thing to say.

Sure, I had an advantage in this way: not only a set of parents who encouraged me to read (and occasionally read to me) to a set of grandparents who also encouraged me to read (and often read to me).

Some of my earliest memories include bedtime when I was in my crib and my mother would make sure I had my 2 favorite teddy bears, my stuffed dog, stuffed mouse, a stack of books, and the night light was left on for awhile so I could flip through the books and look at the pictures. I still have a few of those books, including an old cloth-bound atlas that my mother used in school back in the late '40s/early '50s. That atlas is partly why I'm on this forum right now, because my 2-year-old self loved books and became intrigued by maps. I couldn't read any of the names of the countries or geographic features yet, but that would come a few years later. I was reading basic stuff at age 4, and after starting school at age 6 (no kindergarten), I consistently tested several grades ahead of my peers in reading and writing.

So was this an "unfair" advantage? I don't think so. There were certainly things other kids had that I didn't, so it pretty much evened out in the long run.