Message For Parents – A home Library Can Have A Powerful Effect On Children

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By Mayukh Saha / Truth Theory

As per a newly published paper, most households in the United States of America have an average of about 114 books, which is a rather good number to have. The authors of this paper conducted their research based on their study of nearly 189,000 adults from the year 2011 to 2015. This research yielded the result that the households which have 80 books or more were able to raise individuals with considerably higher acumen for numeracy, information communication technology skills (ICT), and numeracy. It conclusively raises these points:

  1. A child that is raised in a house which has at least 80 books will have higher literacy and skill in their later life.
  2. Having a library at home can encourage math skills and inculcate reading habits a lot more efficiently than even college on its own can.
  3. A home that is pro-learning will lead to an individual growing up to become a knowledge seeking individual.

The research is indicative of the fact that being raised in a household with readily available knowledge enhances grown-up skills in the aforementioned areas. These cannot be acquired by singularly relying on parental education, occupational learning, or even your own education.

This enhancement of learning was particularly immense. It was found that individuals studying in high-schools from homes with libraries were just as numerate, technologically apt and literate as their older counterparts from Universities who had access to just a small number of books while growing up.

Quantity is Not the Only Important Factor

The previously mentioned scholarly article is led by a faculty member of Australian National University, Dr. Joanna Sikora. The research states that the adults who hailed from households with 81 to 349 books had the best qualitative improvements over the formative years of their lives. No further improvements were achieved with households with more number of books than the above mentioned range.

Regardless, the constituents of your library differ from where you live in the world. The largest collections in the world were of Scandinavian families: 13% of Swedish residents and 14% of Norwegians had libraries with more than 500 books in their households. On the contrary, only a few countries have lesser than 81 books on an average in their households: Singapore, Turkey, Italy, Chile, and Greece.

The Effect of Non-Paper Books

A justified question to raise would be regarding the influence of the steady growth of the digital media, to be specific, the growth and consumption of e-books. The research paper understates the effect of this rising trend in its conclusions. It states that considering the consumption of print media to be obsolete at this juncture of time is rather premature. The reasoning behind this logic is that currently, large digitized libraries are equivalent to big paper ones. Household library sizes are positively correlated with higher digital literacy. Thereby, the research indicates that for a foreseeable span of time, the interaction of tangible objects of intellectual learning, i.e. books will exert consistent and continued benefits in a growing child.

So why are home libraries helpful?

The research is indicative of two factors which come into play in this scenario. First is the effect of being raised in a pro-learning social atmosphere. The introduction to books during childhood and adolescence is a vital component that instills long term intellectual aptitudes. In addition to that, these abilities not only assist occupational and educational attainment, but also promote the practice of life-long habits that improve numeracy and literacy.

Even The Annual Cost of College Tuition Fees is higher than the Cost of 80 Books

This research discovered that graduates from universities who were raised without having access to a lot of books available to them had approximately average levels of literacy. Hence, it is not unreasonable to draw the conclusion that owning books at home is certainly a very good investment towards the future of a child. The authors maintain that in terms of literacy, adolescence with a good amount of books readily available to read creates excellent scholastic benefit in their adulthood.

The findings of this study should come as a welcome surprise to families all over the planet that are not able to afford a college education for their kids. Having books at home can significantly provide necessary assistance in math skills as well as reading proficiencies without the cost of higher education.

For the fortunate families that can afford to send their children to Universities, the research indicates that raising children in a household with an atmosphere of learning might be essential to obtaining the utmost benefit of higher education. It goes without saying that it prepares an individual for higher accomplishments in their adulthood.

Hence, it can perhaps be subjectively identified that books, in all their supposed “inflated glory” are truly beneficial to our mental development throughout the formative years of our life. It has now been supposed by scientific data. So next time, don’t judge someone for reading a book in public and start reading yourself.

IMAGE CREDIT: Tyler Olson

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