Suspect results

I've got to quibble with the assumptions of researchers who found that books of poetry inhibited a student's academic achievement scores (ez may want to read the blurb before this on white voting behavior and African-American GOP candidates). Anyways, apparently books in the home are good things for academic achievement, unless they are books of poetry:

A research team headed by demographer Jonathan Kelley, of Brown University and the University of Melbourne, analyzed data from a study of scholastic ability in 43 countries, including the United States. The data included scores on a standardized achievement test in 2000 and detailed information that parents provided about the family. The average student scored 500 on this test.

The researchers found that a child from a family having 500 books at home scored, on average, 112 points higher on the achievement test than one from an otherwise identical family having only one book -- and that's after they factored in parents' education, occupation, income and other things typically associated with a child's academic performance. The findings were presented last month at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in Los Angeles.

Of course, it's not the number of books in the home that boosts student performance -- it's what they represent. The researchers say a big home library reflects the parents' dedication to the life of the mind, which probably nurtures scholastic accomplishment in their offspring.

They also found that not all books are created equal. "Having Shakespeare or similar highbrow books about bodes well for children's achievement," they wrote. "Having poetry books around is actively harmful by about the same amount," perhaps because it signals a "Bohemian" lifestyle that may encourage kids to become guitar-strumming, poetry-reading dreamers.

First off, Shakespeare wrote in verse, not just in the sonnets, but in all the plays. I don't actually ever recall reading any Shakespearean prose. So that in and of itself should invalidate this study.

And do we really have to go into the inadequacy of standardized achievement exams in measuring academic aptitude?

And finally - "guitar strumming, poetry reading dreamers?" So musicians and poets are a bunch of dumbfucks incapable of succeeding in school?

Demographers can tell us some wonderfully useful things. However, they should stay away from such inane research hypotheses as they one they cooked up here. And the WaPo and its columnists should maybe be a little more critical in their reporting (hello war cheerleaders!).