Bill Cosby and Thomas Sowell have traced success in education and in life to culture. Here's an article that indicates culture may be highly significant, and in ways we didn't expect. What seems to make the difference in education is not so much any particular tricks, but an overall culture that respects education.
But the ECLS data show no correlation between a child's test scores and how often his parents read to him. How can this be? Here is a sampling of other parental factors that matter and don't: •Matters: The child has highly educated parents. •Doesn't: The child regularly watches TV at home. •Matters: The child's parents have high income. •Doesn't: The child's mother didn't work between birth and kindergarten. •Matters: The child's parents speak English in the home. •Doesn't: The child's parents regularly take him to museums. •Matters: The child's mother was 30 or older at time of the child's birth. •Doesn't: The child attended Head Start. •Matters: The child's parents are involved in the PTA. •Doesn't: The child is regularly spanked at home. <snip> So it isn't that parents don't matter. Clearly, they matter an awful lot. It's just that by the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it's too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago - what kind of education a parent got, how hard he worked to build a career, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children.
The time to start preparing for raising children is when the parents themselves are children.
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