Part of Gove’s comment reflects age-old stereotypes that the wealthier classes are much more educated. I believe that part of what is occurring now in schools is a sort of backlash against modern technology. Literacy and reading have been brought to the forefront of the educational debate, particularly with programs such as Teach For America that brings its own literacy-based methodology to lower income schools. When you think about it, 50 books does seem like an awful lot, considering the amount of time students now spend on the internet, either on Facebook, YouTube, or other similar sites. Part of the issue is that they lose an intrinsic part of childhood and education as they move away from books and other physical forms of literature, such as magazines or newspapers. Life becomes much more abbreviated, limited to what can be fit in a Facebook status or a 140 character tweet. Children lose the opportunity to create an individual experience and imaginary world when they rely solely on visual interpretations offered in films.

Educators and the media have noted this decline in book consumption for the past few years and trends continue to point towards the internet. Considering the fact that kids under the age of 13 now own cell phones or electronic tablets, every aspect of a child’s development is impacted by technology. Furthermore, another point Gove makes that is particularly important is that educators and parents work towards convincing students to read books for more than just exams; one concern the Education Secretary had is that students only read 1-2 books a year, in order to prepare for the GCSE, a state exam similar to our SATs.

On the flipside, however, in the United States, eBook sales within the teen fiction market have done particularly well, according to the NYTimes. What might account for this success is the attraction to eReaders and similar devices. Perhaps the best way to address the drop in reading, at least among different groups of kids, is to find a good way to promote eBooks to educators as educationally valuable. One interviewee said, ““There’s something I’m not sure is entirely replaceable about having a stack of inviting books, just waiting for your kids to grab…but I’m an avid believer that you need to find what excites your child about reading. So I’m all for it.”

Part of our mission at Speakaboos is to foster a love for reading based on traditional stories and characters, in a modern way. The storybook videos invite kids to read along with the stories and oftentimes, hearing a story aloud can help children develop greater oratory skills. Like many other people, I don’t believe that there will ever be a good replacement for a physical book. Few things can completely replace the experience of changing pages (and possibly getting papercuts!) or the overall interaction. On a level, it is separate from watching and hearing a story on a digital screen, in that reading is much more active. That said, life sometimes gets in the way. Reading does take time – and some parents just don’t have that. Electronic readers, tablets, and/or iPhones with book Apps may prove useful to those who want to encourage their children to read but can’t sit to help teach their kids how to pronounce each words. That’s where narrated eBooks come in.

Barnett is said to have an IQ of 170 (just a few points higher than Albert Einstein’s). Says the Daily Mail, “The boy wonder taught himself calculus, algebra, geometry and trigonometry in a week, is now tutoring fellow college classmates after hours.” If he does manage to solve some of the equations he’s set aside for his doctoral program (many of them involving complicated astrophysics and theoretical physics), Jacob Barnett may be in line for the next Nobel Prize.

But things are not all golden for the “boy wonder.” Barnett suffers from a mild form of autism known as Aspergers: “A syndrome that is similar to autism, but with the distinction that those with it typically function better, have normal intelligence and near-normal language development.”  Jacob Barnett is considered a savant — “a rare condition in which people with developmental disorders have one or more areas of expertise, ability, or brilliance that are in contrast with the individual’s overall limitations.”

Mr. and Mrs. Barnett report that their son often has trouble sleeping at night because he sees numbers in his head. A professor at IPIU says, “When he asks a question, he is always two steps ahead of the lecture. Everyone in the class gets quiet. Poor kid. . . . He sits right in the front row, and they all just look at him.”

We can only guess what Jacob Barnett will uncover in his research as he gets older.

The child, a first grader at Edgewater Elementary, could die if she comes into contact with any trace amounts of peanuts. School officials have devised special precautions to ensure her safety while in the classroom. According to Fox News:

Students must now wash their hands and rinse out their mouths before they can walk into their classroom.Desks must be regularly wiped down with Clorox wipes.All peanut products have been banned.Snacks are no longer allowed in class. Even outside food is no longer permitted for holiday parties.

Many parents feel that these restrictions constitute “special treatment” and take time away from learning in the classroom. Their solution? Throw the girl out of school and make her parents home school her.

But as District Spokeswoman Nancy Wait explained, removing the girl from school would be a violation of the Federal Disabilities Act, “It would be the same thing as putting a handicap ramp for a student that is physically disabled. The only difference with this is that is affects other students.”

Disability Act or not, many parents are still taking time every day to stand outside the elementary school with picket signs. No word as to how students actually feel about these new precautions. One reader  on Jezebel.com wrote:

“Kids are supposed to be tactless, they haven’t learned better. That’s what adults are supposed to be teaching them. Their parents seem to be teaching them, “Whine and gripe enough, make other people feel awkward and uncomfortable enough, alienate people who are different, and things will always go your way!”

Are these parents setting a bad example for their children? Or has the “special treatment” for this one student really gone too far?

“Those who get anxious think that education is like a race and you’ve got to get running fast, and if you don’t you’re going to fall behind and then you’re going to lose the race. That’s not the right way to look at education.”

It seems private schools are worried about putting too much pressure on kindergartners. Yet many educational experts stress the importance of early reading in mental growth.

This educational technique comes to light just as Professor Ronald Ferguson, founder of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University,  extolled the importance of early reading — and continued reading — as a key factor in intellectual expansion and the narrowing of America’s racial achievement gap:

In a wealthy suburb he surveyed, 40 percent of blacks owned 100 or more books, compared with 80 percent of whites. In first grade, the percentage of black and white parents reading to their children daily was about the same; by fifth grade, 60 percent to 70 percent of whites still read daily to their children, compared with 30 percent to 40 percent of blacks.

The average Manhattan private school may not be interested in the narrowing achievement gap. But are private educators doing children a disservice by delaying reading until first grade? What do you think?

The article boldly states, “A study of 11,000 seven-year-old children found that those with parents in professional and managerial jobs were at least eight months ahead of pupils from the most socially disadvantaged homes, where parents were often unemployed”

These findings collected University of London’s Institute of Education come just three months after British Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, spoke at the Hugo Young Lecture of 2010 about the Labour Party’s commitment to ending poverty in UK  before sheepishly suggested that ” good parenting could make a bigger difference than class to the destiny of a child.”

Clearly the UK, like the rest of the world has serious “class issues” that undoubtedly effect the progress of children. But to say that parenting has no effect on the success of one’s children? Without knowing the specifics of how the University of London conducted its study, it’s hard to say whether this data is really statistically significant (and the Guardian neglects to provide its readers with any such information). But it seems like data is being presented for political, rather scientific means here. What do you think?