This post may be quite a bit off topic, but in the spirit of providing a blog about excellence in education I have decided to post this article here.

In an era of electronic entertainment, the term “home library” increasingly has the word “video” in the middle. But before parents start giving away books to clear shelf space for DVDs, they’ll want to consider the results of a comprehensive new study.
After examining statistics from 27 nations, a group of researchers found the presence of book-lined shelves in the home — and the intellectual environment those volumes reflect — gives children an enormous advantage in school.
“Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s occupational status and other family background characteristics,” reports the study, recently published in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. “Growing up in a home with 500 books would propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average, than would growing up in a similar home with few or no books.

Home Libraries provide a huge Educational Advantage  Miller McCune April 8, 2010