Interesting study reported in The Atlantic …
A pair of psychologists – Betty Hart and Todd Risley – got curious about why some 3 and 4 year old kids are more academically ready than others.
“They devised a novel (and exhaustive) methodology: for more than three years, they sampled the actual words spoken to young children from 42 families at 3 different socioeconomic levels: (1) welfare homes, (2) working-class homes, and (3) professionals’ homes. Then they tallied the quantity and quality of the words spoken to the kids. “
The results were – in the words of the researchers – “astounding”…
The Homa Files 