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<div>[Please note: I'm cross-posting this to both Linganth and
Anthro-L.]</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I encountered this column by William Raspberry in the Florida
Time-Union this morning; apparently it appeared in the Washington Post
a few days ago (we're always behind in Florida).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40302-2003Aug24.html</div
>
<div><br></div>
<div>The column reports on a book, *<font face="Times" size="-4"
color="#000000">Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of
Young American Children*, by Hart and Risley, published in 1995. The
principle findings, as reported by Raspberry, are:</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" size="-4" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<blockquote><font face="Times" size="-4" color="#000000">* Verbal
stimulation (roughly the number of words a young child hears at home)
may be the most important predictor of the child's future academic,
economic and social success.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Times" size="-4"
color="#000000"><br></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Times" size="-4" color="#000000">* The
difference in the amount of verbal stimulation received by children of
poor families and those of the middle class is so huge as to be
essentially unbridgeable.</font></blockquote>
<div><font face="Times" size="-4" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" size="-4" color="#000000">It seems that these
differences are being invoked as a main factor in the poor school
performance of children from lower class and working class homes. My
initial gut-level reaction (without having read the book) is one of
cynicism: that this *sounds like* another round of blaming the victims
for being part of a system that is not prepared to deal with the
(normal?) diversity that one expects in a society of this size. But I
wonder what others might have to say about this, if
anything?</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" size="-4" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" size="-4" color="#000000">(I'm tempted to
write a letter to the editor, but the Times-Union never published my
last one on the bilingual ed/official English thing, so it's probably
not worth the effort.)</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" size="-4" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
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<div>Ronald Kephart<br>
Associate Professor<br>
Sociology, Anthropology, & Criminal Justice<br>
University of North Florida<br>
http://www.unf.edu/~rkephart</div>
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