Why reading to your child is a waste of time

I bumped into Andy on the way to work this morning, he told me about an interesting-sounding book "Freakonomics" that his dad is reading. This sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't say why. It turns out that the Times article I'd been reading on the train 20 mins earlier and was intending to blog is an extract from that book! So destiny demands the following posting:

You thought you knew how to be a parent? Wrong: it isn't what you do, it's who you are
by Steven Levitt
Times 2 - Cover Story
22/06/2005
An American economist has overturned our assumptions about society's ills in a new book, Freakonomics. In our first extract the crucial factors that will determine a child's success - or failure - at school are outlined

Consider the following list of 16 factors. According to the ECLS data, eight of the factors show a strong correlation — positive or negative — with test scores. The other eight don’t seem to matter. Feel free to guess which are which.

1. The child has highly educated parents.
2. The child’s family is intact.
3. The child’s parents have high socioeconomic status.
4. The child’s parents recently moved into a better neighbourhood.
5. The child’s mother was thirty or older at the time of her first child’s birth.
6. The child’s mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten.
7. The child had low birth weight.
8. The child attended Head Start (America’s pre-school programme for children from low-income families).
9. The child’s parents speak English in the home.
10. The child’s parents regularly take him to museums.
11. The child is adopted.
12. The child is regularly spanked.
13. The child’s parents are involved in the PTA.
14. The child frequently watches television.
15. The child has many books in his home.
16. The child’s parents read to him nearly every day.