The Racial Gap of Leisure Reading

Mark Bauerlein discusses a correlation that I hadn’t considered before: the race and reading habits of teenagers .

When we look at the results broken down by race, more concerns arise. Table 11 doesn’t separate racial groups into age groups, but the racial groups in general show marked differences that likely are reproduced for the teen category alone. Whites come in at .31 and .37 hours on weekdays and weekend days, respectively. Blacks come in at half that figure, .17 and .18, even though blacks have more leisure time than whites (5.61 hours to 5.14 hours per day). Hispanics have less leisure time (4.89 hours) and pile up even less leisure reading (.15 and .11 hours on weekdays and weekend days).

There is one other wide difference that is reflected in college achievement. Teenage females have much less leisure time than do males (4.82 to 5.57 hours per day), but they log more minutes of leisure reading (.33 to .24 weekday hours, .38 to .29 weekend day hours).

These numbers confirm the rule that the more young people read on their own, voluntarily, the better they do in school.

Read more . . .

(Via: Tim Challies )