troy:
I guess I'm leaning towards CK's view, but I'm not averse to programs, etc, that encourage people to do the right thing wrt their children. I dunno, tax rebates for people near and below the poverty level who take their kids to the museum 12 times a year or volunteer at their school 12 times a year? Extended funding to head start? Intensive propaganda, er uh, public awareness campaign (similar to the anti-smoking stuff going on right now) to make parents understand that they have the ability and responsibility to talk to their kids.
ck:
I recall (as usually it's a vague recollection and I could have misremembered the facts) but I think I recall a discussion on npr a while back about a group of intellectuals that grew up in war ravaged europe just after wwii. They did not have proper schools, paper, books, or much of anything else. But apparently they grew into a group of great intellectuals. (I can't for the life of me recall who these guys were.)
bill:
I'm a wealth of unsubstantiated rumor today. Regarding your friend's comments, I recall an interview E.R. Braithewaite gave concerning students at Howard university where he referred to the misfortunte of students with vocabularies of like 300 (or maybe it was 3000) words. I remember wondering if that was hyperbole.
It strikes me that the word vocabulary is ambiguous and I've heard the term "functional vocabulary." There are words that people have seen or can figure out and there are words that people know and use with ease. It could be that the difference in counts could reflect a difference in understanding of what is meant by "vocabulary."
k
