Re:I hate this tag, but... (Score 5, Informative)

Your points 1 & 2 are precisely the same conclusion drawn by Dubner and Levitt in Freakonomics. They make it in reference to a program the city of Chicago enacted to send books to kids in hopes that they would get smarter by osmosis or something. You'd think by the off-handed way the Freakonomics reference was made that the submitter would've recognized that. I guess reading the allusory material is about as highly regarded as reading the original article around here...