Why Your Child May Not Be a Genius
Dr. Benjamin Spock, author of what's often called the instruction manual for kids, told parents,
"Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do." Of course, he also wrote hundreds of
sometimes intimidating pages filled with other advice and information. Many parents, on getting
the always popular and heftier than ever Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care, decide that
they know far less then they think they do. Still, "Trust yourself. You know more than you think
you do," is both good advice and a fair representation of Dr. Spock's approach.
According to a new parenting book, Einstein Never Used Flash Cards by child
psychologists Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Diane Eyer, that message
may be needed now more than ever. They argue that the omnipresent pressure to boost
intelligence by cramming classes and rote memorization into babies and young children relies on
misinterpreted science and empty marketing. This "flash card" approach, they argue, takes
parents away from easier and more personal methods of teaching.
It's easy enough to see the marketing strategy at work. Just walk into a toy store or flip through a
parenting magazine. Toys aren't toys anymore. They all claim to be educational. You can buy a
rattle specifically designed to give early lessons in physics. Plastic bowling sets have numbered
pins to sneak math lessons into a session of Knocking Things Down. ("Now were you trying to
hit the three pin? Because I specifically asked you to add the two pin to the four pin.") Parents
can easily feel like they're cheating their kids if they aren't using every moment as an opportunity
to elevate future IQ scores. Hell, if baby formula can provide brain-building chemicals, "Baby
Einstein" CDs can play neuron-stimulating melodies and flash cards can teach from the
collection at the National Gallery of Art, your only excuse for not having a child genius is that
you didn't care -- or spend -- enough.
"Marketers of products for babies sensed a breech they could jump into and have eagerly
blanketed the parents' world ever since with a kind of running advertisement about the need to
manage the baby brain," the authors write. This pressure has given us a new way to keep up with
the Joneses. Hang around parents of young children long enough and you'll hear some sort of
bragging about how bright their children are. Parents will tell you when their kids learned their
letters, how they finished an entire song in music class, how they have the diction of a fifth
grader, and even how often they win at CandyLand -- a game of pure chance.
Recent studies, heavily hyped in the media, have warned parents that their children's
development has a deadline and they may have already missed it. The Mozart Effect, for
example, theorized that listening to classical music or absorbing other highbrow information at a
young age boosted intelligence, and told parents it was never too early to start college prep. The
conventional wisdom has also touted the idea that early childhood stimulation fosters neuron
growth, which in turn leads to more intelligence. In short, the more flash cards, the more
Einsteins.
The authors of Einstein Never Used Flash Cards argue that this approach to parenting has
robbed children of their childhood and suspect that it, in fact, hinders their ability and desire to
learn. They provide clear background for these ideas as well as some healthy skepticism,
pointing out that while in the preschool years our brains grow at an accelerated rate, we actually
need to "shed" these neuron pathways as older children and that more pathways may actually
hinder intellectual growth. They also make the obvious point that a child drilled with
meaningless facts and forced repetition may grow to resent even the idea of learning.
While this is all soothing news to the stressed parent, much of it is also common sense. If you
find yourself scolding your daughter, "Come on, that's a ankylosaurus. You know that one," it's
time to take a breath. And drilling your child with Museum of Modern Art flash cards won't
guarantee him a perfect SAT score and it probably doesn't even teach him the difference between
Keith Haring and Jasper Johns. He would rather be reading Dr. Seuss. Or fingerpainting.
What could be better to learn words than The Cat in the Hat? Or better to learn colors and
shapes than finger-painting? Einstein Never Used Flash Cards maintains that natural and
fun play is the best way to teach a young child to love learning. The authors repeat
"PLAY=LEARNING" many times. Instead of memorizing tables of numbers, kids probably
learn more math from card games. Similarly, the authors maintain that standardized testing of
pre-schoolers and kindergartners reveals only "surface markers of achievement." The tests fail to
measure whether the children understand concepts, are prepared to learn rather than perform, and
have developed crucial social skills.
The most interesting parts of the book dealt not with the frequently dubious claims of hyped-up
magazine articles ("BABY BRAIN BOOSTERS") but with these steps of child development.
The incremental breakthroughs needed to recognize letters or count are described as the little
victories they are. The authors even provide techniques to determine your child's progress. For
example, they detail the different ways a child can count and what this reveals about their
understanding of quantity and numbers. I found these portions instructive, but I'm not sure what
the book's target audience -- Type A harried parents -- would make of them. Instead of bullying
their children to learn their numbers, will the parental brain trainer simply have a new set of
hurdles and drills?
The book contains another schizophrenic element. While the portions about cognitive science
and the flaws of certain studies are succinct and clearly written, the narrative examples are
riddled with heavy-handed caricatures. And the attempts at humor are of the parenting magazine,
isn't your car messy variety. It's not hard to recognize a group of academics -- three
Ph.D.'s between 'em -- trying to write for a mass audience.
The advice in Einstein Never Used Flash Cards is basic, but still valid. It's almost
certainly unfair to bring up the American Bible of child-rearing, Dr. Spock's Baby and Child
Care, in comparison to a rather specialized parenting book, but I'm struck by how often items
like these remind parents of common sense. Of course, parental expectations and fears can be so
intense that we confuse good advice and bad science, common sense and dubious marketing.
Sometimes, we need a reminder.
— 24 February 2004
