Baby Einstein DVD's recalled/refunded

[Drtooth]

Anyone else hear about this? I admit, I felt an air of celebratory smugness on this one.

Apparently some child advocacy group, Commercial-Free Childhood (a company I LOATHE, and I will go onto later) threatened a lawsuit about the outstanding claims these DVD's promise... you know, how watching these will make your baby smarter or something like that? And there were all those pediatric studies that said that these videos have no more effect than watching flashing colors on a strobe light...

So what does anyone else feel about this? As much as, again, I loathe this advocacy group (you know, the road to Hades is paved with good intentions and all) I think this strikes a blow against the new model of educational products trying to appeal to younger and younger ages.

That said, I really want them to take down those extremely bogus "Your Child Can Read" systems that they all the time advertise on infomercials.

 

[Scotter]

I know that you dont mean that that could be news for the mom's

 

[D'Snowth]

It's almost kind of like Teletubbies - everyone talked about how it pretty much was like a reversal effect as far as "educational" television is concerned... the babyish gibberish, the simplisity of it all, etc.

Ironically though, from what I understand, THAT show came to be from a concept for a TV-Y7 rated sitcom about space explorers.

As for Baby Einstein, I have to admit, I never thought it was SUPPOSED to be educational, but rather, instill a love of music into kids, because everyone's so hot about how music is "dying" these days and all that jive about high schools and colleges fighting to keep music classes and programs alive.

 

[Drtooth]

It's almost kind of like Teletubbies - everyone talked about how it pretty much was like a reversal effect as far as "educational" television is concerned... the babyish gibberish, the simplisity of it all, etc.

I think the underlying problem in that show is that it was very British... if you see a lot of British kids shows, they have some sort of something that doesn't translate well over here half the time. I stumbled upon something called "Boo" where a character "hides" and everytime a character is found, we have a chorus of children going "It's sleepy bear" or something in a sing songy voice. In fact, a lot of British kids shows have people who talk in a quiet sort of voice. There's a cartoon called Pog and Pib or something that's a great parody of these shows.

Other than that, I never liked how it came about as a show for infants. But then again, Mommy has to do something with 2-3 year olds when they need to do some laundry or something. My problem is that educational values don't get implanted until they're old enough to form a comprehensible or working memory.

As for Baby Einstein, I have to admit, I never thought it was SUPPOSED to be educational, but rather, instill a love of music into kids, because everyone's so hot about how music is "dying" these days and all that jive about high schools and colleges fighting to keep music classes and programs alive.

I would get that logic... but you could just as easily sell CD's. In fact, if they just toted this as a CD program to instill calming classical music into infants, there would be no problem. It's when they got to be about early developmental educational values that it lost its credibility with true experts. And somehow, parents were so eager to buy these things up because they'd think their kid would be ahead of everyone else in school years and years from then, leading them to get solid well paying careers (doctors, stuff like that). And as the studies show, they really don't make a difference until age 3.

 

[D'Snowth]

That's very true, they could have very well done this as a CD set, but I'm guessing someone in the research-and-development department decided that just simply listening to classical music wouldn't stimulate the kiddies' minds nearly half as much as it would if there were moving pictures to go along with it.

Funnily enough, my math teacher in Grade 6 would play classical music in the room whenever we had tests... that bugged all the other kids, because my middle school was in the ghetto, and all those kids hated classical music, lol. However, I can't really see a whole lot of concentration getting done if rap and hip-hop was playing in class during tests, lol.