Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Because Einstein Was Well-Known for His Happiness
From an AP report:
The mother who launched the Baby Einstein children's video empire by making videos in her basement for her own children says she's stung by a controversy over whether the videos help babies learn or get in the way — and insists they were never designed to make infants smarter, only happier.
...
In an interview, Aigner-Clark said she stands behind the videos and that they were never designed to make children smarter. The point, she said, is to make them happier by exposing them to "beautiful things" such as art, music and poetry.
Meanwhile, the NYTimes op-ed page found an author trying to sell her new book,“Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five.”
Only 17 percent of 384 babies in the survey were put in front of videos for an hour or more each day. The average baby watched only about 9 minutes a day. Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that the national average may be a bit higher — about 13 minutes a day. And babies’ total screen time, including television, DVDs and even computers, according to Kaiser, is higher still — about 49 minutes per day. But the alarming finding from the University of Washington survey applied only to baby videos. Television time, in contrast, seemed to have no effect, good or bad, on babies this young.
I don't see how this helps the Baby Einstein case, to say that the TV time doesn't hurt, but acknowledge the video time does?

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