Bob Iger Argues for Baby Einstein’s Merits

Just saw this on DIS News: The Walt Disney Company is demanding that University of Washington retract its Baby Einstein study. From Bob Iger’s letter:

The study fails to account for, let alone assess, the interactive nature of products such as Baby Einstein, seemingly dismisses the importance of interactivity as a factor by assuming without proof that interaction is equally important regardless of content design, and then undermines even that unproven assumption by conceding that the study “cannot capture the quality of [parent-child] interactions, which surely vary.”

While it is indisputable that children develop at different rates and differ in their innate abilities, there is no attempt to control for these differences which are particularly important in the sample of younger babies.

Iger would seem to be agreeing with Sarah, who posted yesterday on my blog that the results of the University of Washington survey just suck.

My scientific mind would like to see more studies. As a parent, my gut feeling and anecdotal experience say that talking to your kids is a more effective way to teach them language than any other method (surely that’s how evolution should have set things up here). Don’t go thinking that this means I didn’t let my kid watch Sesame Street videos though . . . I can sing Ernie’s greatest hits with the best of ’em.

Baby Einstein Not So Smart After All

From the DIS News:

Researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle say that baby DVDs and videos – such as “Baby Einstein” – are different from beneficial children’s programming because they have little dialogue, short scenes and disconnected pictures and show “linguistically indescribable images such as a lava lamp.”

The researchers found that for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than babies who didn’t watch them. Their study was published Tuesday in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Want to help your baby’s language skills? Don’t put on a video, just have a nice little chat.

Racial Profiling at Downtown Disney?

Disney’s been ramping up security at Downtown Disney, in the wake of an alleged (but highly doubted) abduction. (They say that’s not why they’re ramping up . . . but I’d be surprised if this event and the national attention it received hadn’t influenced priorities.)

What worries me though . . . is that the Orlando Sentinel reports today concerns that Disney Security may be disproportionately handing out warnings to teenagers of color:

Out of the 50 warnings issued last weekend, the Sheriff’s Office was able to find only 40 of the reports. Warnings were issued to 20 young Hispanic males, 19 young black males and one young black female.

None came from Orange County, the location of Downtown Disney. Eleven were from Osceola County, 11 from Lake County, 11 from Polk County, five from Georgia and one each from Arizona, Texas and an unreported location.

One of the teens told never to come back asked why no whites were among those warned about trespassing.

“A whole bunch of white boys walked by yelling and stuff, and they didn’t do nothing to them,” said Michael Washington, 16, of Polk City.

Let’s hope that Disney sets things right quickly. Racial profiling isn’t just unfair, it’s also ineffective. Need to understand the issues better? ACLU’s got the scoop for you.