Baby Einstein is offering a refund for its DVDs writes Daniel Willingham asking his usual question:*
"How can science reporting and education be improved so that consumers will not be susceptible to subtle marketing campaigns that play on misunderstandings of scientific findings?"
It's a question I've asked before too. (In fact, it's been a bit of a theme.)
Of course, it's completely the wrong question.
Blame Teletubbies
Baby Einstein didn't do what it was supposed to do (it didn't, erm, turn your baby into Einstein. . .) but some TV programmes are even worse; according to Literacy Today in 2004.
". . .watching Teletubbies was negatively related to both vocabulary size and expressive language use. . .
Teletubbies features poor language models (primarily vocalisations and single-word utterances). Those children who did view the programme tended to produce more vocalisations and fewer single and multiple word utterances than those who did not view, suggesting that children will model or imitate what they see onscreen."Blame the pressure to publish
You would be forgiven for reading the article and coming away with the impression that Teletubbies is bad for children. You would also be forgiven for reading the article and deciding that it's entirely empty of meaningful content. (My summary: we tried an experiment which didn't work the way we expected, so we analysed the heck out of our data until it yielded something we could publish.)
Blame Game
There's little substantial difference between this and the Tinky Winky controversy in which the eponymous Teletubby was 'accused' (sic) of being a gay role model by Jerry Falwell and investigated by the Polish Ombudsman for Children. (Incidentally,it's not just Tinky Winky. Apparently all the Teletubbies are fomenting the rejection of the Christian paradigm.)
Blame Politicians
Some of the objections to Teletubbies were more insidious. Steven Byers, then Minister for School Standards said they exemplified the dumbing down of culture.
Blame your colleagues
A colleague of mine recommended the Baby Einstein DVDs to me. A teacher, she gave me lots of good reasons why I should stick my children in front of the idiot-box to watch them. But I resisted (and now I get to say, "I told you so). Why did I resist?
Blame the parents
I'm a snob. I don't let my children watch TV. Even if Daniel Willingham himself had imploringly thrust the DVDs into my hands I would probably have found a way to do something else. I don't have any real evidence that TV is a negative influence (other than that, like everything, it's harmful in excessive amounts). My opinion of TV is based on aesthetics.
All of the humbug about Teletubbies came after the opinion was formed.
Hang the blamers
There's a common image of people with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. The reality's more like this: a lynch mob rampaging through your mind, razing reason with whatever weapon they can get their hands on. Sometimes the nearest weapon to hand is science, sometimes aesthetics. They're both potentially just as flawed.
Blame hormones
The last post here was on Learning Styles, which many people respond to in basically an aesthetic mode. Here's a post called No, I’m Not A “Coach” — And You Shouldn’t Be, Either which seems to be largely an aesthetic judgment.
Blame my exquisite sense of taste
I would never use Comic Sans, even though many people say learners find it the easiest to read of all the available fonts. Some feel the same way about 'informal learning', 'learning 2.0', 'unLearning' - you name it. People are making decisions and posting blogs based on aesthetic principles.
Your workplace learning strategy is being decided based on whether it's (a) funky or (b) reputable. You have no chance at all of persuading the reputables to get funky.
Only ourselves to blame
Daniel Willingham wonders how to make consumers less susceptible to subtle marketing campaigns. He really should be asking how to make people more susceptible.
Credits: @techerding for the post on coaching (which I mostly agree with) and, especially, @usablelearning for this post on cognitive bias which includes an essential reminder of why the lynch mob is so important (see the bit about Damasio).
*You could say I'm a fan of the 'usual question'. Not just this one, but anybody who has one. If you haven't got one, I would seriously think about getting one if I were you.
Just in case you were wondering, this is what Steven Byers, Minister for School Standards and nemesis of dumbing down, grew up on:
[Image: Indypendent]
1 comments:
Study shows no appreciable link between watching kids' DVDs and language learning.
Why does it have to be about learning language? Shouldn't they be studying whether kids are learning how to, erm, watch DVDs?
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