Seminar 14: Presentation Day 4

This week's two presentations were interesting. The Baby Einstein presentation touched on a lot of aspects that had been covered by several colleagues, but added some new points that added and extended to the findings. Although the presenter argued that Ms. Aigner Clark had good intentions, I find it very difficult to alleviate her of all the responsibility. When someone is making a product for any group of people, it is important to ensure that the product does in fact do what it was intended to do. This must apply even more so when the population in question is young children and mothers who are desperate to find a solution to their constant stress. The Baby Einstein seems like a 'gift' for most of these moms. In the past several weeks, I have met several more mothers, some of whom are pediatricians and they have expressed how much they love the Baby Einstein DVD's and citing that they have at least 10-15 of the videos at home. It irks me to find out that if the American Academy of Pediatrics' message isn't even being heard by the pediatricians, then who is listening. Are recommendations being made and falling on deaf ears? What is the point of doing all this great research on television and very young children if not even the most qualified doctors in the field don't follow it. The fact is that Baby Einstein is simply too easy. It alleviates parents of their responsibilities and makes them feel good that their kids might be learning. In terms of child rearing, our society needs to make a serious paradigm shift. We need to all start realizing that the 'easy way' is more often than not, the wrong way! I think this change needs to start with authority figures, psychologists, doctors, politicians, people that have the power to change the way society works. I know that the change will take a long time, but we have to start slowly by convincing parents that they themselves may in fact know the best way to rear their children.

Here we see the fall-out from the Baby Einstein campaign for the refund: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/education/10baby.html

It's scary what some companys will do to try and clear their name.