The Baby Einstein Brouhaha

Link to October 29 School Library Journal post, "Librarians: Forget Baby Einstein, Try Reading".

OK, let's not get too smug here. (I know, popular materials, patron demand, and all that. They're important elements of collection development.)

(Click on screenshot to enlarge image.)

Excerpt: Librarians and media specialists are secretly saying "I told you so" about the Walt Disney Company’s decision to issue a full refund on the Baby Einstein videos that parents have bought by the millions over the last five years.

While stopping short of admitting that the 30-minute videos, which often feature classical music or introductory sign language lessons, didn’t turn babies into geniuses, the extensive refund offer from Baby Einstein does acknowledge a growing dissatisfaction and skepticism among researchers, educators, and certainly parents, that the DVDs are unlikely to speed up developmental pathways among infants.