Your Baby Can't Read*

Have you ever been up late at night flipping through the channels on the television? If you have, then you have probably seen the hoards of infomercials that pitch “the next great product” to the viewer. On any given night, you can see a wide variety of products that are being advertised. In an insomnia-induced trance at about 3 in the morning last week, I flipped on the television. Of course, there was nothing good on, so I left it on one channel that caught my attention.

On this infomercial, a middle-aged man narrated something like this: “What if I told you your baby can read? Well, it’s true. Our scientists have come up with a way to teach your baby to read.” I was immediately hooked. The commercial went on to show children under the age of 4 reading the words that their parents showed them on flashcards. Words like “dog”, “cat”, “word”, and “ball” were being shown to these kids and they would say them aloud. I was blown away.

I wondered if this could possibly be real. I was immediately skeptical, for obvious reasons. These kids can’t even walk on their own or make a legitimate sentence, and they are reading words one after the next. On to Google.

After reading numerous reviews, I was slightly taken back at the negative comments, but was even more blown away by the positive reviews that people were actually giving this product. “My three year old son has been using the product for about 6 months now and he can read some words out of books and magazines.”

The product uses videos shown on a television to “enhance memorization skills”. Now I was beginning to understand. Many of the negative reviews online stated that the product only allows children to memorize the shapes of the words, not actually learn the letters and put them together to form a word. Nevertheless, these children are technically reading.

Okay, it works. So what is the big picture here? For starters, we are screwed.

The creators of this product are absolutely insane. What could they have possibly been thinking to influence them to make a product like this? In kindergarten, most of us were taught to read by a specific, proven-to-work method—the same process that has always been used. Learn the individual letters, put the letters together to form words, and put the words together to form sentences.

This “innovative” product is teaching children to memorize the shape and length of the words, and recall that information. In other words, it is teaching children the wrong way to read.

Are you proud of your 3 year old that can read the word “jam”? Wait a couple years until they go to kindergarten. Their whole process of learning to read and process words will be turned around completely, and they will get behind. There are numerous studies that have proved it.

Just a few weeks ago in the State of the Union, President Obama addressed the poor education levels in our country. Products like this one I saw on the television is not going to do anything to help this problem. It will further increase the problem, if anything. These parents trying to get a head start on the education of their babies are really creating a barrier in the education of their children.

You cannot expect a three year old to be able to read under any circumstances, so why try? Effective parenting in our country is degrading quickly, and that has to be a reason why the United States is ranked 9^th in the world in literacy rates.

Products like this should be outlawed in our country. They are holding our children back from making the United States a leader in education. I’m looking at you, Congress.