The fallacy of "educational" toys

And an announcement for readers

Dear readers,

As you likely noticed, I haven’t posted much original writing recently. I have been intensely focused on building the Young Wanderers classic literature program as of late, which has taken up (in all the best ways) much of my writing time. Because I haven’t been delivering original content each week, I have decided to pause paid subscriptions. I am immensely grateful for each and every subscriber, but especially so for those who pay to keep the writing flowing.

As far as delivery of the newsletter is concerned, you won’t notice a difference. I will still publish original writing, and the Education, Serialized section of this newsletter will continue as usual (currently, writing by Mason and Dewey each week), but I will keep paid subscriptions paused until I am able to get back to writing worthwhile posts at least once a week.

Thank you for your understanding. And below you will find a less-than-worthwhile ;) post for your reading pleasure.

Samantha

To be considered an educated person, one must have a bank of knowledge, but having a bank of knowledge does not necessarily mean that one is educated.

Toys for kids these days have many capabilities and contain a lot of information. They teach children numbers, colors, letters, shapes, names and sounds of animals… Sometimes, a toy aims to teach a child all of these things at once. Depending on which button you push, and how many times, a toy may respond with the color of a shape, and then, the next time you push the button, the number of animals, and then, the next time, the sound the animal makes. Toys also often play music and teach you about their function—e.g., a vacuum cleaner that sings and a toolbox that spits out facts about tools.

These toys put children in a state of sensory overload, override the child’s imagination, and attempt to jam-pack a child’s brain with information that they may not be ready for—kids don’t need to know their shapes at 12 months of age—and are devoid of context.

Notably, some brands intentionally do not create talking, singing toys because they recognize, or at least claim to, the importance of allowing children to use their imagination to create the function and narrative of their toys.

But, nonetheless, the toys with all of the bells and whistles are popular. I suspect one of the reasons that parents are drawn to gadgets that claim to teach children their colors, numbers, and letters is because they think their child needs to start learning these things from birth to prepare them for school. And, sadly, to some degree, they are correct. Children are expected to have banked a certain amount of information before they show up for their first day of kindergarten (sometimes even preschool).

But there seems to be a misunderstanding about the value of knowing one’s shapes, colors, and animal sounds. Parents, and even some teachers, think that the ability to regurgitate this information is a sign of being educated, but it is not. Even memorizing the alphabet, letter sounds, and numbers up to 100 is not a sign that a child is educated. Rather, knowing what to do with letters and numbers is what signals the degree to which a child is educated.

Companies like VTech and Leap Frog market their toys as educational, but really they are informational—sometimes, to a degree that is overwhelming. They no doubt help children recognize colors and shapes and so forth, although there are other, and I’d argue better, ways for children to learn these things. But, a child does not walk away from these toys having been educated.