KEY POINTS:
Rapt silence is not a natural state for my young daughter, and it is this that draws me into the living room early one Saturday morning in mild concern. She is sitting, my usually loudly effervescent 2-year-old, in the middle of the sofa, her eyes trained on the television, mouth agape.
Unresponsive to my arrival, she remains utterly transfixed on the colourful cartoon that is unfolding on the screen. I look too, and see one character, with enormous Asiatic eyes, dancing in her back garden with one of the rings of Saturn which, just moments earlier, had come loose from its planet and drifted gently through the universe and into her midst. Though she seems taken with her new, if frankly unlikely, dance partner, she is sensible enough to realise that it needs to be escorted back home.
So she and her three friends take it back in their rocketship all, presumably, before dinner time. En route through space, they encounter slow-motion asteroids, the occasional evanescent moon and a million stars. Classical music, which I'd be able to name were I a classical music buff, lends the unfolding action even more of an hypnotic grace and, together, my daughter and I watch as they travel light years in this most bewitching of fashions.
As it happens, silence is not a natural state for me either, so before long my wife comes into the room, similarly concerned. "What happened?" she asks. "Why are you both so quiet?" She sits alongside us, and I begin to tell her about our discovery: Little Einsteins, an altogether unusual kids' cartoon which goes where few others dare to tread.
Exposing its malleable young audience to ideas clearly above their station, it mixes music with art and the ability to transcend time zones (and ozones) in a matter of seconds. As we watch on, it becomes increasingly precocious. When the characters want their rocketship to go faster, for example, they don't simply say the word "faster", but rather "allegro". They don't say "stronger", but "fortissimo". We are, each of us, hooked and within a week's worth of viewing, my daughter is able to distinguish Venice from Florence and Vivaldi's Four Seasons from Grieg's Peer Gynt, thereby presumably transforming herself into precisely what it says on the DVD box: a little Einstein.
In a world otherwise dominated by Laa-Laa, Po and their other Teletubbie friends, can this possibly be true? Here is what we know of kids' TV: it is bad and ruinous to health, it can lead to obesity, and is ultimately a poor substitute for what all our offspring really desire - the attention of their parents.
There have been studies published to suggest that overexposure to television can have many detrimental effects and can even hinder speech development in the very young. Here is something else we know of kids' TV: that while it may prove temporarily diverting to our children, it is nothing less than torture for the rest of us, an overload of grating sing-song irritation in neon colours that we will do anything to avoid watching, even if that means becoming attentive parents in the process.
"That's what we refer to here in the US as The Barney Effect," says the children's TV mogul Eric Weiner. "Barney was a show that young kids absolutely adored a few years back but that parents hated so much they would end up hiding the tapes rather than having to suffer them again." Weiner, the executive producer of Little Einsteins, was at pains to avoid this with his own show: "We wanted to create something that didn't dumb down but rather something that parents and children could watch and enjoy together. I hope that is precisely what we have achieved."
It certainly stands out from the crowd and though Little Einsteins (playing on Playhouse Disney channel daily) may well stride into the realm of pretension, you cannot help but applaud its lofty ambition. Aimed at pre-schoolers from the ages of 2 to 5, this is a proactively educational cartoon that aims to mix fun with learning. It revolves around four friends: Leo, a skilled musical conductor who uses his powers in music to "conduct" his way out of sticky situations; his sister Annie, a singer and impulsive lyricist (to the tune of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 5 in D Major, for instance, she sings: "Use your hands for turning, turning, turning / Clapping, clapping / Up, down"); Quincy, a multi-instrumentalist virtuoso; and June, a dancer with perfect pirouetting poise.
Each episode comes accompanied by a piece of classical music and a work of art, both elements becoming an intrinsic part of the narrative. Picasso, Rousseau, Warhol and Haring have all featured in the art section.
"It's pretty wacky, really," Weiner confirms, "and follows no real internal logic. We can pick, say, Beethoven's Ninth, mix it with the paintings of Van Gogh, and then send them on a mission to Mexico ... Disney, the parent company behind the show, was a little sceptical at first.
They did wonder whether children could really appreciate wall-to-wall classical music," Weiner admits. "But the wonderful thing about pre-schoolers is that they don't judge anything or anyone. They don't see this as particularly cultural; it's just music to them, and rather beautiful music at that. Our aims are actually pretty simple here: to make TV that nourishes."
Little Einsteins is the work of film and television production company Curious Pictures, which has its headquarters in an unshowy building in downtown Manhattan. Scant natural light permeates the grated windows, and upwards of 60 coffee-fuelled animators are hunched over angled computer screens, in the process of mixing real footage of, say, the Galapagos Islands, the Wild West or Antarctic penguins with two-dimensional cartoon characters hungry for adventure.
Eric Weiner himself makes for a very unprepossessing big cheese around here. A 50-year-old dressed in a button-down shirt, chinos and the kind of trainers that would suggest he jogged here this morning were they not quite so boxfresh, Weiner first made his name in kids' TV on the Emmy-nominated Dora the Explorer, a cartoon about a bilingual heroine of Latin American origin.
Brought in by Curious to inject a similar level of pep and imagination to Little Einsteins, he has overseen all 65 episodes since it first began in 2005. It now screens in 72 countries across the world. Weiner's show is clearly keen to introduce children to everything our planet has to offer. Hence the air-mile-gobbling rocketship and to hell with the carbon emissions.
"The concept of travel," he explains, "came during our research process. We went to schools here in Manhattan and asked kids if they could go anywhere in the world, where would it be. The most popular answer was the One Dollar Store right here in town, the second most popular answer was New Jersey. This suggested to us that their worldview was actually rather tiny. We wanted to open them up to wider possibilities, to Europe, to the wonders of the rainforests, to outer space."
The use of art came largely, he continues, because art is "beautiful to look at", but it is the classical music, and its reliance on musical language, like "legato", "crescendo" and "ritardando", that seems to elevate this show into something more determinedly high-falutin'.
The show's musical adviser is Cordelia Bergamo, a Manhattan teacher of 35 years' experience and a woman with all the poise of a minor royal. Seated in a corner office within Curious, and appraising me over a pair of reading glasses that pinch the end of her nose, she tells me that modern music ("like," she shudders, "rap") fails to elevate people to a higher level of thinking. Classical music does.
"At its heart, classical music has a simple beat, and all children feel a beat," she says. "We all have a heartbeat, don't we? And we all have a need to be centred to it. Why else do you think that in every culture the mummy will pat her baby's hands together? Rhythm! And rhythm is central to all learning, to math, to language; it's the key to everything. I cannot," she sighs, clutching at her breast, "think of anything more satisfying to a child than rhythm."
But all music possesses a rhythm, I say, so couldn't lullabies or even pop music be just as effective here? Bergamo angles her face down a degree or two, and frowns. "It wouldn't work as well," she states. "I'm sure some pop music may possess something of a melody line, but nothing touches the heart strings, my dear, quite like the melody of a piece by Beethoven or Brahms, Bach or Stravinsky."
Later, I speak to another of the show's consultants, Anne Lund, a developmental psychologist and mother of a 16-month-old son who is a fan of the show. Lund explains that Little Einsteins is unlike other children's TV shows because it is rigorously tested along every step of its creative process by the most critical of judges: its target audience. "We visit schools throughout the five boroughs of New York and beyond," she says, "right from storybook stage through to the finished product.
It's called 'formative testing' and it is highly useful. If Hollywood did this," she smiles, "we'd have much better movies than we do, I'm sure. What we do is watch the children watching the show and gauge their responses, then ask them a series of questions both as a group and as individuals. Anything that doesn't work with them, anything that sends them off to play with Mr Potato Head instead, immediately gets rejected.
By the time it reaches the screen, it has been very stringently honed." As for whether its deliberately highbrow bent strives towards transforming children into geniuses or at the very least precocious brats, Lund insists that, "it would be impossible for me to say that early exposure leads to increased mental capacity. That's not really what we're about, anyway. In [the US], children are watching a lot of television, quite possibly too much, and it is having all manner of negative effects on them.
But there is no escaping it: TV is a major part of our culture, it's not going to go away, and so Little Einsteins just wants to raise the bar a little, to give our children something to learn from as well as laugh with. There is a lot of bad TV out there. This is one of the good ones." In many ways, the show's makers have been rather shrewd here. Given the blanket criticism of the so-called "electronic nanny", it makes sense to play towards the conscientious parent's sensibilities.
If we are going to allow our children to watch TV at all - and that, almost inevitably, is a certainty - then we are far more likely to be drawn towards something informed by high art than, say, a collection of oversized puppets who speak in mono-syllabic honks. The show's impressive global viewing figures suggest that this approach has worked terrifically well. "That's exactly the game they are playing here," confirms Frederick Zimmerman, an associate professor at the University Of Washington.
"After all, they named it Einsteins for a reason: it's basically a giant marketing ploy. That's not to say it is necessarily bad, because it isn't, but I wouldn't buy any claims that suggested a show like this could ever intellectualise our children." Zimmerman asserts it is unlikely that any show aimed at such a young audience can ever have a discernible impact on mental capacity, but he concedes that Little Einsteins does appear more directed at upper-middle-class families with at least one eye already on university applications.
"Should we try to give our children a head start, a leg-up?" he says. "Yes, I believe we should, but I don't think parents should feel like they have to turn their kids into brilliant students even before they have started kindergarten." "I actually hope that's not how [our show] is viewed," counters Eric Weiner. "We've undertaken advertising campaigns to underline its inclusiveness to all. Also, we make a point of testing the show with pre-schoolers across all socio-ethnic lines.
And you know what? Whether we've tested to inner-city kids or to children from the suburbs, it has always had a similarly positive effect. I actually think a lot of the time we underestimate just what children can understand and take in. They are smarter than we realise." And that, presumably, includes 2-year-olds. But then this is representative of a recent marketing phenomenon known as Kagoy: Kids Are Getting Older Younger.
"These days, 8-year-olds are watching what 12-year-olds once watched, which means that 2-year-olds are watching what pre-schoolers watched," says Zimmerman. "If you look back to our generation, we didn't start watching Tom and Jerry until we were 4 or 5 years old, and cartoons were restricted to Saturday mornings. Now there are whole channels devoted to them. The median age these days for kids starting to watch TV is 9 months old. That is really very young."
The fact that there has yet to be any definitive proof that exposure to material like this is in any way beneficial to increased cognitive development is certainly borne out in my own (admittedly unscientific) studies. Several months into watching Little Einsteins, my daughter is showing precious few signs of budding genius. She may know her Venice from her Florence, but she referred to a plum as a pear the other day, and in moments of heightened emotion, she can refer to me, rather distressingly, as "Mummy".
Nevertheless, for what it is, the show has opened her eyes to the wider world. And it is in this way, says Zimmerman, that the show makes its biggest impact. "I think it's really important for us to encourage a love of learning in our children early on, to help arouse a passion for discovery in them, because kids are all natural scientists anyway."
Anything that exposes them to this, he concludes, can only be a good thing. And so we continue to allow it to be a part of our daughter's life, each 24-minute episode not merely an opportunity for her to learn but, perhaps more pertinently, a chance for my wife and me to take things a little adagio, to have ourselves some dimin-uendo time.
We're grateful for it.
Play school
Buzz!
The questions in this lively quiz game should go some way to showing exactly what your little darlings have been doing in the classroom. It sounds almost too worthy for words but Buzz! is an entertaining game that wears its learning lightly. Played on PlayStation 2 and suitable for up to four players, the title comes with a clutch of chunky buzzers contestants use to answer a possible 5000 questions on topics from the weather to ancient Egypt. Parents can adjust the level of questions to suit their children and themselves, too.
$70-$100 from game stores.
Dr Kawashima's Brain Training
Described by its creator as "a treadmill for the mind", Brain Training is a computer game dedicated to boosting brain cells rather than blasting aliens. Played on the Nintendo DS, the title is packed with tasks that aim to stimulate the mind and improve the memory. Counting, calculating and reading aloud are some of the challenges that are used to assess the player's "brain age". The aim is to reduce this figure by regular play. While the title has been a best-seller with adults, there's plenty here to stimulate younger minds too.
Around $60 from game stores.
Smart Globe
Any globe makes an excellent addition to a child's bedroom but, to maximise the learning potential of a quick spin, investing in a Smart Globe is a clever idea. This sphere of learning comes with a special pen that little learners use to navigate the planet, discovering facts about geography, climate, population and politics. There are three age settings, multi-player games and an interactive guide to flags and national anthems. There's also a USB cable to connect it to the internet for updated information on world news.
$199.99 from toystoystoys.co.nz
Cranium
Nintendo may be feeling smug thanks to the huge success of its Brain Training games, but it's not the first games company to disguise mind-expanding exercises with play. In Cranium, players must complete a range of tasks from the silly to the skilful, including backwards spelling, word games, sketching and crafting items out of clay. The challenges are genuinely stimulating and, better still, fun. Ideal for over-10s and for dinner parties too.
$60 from book and toy stores.
- Independent2
