Before I give you the details of this study, or even tell you what it’s about, I’m going to give you the surprise ending
first: bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Here’s the study:
Researchers found that playing with blocks helps young
children gain language skills. Why the doubt? Why the hostility?
Because this small study was funded by
Mega Bloks, which is owned by Montreal-based toy maker MEGA Brands Inc., who
make … BLOCKS!
Parents who participated in the study were given ideas of
how to play with their children and blocks. They kept diaries of how they
played. And they assessed their children’s language.
Incredibly, language scores for the kids who played with
blocks were 15 percent higher than those who didn’t. So the block makers, who,
remember, funded the study, concluded that unstructured block play stimulates the rapidly developing kid brain. OK, I'll buy that. And that's linked to language development? Hmmm. I'm not convinced.
Maybe the great ideas the “researchers” gave
to the block parents for playing with their children involved hours of one-on-one play and lots of ... talking. "Blue block, punkin', blue block." "Boo bok, mama!" It's working!
Did they try using trains instead of blocks, because something tells me they'd get the same results. What about sticks? Or cotton balls? Was it the blockiness of the blocks that fired up those synapses and pulled together Subject-Verb word order? Or was it the fact that the television was off and mommy or daddy was sitting there giving baby loads of (no doubt recommended by MEGA researchers) quality face time?
I don't mind that a group studied kids playing
with blocks, which are classic toys undoubtedly beneficial for learning all kinds of neat things. But the researchers were out to find a connection between
playing with blocks (the company's product) and pace of early language
development (a potential marketing hook and every parent's favorite milestone) and they did. Soon, we'll be
reading ads for The Building Blocks of Language by MEGA.
