From: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Doman and the Better Baby Institute
Date: 15 Aug 92 04:32:47 GMT
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <18249@polstra.UUCP>, by larryba@polstra.UUCP (Larry Barello):
> Does anyone out there have experience with early childhood home teaching?
> In particular the stuff promoted by Doman and the Better Baby Institute.
> We have read "How to multiply your babies intelligence" and other Doman
> books.  We have also started on some of the programs.  It seems to work,
> yet I wonder if this is the best way to give our children the proper
> start in their educational career?
>
> Any thoughts on how these programs dovetail with structured pre-school
> like Montessori?

The folks over on sci.psychology seem to think that Doman is a flake who's
out to get your money. I personally have no opinion of the man himself,
having never read any of his books or heard any of his spiel. But they
point out that his program has never been studied via a blind controlled
experiment to see whether it actually does work better than the "normal"
pre-literacy practices.

I do recall, however, a study which followed a number of youngsters and
discovered that the youngster's reading ability at age ten was
uncorrelated with the age at which the youngster began to read (from ages 3
to 6, at least). I also recall another study which noted that youngsters
whose parents "took them everywhere" did better in terms of language skills
and reading development, even when "everywhere" was to mundane
non-kid-related places like the grocery store or dry cleaners. And finally,
there is an extremely high correlation between overall language development
and proficiency as a reader -- kids who talk expressively, in complete
sentences with reasonable grammar, comprehend better and read faster than
kids whose language skills are less highly developed. And finally, in
another study of children who taught themselves how to read, there was one
common denominator: ALL of them had been read to by their parents from an
early age, generally with the child sitting on lap and the parent tracing
along the words with a finger. As a former library clerk, I have to admit
that I'm biased here, but I'll repeat what I often say -- use your library.
Reading books to your child, discussing pictures in wordless "board books",
and so on and so forth, are all very good language exercises and accustom a
child to the concept of a "book" and reading.

Regarding intelligence testing: the WPPSI and WISC-R are most often given
to children. They measure a number of different skills, all of which have a
common denominator: they are learned skills (as Sandra Scarr at the U. of
Minnesota found out during her famous study of black infants adopted at
birth by white middle-class parents -- they had the same IQ as white
middle-class kids, despite the fact that their relatives growing up in a
black ghetto had an average IQ of 89). I don't know about Doman's "increase
IQ" claim, but it is conceivably true, as long as you are talking about the
particular learned skills involved in intelligence testing.

Before you come back with, "well, IQ tests are normed," IQ tests were
normed on kids who did not have the opportunity to "study" for the test. IQ
tests are like any other type of test: if you practice the particular
skills measured by the test, you will do better on the test, an average of
twenty points better in the case of the Minnesota adoption studies. That
"IQ" score gotten from a test means, in the end, that you have scored that
particular score on that particular test on that particular day. I
seriously doubt whether the black babies adopted as infants by white
middle-class parents were any more or less intelligent than their black
siblings raised in the ghetto... they were just better at answering the
sorts of questions asked by IQ tests.

In other words, Doman may "increase IQ". It is unlikely that he increases
inherent intelligence. You may wish to ponder whether the time spent
teaching the skills measured by IQ tests could be better spent teaching
more age-appropriate skills, such as language skills and social skills.

---
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.sccsi.com         Dodson Elementary
 (713) 437-6908  uunet!nuchat!elgamy!elg      Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"