Oh, I’m loving this. Don’t you see–if you look at the press release about the suit, you’ll see that they are resting on the Today Show report about YBCR, which was a joke. See my review of the Today Show segment here: http://larrysanger.org/2010/12/today-show-reviews-ybcr/ It was ridiculously biased.
If the litigants are suing on the basis of THAT, they’ll fail, big time. The press release even says, “The experts all agree that children cannot really learn to read until they are 4 or 5 years old because the brain has yet to develop the cognitive ability.” That children can learn to read before the age of four, using YBCR, is one the easiest things to prove, out of all the possible criticisms one can make of YBCR. There are LOTS and LOTS of kids who have learned to read before the age of 4, who used YBCR.
BTW, I have no relationship to YBCR myself. See http://www.larrysanger.org/ . I am a supporter and satisfied customer, so much so that the non-profit I work for has purchased copies of the kits to place in Memphis-area preschools, and we are sponsoring a study of the program’s efficacy. This is one of five studies that I have heard about. I’m guessing that the studies are going to shame the supposed experts, as well as winning the case for YBCR against these money-grubbing lawyers.
Quite ridiculous really, but of course someone will do this. Especially after the Baby Einstein lawsuit. I’m not saying the videos are in any shape or form alike, but they are both videos for babies that people expect to turn their kid into some kind of prodigy just by plopping them down in front of the TV a few times a day.
When will people get it through their thick heads that if they want their kids to succeed they might actually have top make them priority number one rather than putting them in the hands of the TV and waiting for miracles to happen.
Big fan of YBCR by the way as my son and my young nephew both learned to read initially through this program and further developed through LR. I must say though that I would like to take some credit as without our involvement I doubt he would have had so much success so quickly.
How long will the study be? Starting with preschoolers is much different than starting with a 3 or 6 month old baby. That one would also be very interesting. I suppose that with this forum users you can get a lot of material for that but maybe it is difficult to capture measures and put them together.
Thanks for sharing your points of view.
this forum was the first place i heard about the YBCR lawsuit. it motivated me to finally get a Youtube account and upload some video of my daughter, Amelia, reading. she started with YBCR at around 3 or 4 months. now at 2.5 years she surprises people by reading their t-shirts (though i haven’t got a video of that yet)
Great video–priceless to see Amelia signing words she cannot read aloud. That can’t fail to make a big impression on people!
Re the study, we’re not doing the study, we’re just help paying for it. So I don’t know the details. It’s going to be fairly short, not a longitudinal study. Just a YBCR “before-and-after” study. Focus will be 2-3 year olds, instead of babies, for reasons I won’t go into…
I still desperately want to do an online survey of early-educating parents. I might have time to help with this soonish.