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Dumb Toys

Read this really insightful article on dumb toys making smarter kids. The author describes the huge improvements in his son's math and reading abilities on account of his addiction to Pokemon cards. I have no first hand experience with this being that J dislikes all things Pokemon. As the author points out Disney is yet to do Snow White or Cinderella trading cards. Even if they existed, it would be interesting to see if little girls were even interested in them. Po Bronson says

"Our son taught me an extremely valuable lesson. When it comes to kids, we often bring moralistic bias to their interests. There’s a pervasive tendency in our society to label things as either good for children or bad for children. Cultivating children’s natural intrinsic motivation requires abandoning all judgment of good and bad content. Society has a long list of subjects that we’ve determined they should learn. "
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