Following up on Jon Udell’s “Mechanical Memory” post, I submit this quote from deep in a Globe And Mail article on Slow Schooling:

“U.S. developmental psychologists Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek’s book Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn — And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less hits bookstores next week. Prof. Golinkoff, who has spent her career understanding how the human brain works, decried the ‘roadrunner society’ that tells parents to accelerate children’s brain development.

Some earlier research has been misinterpreted, she added, to produce the notion that ‘if you don’t pour it in by the first three years, your kid is doomed. Your kid will never see Harvard.’ This idea that children must be constantly at work, she said, is folly: ‘We don’t need people who can spit back facts. We’ve got Google.’”