The R&D Department of Life

The front page of the Post tells me "your baby is smarter than you think"; well, when the boys actually were babies, I always suspected they were smarter than me, anyway. What I had on my side was experience-based cunning.

The difference between teaching children and teaching adults, I'd been taught, was roughly the same: Children learn more easily, in fact without even meaning to, but adults make up for it (almost) with background knowledge and motivation.

A researcher at Berkeley has concluded that the kids, even in babyhood, have the advantage:

Ms. Gopnik argues in the book [The Philosophical Baby]that babies' brains are far from a blank slate, and are instead more highly connected than adult brains -- more neural pathways are available to babies than to adults.

She thinks this is why we humans have

"this long period of immaturity, much longer than any other creature . . . It seems babies are meant to spend that time learning. They're like the R&D department and then we, as adults, put that knowledge to use."

Not that this means you should go the superbaby route, with constant flashcards and extra classes. As I said a moment ago, kids learn almost by accident. And when they're motivated -- which can't be forced -- they can learn at a rate that would drive an adult brain crazy.

Alison Gopnik herself "went to an ordinary public school and attended neither enrichment programs nor special summer camps", and look where it got her.