a little background

I want to throw out a semi-apology for my last post.  I failed to give any background information, hence the uncharacteristic rant about consumerism.  Here is a short blip to clarify:

As you probably know, I work with children - I am a nanny.  I work with two different families that have two very different philosophies on parenting and what childhood should look like.

One family has ALL of the Baby Einstein books, movies, CDs, and toys under the false impression that these items will make their children smarter.  In reality, they are merely books, movies, CDs, and toys labeled with a genius's name to make parents feel better about sitting their kids in front of a TV instead of really playing and learning.  TV shows disguised as "Preschool on TV" (a.k.a. Nick Jr.) are still just TV shows.

The other family uses as little technology as possible, because they believe very strongly in traditional child-directed play.  When a television show is supposed to teach a child about proper social interactions (as are many that run on a daily basis), would it not be more effective to have the child actually play and interact with other children and learn by experience?  This family has given me several books to read and websites to check out based on this philosophy, as well as other parent/educator topics.

As a result of their philosophy of technology, these things have been running through my mind the last couple of months, and finally ran out into something coherent.  Yet its validity was lost when I cited nothing, gave no background information, and essentially spewed it out at you, the reader.  For this I am sorry.