Babies Can Read

Babies Can Read: How and Why!
By Eliane Leao

Yes, babies can read. Here we present how and why.

Our challenge lies in understanding how and why babies learn to read. Is it a difficult task? Maybe it isn’t -- once we take into consideration the amount of works written on childhood development regarding other age groups. Teaching the baby to read and explaining what happens inside and out of the baby is a post-Piaget or Vygostsky issue. It doesn’t imply questionings like appropriate linguistic training nor does it make the pre-op child overcome difficulties his/her thought process might find only in the operatory plane. The reading done by babies results from a mechanism which precedes these problems, and it is developed despite the theoretical disputes of the how it is processed (Piaget) or the how it is expressed (Vygostky).

However, it finds in both all of its fundaments. In Piaget, unseen by him at the time he developed his research, a time in which he explained how the process was possibly occurring in a structural construction level and that of inner structuring maintenance, there remains the truth that it is the child who constructs his/her own knowledge of the world. In Vygotsky, there remains the truth that we must value the role of the intermediator in the learning process. In other words, the mother who plays with the baby provides him/her with the opportunity of contact with knowledge in such a way that it would be impossible were the baby alone.

Based on what’s been stated, we can affirm that it is not us who teach; it is the baby who learns. When Piaget says that language is no self-sufficient condition, nor is it necessary to the acquisition of concrete operations, we agree -- and can verify such truths. However, when it comes to babies, some special considerations must be made. The baby who has the words already read and not yet spoken, which, to him/her, are whatever objects with concrete and significant meaning of that which he knows in his/her mental life (because s/he has reference points in real life, the medium) presents a more rapid development than expected. Then, the appearance of precocious verbal expression is made possible, the baby demonstrating no later problem with orthography, mathematical reasoning, and other external manifestations dependant upon the expression of the intellect. This more rapid development leads to a more advanced mental adaptation.