The democratic brain

I often saw advertisements around town that your kids will become smarter by signing up some sort of "mind-opening" or "skill-nurturing" programs in the early childhood (of course, with fees paid). And as long as parents believe so, it means business for the program providers, and in fact, it turns out to be quite easy to get parents to believe that your programs will "stimulate their children's brains and optimize their potential", and your business is guaranteed. Pure psychology. No hard proof needed!

But it does not seem convincing or even logical that the brain will learn better if it is exposed to a particular type of stimuli. In early childhood, the human brain should have the ability to train/develop itself from any available stimuli, or precisely, our brain should find the ingredients it needs for its development among the external stimuli it is exposed to. What it actually looks for seems to be a mystery. The choice is more likely to be controlled by DNA. Intentional presentation of specific types of stimuli should have some, but very limited, influence on the brain's development. At the end, any stimulus that we (the parents) intentionally present to a child is not making any significant difference as the child's brain will manage to find what it needs out of the available stimuli. My theory is that we have to let the brain choose. A child may get as much from just daydreaming as from a Kumon class. The point is that the brain could get even better training in the process of daydreaming too if it really likes to do it!

Question: How many big names out there were once trained in the ways claimed by those mind-opening courses?

January 2010