the toys developed by the Infant and Toddler Division be tied to academic research on very young children, which has boomed in the past decade. In the baby division, learning has more or less been codified by a special document, about which people speak with hushed pride. This document is known as the S&S, short for Scope and Sequence.
Scope and Sequence, a term borrowed from academia, refers to a curriculum plan in which educational objectives and skills are mapped out according to the stages at which they will be taught. At LeapFrog, however, the S&S is jokingly referred to as “the secret weapon”: It is the basis on which the division’s toys are designed. As such, the S&S is guarded with extreme care. Only producers who are given clearance to work on it can access the document on the company’s computer network. Only one hard copy is permitted to circulate internally at any given time; additional printouts are strictly prohibited. When analysts or journalists meet with the Infant and Toddler Division to learn about how LeapFrog applies its distinctive brand of “learning” to toy design for this age group, the producers clutch the well-worn S&S and refer to it by opening the pages gingerly, cupping their hands to keep outsiders from stealing a glance. Producers say that the S&S is kept secret because it contains the key to LeapFrog’s unique competitive advantage in the zero-to-three market. They explain that the S&S is the product of years of data compiled from books, academic journals, and parenting magazines on infant and toddler development, as well as discussions with experts, and thus is grounded in serious research. While competitors may incorporate a general learning lesson into their toys in order to market them effectively to mothers and retail buyers, LeapFrog is able, thanks to the S&S, to design toys that pinpoint specific areas of learning targeted to precise ages.
After assuring themselves that I am not spying for a competitor, the producers grant me a brief chance to examine the S&S. The document, which is constantly being updated is between fifty and one hundred pages in length. Essentially, it is an enormous chart with correspondingly enormous ambition: to catalog every developmental skill from birth to two years. One axis lists a specific age or range (such as six months or six to twelve months); the other axis itemizes the developmental skills associated with that age or range. For example, under the subheading “Memory,” one finds the entry “cognitive mapping” — basically, the ability to remember where things are located — listed as a skill correlating with the age of six months. If these terms sound as though they were lifted from a textbook on early developmental psychology, it is because most of them were. Although most LeapFrog producers are not academics, there is nothing inappropriate about adopting academic terminology to identify developmental milestones to clarify specific phenomena and behavior.
But in many cases the terms used to categorize developmental milestones suggest that little children will be learning academic subjects. For example, according to LeapFrog’s S&S, the twelve-month-old developmental milestones of shape recognition and perception of spatial relations fall under the heading “Geometry.” Also, a single developmental milestone often appears under several headings. Shape recognition, for example, turns up under “Early Reading” as well as “Geometry.” This semantic shift is striking. There is a substantial difference between using academic language for the sake of precision and using it to convey an academic objective. When asked about the rationale behind their choice of language, producers contend that the reasoning is not flawed in any fundamental way. Although it may not be literally accurate to characterize shape recognition as an example of the ability to formulate geometric proofs, they argue, it is legitimate to suggest that by mastering these developmental skills, infants and toddlers are building the foundation for grasping advanced mathematics later on. It seems odd, however, that after identifying developmental skills with such precise academic terms, producers would then shift to loose, bendy language in categorizing them. What’s going on?
THE “LEARNING” LINE
Producers admit that one of the larger purposes of the S&S is to establish a curriculum for infants and toddlers, one that LeapFrog hopes might ultimately serve as a government-sanctioned standard. Since President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which compels public schools to comply with specified academic standards, even state pre-K programs have been obliged to conform to standards published by the states’ departments of education. Teachers and heads of schools must painstakingly comb through book-length guidelines and cross-reference them with their teaching plans to make certain they are in compliance.
At the 2004 annual conference of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), in Anaheim, California, an entire track of speeches and seminars was devoted to complying with standards without sacrificing young children’s developmental need for play. But even as such seminars were under way in the conference rooms, the main exhibit hall was lined with booths of companies marketing prepackaged preschool curricula, reflecting the big business that has bubbled up since passage of the No Child Left Behind Act. Now the standards-based trend is beginning to trickle down to even lower ages. Over the past few years, the daycare industry has begun to feel pressure to offer parents some assurance that their infants and toddlers will be prepared for preschool. LeapFrog spokespeople explain that this situation offers the company a strategic opportunity. Through its School-house Division, LeapFrog already sells LeapPads and other products to kindergartens and elementary schools. If LeapFrog can create and standardize a curriculum for babies and toddlers, the company will be in an excellent position to market products in large volume directly to daycare centers. LeapFrog already has a substantial foothold in the daycare business. Its parent company, Knowledge Learning Corporation — owned by the erstwhile junk-bond trader Michael Milken — completed mergers with the nation’s two largest daycare chains, Children’s World and KinderCare, in 2005. Today the company operates in thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia, with nearly 2,000 daycare centers, over 500 school partnership sites, and more than 120 corporate daycare centers.
The S&S also serves several other functions. Every time a new product goes into prototype, producers check off the skills it supports on the S&S grid. They consult the S&S during brainstorming to see what has been checked off and where the holes are; holes represent opportunities for new products. But before moving forward with a concept based on these holes, producers consult with LeapFrog’s focus-group researchers to find out what mothers have been saying. In the world of the zero- to three-year-old, mom is the primary consumer, and today’s mom is well aware that very young children are far from blank slates, that they are capable of learning a great deal.
However, today’s mom is also wary of fast-tracking her little ones. For example, LeapFrog’s market research department noted that many mothers wanted to start a comforting, nurturing bedtime reading routine with their infants and toddlers. Producers consulted the S&S, and the ensuing marriage of these two varieties of research resulted in the Touch and Tug Discovery Book, an electronic toy that straps on to the side of a crib and can also be detached and used as an “interactive book”; a recorded voice reads stories and, according to the enclosed pamphlet, “When playtime is over, the included soothing music and lullabies are an excellent way to calm baby as he drifts to sleep.”
Mothers also told researchers that they wanted to introduce their children to music, which they knew was important developmentally. But any product linked with classical music — particularly Mozart — would make them feel that they were trying too hard to turn their babies into geniuses. It wouldn’t make learning feel like fun. After consulting the S&S, producers came up with the Learn & Groove Activity Station, which features a rotating plastic disco ball and a toy version of a rap-era turntable — both artifacts of Mom’s own early childhood, when the Bee Gees ruled on radio, and, later, of a Grandmaster Flash–era adolescence.
LeapFrog has learned that “learning” must feel like fun. The company identifies itself as a maker not of “educational” or “developmental” toys but of “learning” toys. While there is only a shade of semantic difference in that distinction, it is a significant difference in marketing terms. Producers and executives at LeapFrog, like their competitors, say that the term “educational” harkens back to the achievement-driven yuppie era
