Salon.com > Janet Hopson http://www.salon.com Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:24:51 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Can babies read? http://www.salon.com/2012/09/12/can_babies_read/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/12/can_babies_read/#comments Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:08:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13009032 Pacific Standard The video clip on Larry Sanger’s website shows the cofounder of Wikipedia looking both scholarly and paternal with his owlish glasses, thinning pate, open book, and lapful of chubby-cheeked 3-year-old. Sanger’s son is gazing hard at the book pages and pronouncing words with the charming r-lessness of a toddler: “Congwess shall make no waw wespecting an establishment of wewigion or pwohibiting the fwee exewcise theweof or abwidging the fweedom of speech or of the pwess…” It’s not clear whether the boy is working toward a doctorate, like his dad's, or training to be our future pwesident. But it is stunningly obvious that the boy is sight-reading the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution at an age when most tots can’t tell an a from a b. When an influential philanthropist viewed the video, says Sanger, “he was gobsmacked.”

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