It would be more helpful to ditch the 'myth' that age-segregated classrooms are an improvement over the one-room school house.<p>It used to be that education was something people did for themselves. Parents or a teacher would help children learn what they wanted to learn, when they were ready to learn it. Modern schooling forces children to learn on the teacher's schedule.<p>John Taylor Gatto wrote extensively of the corrupt nature of institutionalized schooling 15-20 years ago. I guess it's not polite to point out that the system is rigged against children, so Mr. Gatto's insights into more effective teaching have been successfully ignored in recent years.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Main_thesis" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Main_thesis</a><p>"Against School: How Public Education Cripples our Kids, and Why" - <a href="http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm</a><p>Archive.org should have the complete text of "The Underground History of American Education", which was formerly posted in its entirety at <a href="http://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com</a><p>Also search for "I quit, I think", and ... "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher"... several copies of these essays are scattered around the internet.
This myth has always particularly annoyed me. It's like when people say "I'm a visual learner". Of course you are. You are a human being. We all learn things more effectively when they are displayed visually in an intuitive way. It's the same mindset that feeds into people thinking they "just aren't a math person". You're not special, it's just pop science BS designed to make people feel better in their laziness.
For those wondering what is meant by learning styles. I've written this in the past:<p>Commonly, with learning styles a student was considered an auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learner.
Timmy is an auditory leaner? He should learn to calculate voltage through lectures and song.<p>Timmy is a visual learner? He should learn to calculate voltage through pictures and diagrams.<p>Timmy is a kinesthetic learner? He should learn to calculate voltage through dance.<p>It's a shallow understanding of how learning really happens. No one learned how to throw a football by singing about it and no one has a strong understanding of circuits and how to design them just by listening to lectures.
A much welcome public statement on this matter. When I was teaching and I chanced upon a colleague who was overzealous about the learning styles theory, I used to respond - if you had a child whom you pegged or tested as a "visual learner" and you wanted to teach him how to distinguish between different bird calls, you'd seriously have him do something like study oscilloscope graphs of the sound waves rather than having him actually listen to the calls?<p>Taken to its logical conclusion, it defies reason and even basic experience that any knowledge and skills can be better transmitted when conveyed in the modality that lies in learner's unique strengths.
> “I think the fad about learning styles faded long ago, and I would be surprised if many schools continued to subscribe to the approach. That said, the notion of making teaching and learning more varied in classrooms is helpful and likely to motivate a wider range of students,” he said.<p>LOL no. It's faded in research and education-policy nerd circles, maybe. It's still everywhere in pop culture and among actual k-12 educators. Questioning it will likely get you disapproving looks from teachers, principals, and so on.<p>(at least in the Midwestern US. Like everything else, until someone comes along selling some BS curriculum/training package that tells them it's wrong, they'll continue to think it's true. Source: am married to a teacher who's taught in 3 states, and am [separately] friends with a bunch of others)
So, how should kids be taught? Since learning styles are a myth, would it be okay to skip in-person lessons entirely and just move everyone to individual text-based book learning?<p>After all, it looks like the idea that "someone might learn better in person" or "by discussing things with peers" is complete bunk, and one method should be sufficient for everyone.
The letter itself possibly carries more information than the article: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/12/no-evidence-to-back-idea-of-learning-styles" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/12/no-evidenc...</a>
And yet, I continue to see anecdotal evidence that something like learning styles do exist. Granted, they don't always fit the classic visual/kinesthetic/auditory classification. For instance, I often learn a new topic best by reading about it, while some friends do better watching videos. And I think we all know that different explanations on hard topics work for different people.<p>Other people here have talked about stupid things people have done because of a simplistic understanding of learning styles. Ok, fine. Obviously you need to learn a topic in its own medium, and there's limits to what you can teach with song and dance. But let's do enough experiments to actually figure out what's going on, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's clearly <i>something</i> there, IMO, even if it's relatively insignificant.
All my favourite teachers had one thing in common: passion. They liked their subject and they liked teaching it.<p>I don't necessarily disagree with the post or the people behind what's being reported, but telling teachers how to teach seems like you're going to pick away at them, and with it their passion for their job.
"[...] research in 2012 among teachers in the UK and Netherlands found that 80% believed individuals learned better when they received information in their preferred learning style."<p>What a weird way to put it. Do the others think it makes absolutely no difference in what form the information is presented?
Public Schools are horrific squanderings of societal wealth and innumerable years of cognition.<p>They socialize children into diets that bring on pre-diabetes and diabetes.<p>It's absolute quackery to say that the massive resources spent have anything near a positive return for most kids.<p>Schools are for the benefit of administrators and unionized teachers imo.
This article is a great example of how to write hundreds of words to say "this doesn't work".<p>This is literally what this article is. "X says learning styles doesn't work", "Y says he's concerned that teachers are taught learning styles even though he thinks they don't work", etc.<p>I was hoping they would at least quote someone explaining the problem simply and offer a potential solution. Instead, the comments here did a better job at that.<p>I nominate Sally Weale as a useless journalist.