much education research takes the form of collecting data on people’s ability to learn nonsense.

where scientific theory conflicts strongly with the basic empathic responses of ordinary people, history (and Jane Goodall) would suggest that it’s a good idea to pay attention to those conflicts.

There’s an Orwellian quality to the spectacle of cognitive scientists reasoning from their own inability to meaningfully address the differences in our children to a finding that our children don’t have meaningful differences after all.

What needs to be noted here is how the claim that LEARNING STYLES DON’T EXIST has morphed directly and explicitly into a claim about lower intelligence in certain children.

The question, then, is this: is there a scientific reason we should assume every difference is a deficit until proven otherwise?

Or is there a historical reason that difference was framed as deficit from the beginning, intentionally, to perpetuate and justify a hierarchical society of winners and losers?

So before we uncritically accept the debunkers’ claim that the scientific research supports a One-Style-Fits-All approach to instruction, we should stop and ask ourselves: “Who invented that One Style? Who succeeds by it, and who fails? What historical power structures does it emanate from, and whose power does it perpetuate and reproduce?

The logic goes like this:

What “works?” Direct instruction. How do we know? Tests. Who designs the tests? The same people who have always designed the tests.

Source: Science / Fiction — Carol Black