This, times 10. I worked in a lab on education-related subject at a top university and it was wishful thinking all the way down: from Ministry bullshit like "education 5.0" and grants to whatever buzzword heavy proposal was thrown, to researchers ignoring obvious flaws in their dumb but cool things that are set to fail from the start, to arranging the reality of collected data (from weak protocol) and their interpretation, etc. It was full of people trying to make a name for themselves but very few solid research. Most of the papers were flawed, irrelevant or kinda stretched reality.
The article includes quite a bit of history about reading instruction, insights from neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene [1], a reference to a 2000 report from the National Reading Panel [2], and reports by education reporter Emily Hanford on why the science of reading has not been rapidly adopted [3].
[0] https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers... [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0670021105 [2] https://www.nichd.nih.gov/sites/default/files/publications/p... [3] https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/10/23/hanfordandread...
> The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.
Then it's a bad sign. I'm glad they don't let us get past the second paragraph before turning it into a culture war.
The Minority View in the 2000 report seems a bit less 'culture war' and more thoughtful:
> In the end, the work of the NRP is not of poor quality; it is just unbalanced and, to some extent, irrelevant. But because of these deficiencies, bad things will happen. Summaries of, and sound bites about, the Panel’s findings will be used to make policy decisions at the national, state, and local levels. Topics that were never investigated will be misconstrued as failed practices. Unanswered questions will be assumed to have been answered negatively. Unfortunately, most policymakers and ordinary citizens will not read the full reviews. They will not see the Panel’s explanations about why so few topics were investigated or its judgments that the results of research on some of the topics are inconclusive. They will not hear the Panel’s calls for more and more fine-tuned research. Ironically, the report that Congress intended to be a boon to the teaching of reading will turn out to be a further detriment.
> As an educator with more than 40 years of experience and as the only member of the NRP who has lived a career in elementary schools, I call upon Congress to recognize that the Panel’s majority report does not respond to its charge nor meet the needs of America’s schools. In spite of the Panel’s diligent efforts and its valuable findings on a select number of instructional practices, we still cannot answer the first and most central question of the charge: “What is known about the basic processes by which children learn to read.” We still do not know what types of instruction are suitable for different ages and populations of children. We still do not know the relative effectiveness of the three models of reading as bases for instruction. We do not even know whether the existing body of research can answer those questions. Therefore, I ask Congress not to take actions that will promote one philosophical view of reading or constrain future research in the field on the basis of the Panel’s limited and narrow set of findings
Not sure about the comparison with beta-amyloid though. There are good reasons to think it is involved with Alzheimer's - genetics, histology, etc.
And I don't think many researchers thought that would be the problem solved. It was just a very logical target in tackling a very challenging disease (like all neurodegenerative diseases, basically none of which are cured).
I can pinpoint over 10 dumb decisions taken by my corporate, as a result of office politics and jockeying for various positions.
There are many myths corporate britain believes, from forcing develipers back in the office to improve productivity despite having concrete evidence that it doesn't, to hiring 'agile practitioners', etc.
No union required for dumb decisions
And teachers' unions in the USA are unions of government workers, not corporate.
Another example: the school system in Oakland, CA, in 2015 abandoned its phonics-based approach to reading instruction, which was actually helping kids learn to read and get good scores in reading. The reason was because the teachers felt the curriculum was "colonizing" and they didn't have enough agency to determine how to introduce reading to kids. The fact that phonics has proven to be a good basis for instruction in mapping written words to sounds, even in a phonetically bizarre language like English, and everything else including "whole word" instruction and whatever learning-by-osmosis method the Oakland district ended up adopting, has produced poorer results, was irrelevant to the school board who made this decision.
Which is to me unconscionable: when it comes to education I favor whatever gets kids to learn. Especially in a place like Oakland; if you've ever been there, you'll know those kids need good education. But that's how it goes when egos, entrenched bureaucracies, and the wishful thinking of powerful people are on the line.
In an unrelated field, it also resembles the fixation the biochem community had on beta-amyloid proteins in Alzheimer's. It was an enticing theory because it seemed so simple: clear away the plaques and the brain would heal -- no more Alzheimer's! Of course it didn't work that way in reality, but it worked so well in mouse models, leading to more intense wishcasting by other researchers and on it goes.