Greetings Education Wars readers (and listeners). If you’re new to this newsletter than you might not be familiar with my podcast, Have You Heard. Every couple of weeks, education historian Jack Schneider and I delve into some education-related topic. Recent episodes have highlighted conservative opposition to school vouchers in Texas, what a second Trump term will likely mean for public education, and the push to shutter schools amid declining student enrollment and financial woes. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you may even learning something!
In our latest episode, we take a (much needed) break from politics to debunk the incredibly persistant myth of ‘learning styles.’ Our guest, Tom Fallace, is the author of a forthcoming and provocative new book, You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea. Fallace argues that the insistance that every student has a learning style—visual, auditory or kinesthetic—is not just inaccurate but dangerous.
So how did the idea of learning styles take hold with such ferocity? Fallace says that learning styles took hold as teachers were asked to do more and more in response to social and economic divides. Not only is the research behind learning styles flimsy, but as Fallace documents, the classifications end up lumping together whole racial and ethnic groups.
Questions or ideas for future episodes? Drop me a line here.
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