Best-selling bunk: We want to believe the easy answer

Educators are suckers for best-selling bunk and phony "studies," writes Brian Huskie. As a fan of exercise scientist Dr. Mike, he sees the same susceptibility to bullshit. Teachers who think students will achieve deeper understanding with less instruction are like dieters who think they lose weight without eating less or moving more.

Education, like fitness, is "a long-term, lifestyle proposition," writes Huskie. Success "is largely determined by genetics and consistency/frequency of hard work. Good teachers can’t read the books and do the math for you."

There are other variables, he writes, but intelligence and conscientiousness are the most predictive: "Work harder, for longer, and you’ll maximize your own potential."

Education, like fitness, has a culture of confirmation bias, Huskie writes. "Cardio sucks," so people are eager to believe they don't need to do it.

When Howard Gardner said, It’s not that some kids are smarter than others, it’s that they are differently smart, here are the 7 intelligences (that are now 11 intelligences), the entire field of education uncritically believed him, because the idea of a 15-year-old being “Nature Intelligent” was so much more palatable than “Unable to Do Trigonometry Intelligent.”

"When Jenn York-Barr said The person doing the talking is the person doing the learning it was too catchy to not trust," writes Huskie. That evolved in to the belief that learning was happening "if students showed visible delight (how lovely!)."

The Depth of Knowledge wheel promised that students students would learn more from DoK4 questions than DoK1 questions, he writes. Nobody "knows where this wheel came from, but we all loved the idea that we could fix learning with a little circular cheat-sheet in our top desk drawer."

In both fitness and teaching, we have a good idea of what's effective, Huskie concludes. The answer is "hard work, consistently, over a long period of time, to reach your individual potential."

But, it's so tempting to believe the hard work is optional, he writes. "After all," as the well-known cartoon shows, fish can’t climb trees, so if Johnny doesn’t feel like reading, it’s probably just because he’s an antelope."

Easy-peasy.