Via Eurekalert, a Florida State press release touting a paper in Science studying techniques used to teach reading. The conclusion won't surprise anyone who has worked in education:
The researchers found that "the efficacy of any particular instructional practice may depend on the skill level of the student. Instructional strategies that help one student may be ineffective when applied to another student with different skills." The trick, then, is to more precisely determine the reading skill level of each child and then find a way to cater the curriculum to each student's individual needs.
Or, as the press release title puts it, "No one strategy is best for teaching reading."
The extension of this to math, physics, cooking, driving, and IQ tests is left as an exercise for the reader.
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McGuffey's Eclectic Primer, etc., adequately educated immigrant-spawned English-depauperate dregs 1836 through the early 1950s. Liberal intellectualization of "Whole Language" intitiated the death spiral. Boards of Education banned "Hooked on Phonics" because kids showed how to think took off like rockets. The ones told what to think - degreed edjumacators' initials carved into their flesh - remained politically useful basket cases.
Could a 2007 high school senior define "eclectic"? At least 46,768 California high school seniors in 2006 could not. McGuffey's Eclectic Primer was the kindergarten text.
You take 5-year olds and screw their ignorant asses into wooden chairs and desks bolted to the bare wood floor. Any insubordinate kid gets whapped. Three classes of larval lifeforms emerge: the normal, the Gifted, and the stupid. The normal will make their way through the system to become productive citizens. The Gifted are taken aside to be lavished every resource and opportunity to create the future. The stupid are retracked into manual arts, sports/entertainment, and other venues where IQ is not directly controlling. Trained muscle is useful. The refractorily stupid should be exterminated.
The Marines could take any youth no matter how scrofulous and turn out a skilled loyal soldier, or kill him trying. That has been changed, by law. We no longer win wars.