Over the years, I have been writing about misconceptions regarding the schooling process. The purpose of these posts is to explain why I disagree with various comments that I have heard people make about schooling. These are meant as personal thoughts rather than conclusive proof, and I will admit that I'm not always the best at explaining my thoughts. Regardless, I have decided that I should be willing to share these posts when I encounter someone online who makes an argument that I have already discussed.
Have you heard that learning styles have been disproven? Actually, that's not quite right. The evidence is specifically aimed at the ridiculous idea that we learn through sight and sound. Although there are variants of this concept, sight and sound have always been the heart of this discussion. I should also mention that there were problems with the methodology behind disproving these learning styles, but I don't want to go into details since I believe the results still reflect the reality. Oddly enough, there are numerous people who have interpreted the evidence against these learning styles as evidence against variable learning styles.
The idea behind learning styles is that different people learn in different ways. No two people are alike. The specifics of how we learn reflects the realities of individuality. Each one of us has a unique set of educational needs.
Arguments can be made regarding how significant differences are between learning styles, but learning styles do exist. Unfortunately, I keep hearing outright rejections of learning styles. Multiple learning styles somehow can't exist because there is evidence against two specific learning styles. The truth is that learning styles are infinite. One of the biggest mistakes we made was embracing a shallow binary perspective to justify the neglect of individual needs. As an odd interpretation of the evidence, teachers are pushing in the opposite direction. They insist if there aren't two learning styles, there must be none.
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