Skepticism Is Our Only Defense Against Marketing Fads in Education
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that healthy skepticism is the education profession's most important protection against the constant barrage of unproven products and programs.
Key Takeaways
- If it sounds too good to be true, it is - Products promising dramatic results with minimal effort are selling fantasy
- Skepticism isn't cynicism - Demanding evidence before adoption is professional responsibility, not negativity
- Marketing targets educators - The education market is full of companies selling unproven solutions to desperate schools
Transcript
I was like, no way, this is a real thing.
As soon as I saw it, I got a podcast pitch today from Aerosmith, not that Aerosmith, but the Canadian Aerosmith that purports to use neuroplasticity to change the brain.
And this is a program that's been around for like 30 years.
This lady wrote a book about how she changed her own brain.
And this program is in use all around the world in Canada and Australia.
And in Australia, there's actually some pretty strong pushback and there's been a lot of pushback and criticism from cognitive psychologists and different people who have expertise in these areas that say, this program does not actually work.
This does not actually do anything.
And when I saw this photo in particular of a student doing one of their exercises, and they're all something like this, you know, different exercises of this type.
In this one, the student wears an eye patch and traces shapes.
And that's supposed to do something to a particular region of your brain.
As soon as I saw that, I thought, there's no way this is a real thing, right?
And it turns out, yeah, it's not really a real thing.
But guess what?
It's popular.
It's been around for a long time.
Lots of people love it.
Lots of people swear by it.
It's been sold to lots and lots of people for thousands of dollars.
And there are lots and lots of kids who are spending tons of instructional time, four 40-minute sessions a day for three to four years doing these exercises.
And I think it's worth trying things.
I think it's worth experimenting.
I think if it is possible to overcome learning difficulties through exercises like this, that's worth figuring out.
But 30 years is enough time to figure it out.
We should not be experimenting on kids that long without some serious encouraging results.
We should know by now, and we do know, this stuff does not work.
You cannot...
you know, retrain your brain by tracing shapes with an eye patch on.
Like, I like Teach Like a Pirate.
I like Dave Burgess.
I think he's got some great ideas.
I don't think this is what he meant, though.
And I think more broadly...
We have to be skeptical, right?
It's not enough to just be skeptical.
Like we have to actually get evidence in addition to our skepticism.
I'm glad we have evidence on this particular program.
But skepticism is our only defense against marketing.
Marketing is really persuasive.
And when you successfully market to one group of people, you then have testimonials that can take the place of actual evidence and allow you to market to more and more people.
And you can make a pretty good living selling something that doesn't work, that does not do what it claims to do.
And I've had enough of that.
I don't know about you.
Let me know what you think.