Naturally, The Economist chooses the political stance of "blame lefty teachers and hooray for Baron Gove".
The regional coverage remains excellent, but this kind of editorializing is the precise reason I stopped subscribing.
The regional coverage remains excellent, but this kind of editorializing is the precise reason I stopped subscribing.
I’m not sure it is even blaming lefty teachers. The blamed people are in university education departments, where I don’t think it’s controversial to say that their faculty tend to be very left leaning (there are surveys on this sort of thing). Their research often being more focused on social justice than finding evidence for better ways of teaching particular things lines up with my (weak) understanding of education research.
I think more senior members of teachers unions are going to be more left-leaning on average and more likely to prefer approaches more on the ‘social justice’ end than the ‘phonics’ end of the education research spectrum. I would generally expect teachers to be more politically left than the general population, as is the case for many professionals, and a little more leftist than other professionals. I also expect many to be a bit naive about how things work in organisations outside the public sector (especially high-functioning organisations). But mostly I think they care a lot about helping kids learn and not very much about the latest education research (expecting some other school leaders will direct them towards the right way to do things). I think it’s therefore reasonable to care about the relatively low quality of education research(ers) without blaming teachers here.
It's filed under "leaders". It's by definition supposed to be "editorializing", because it's an editorial.