Column: Is everything we know about teaching kids wrong?

MINNEAPOLIS -- Emily Hanford is a superstar in education reporting. Four years ago, her APM Reports podcast “Sold a Story” rocked the K-12 world. Soon after its launch, more than two dozen states, including Minnesota, passed laws or policies intended to change the way schools teach reading.

You can see the seismic effects of her reporting today. Educators are being retrained in phonics instruction. Districts have dropped debunked textbooks. This fall, my fourth-grader took a new assessment that tested him for potential hurdles to literacy, as mandated by the state.

In her latest endeavor, Hanford tackles a broader question about what has happened to teaching itself. The second season of “Sold a Story” is sure to test educators’ assumptions about what makes them successful in the classroom. Hanford investigates why so few schools — likely less than 200 nationwide — have adopted an effective form of teaching that is backed by science.

But this approach is controversial: It requires the teacher to lead the class with direct and explicit instruction, rather than following a child’s sense of discovery.

To understand why this method is fiercely debated by educators, let’s zoom out and examine some of the latest fads.

Many schools today offer a radical alternative to the classrooms I was accustomed to in the 1980s and ‘90s. For most of my kids’ elementary and middle school years, there has been no homework. Very few books are considered required reading. Students are left to choose books that match their interests or that feature characters that look like them.

They can spend weeks pursuing a project driven by their own curiosity, such as crafting a business plan or designing a leprechaun trap.

Each facet of exploratory learning sounds wonderful on its own. Young children are given much more autonomy than in traditional classrooms where a teacher puts kids to sleep by diagramming sentences on the chalkboard. Many education experts believe that children learn best through self-direction and experience.

But as the pendulum has swung so far toward putting students more in charge of their learning, we also must confront some sobering realities. Test scores have been tanking for more than a decade, a decline that predated COVID-19. Not even half of Minnesota students are proficient in math and reading. A sizable achievement gap persists across race and class.

Hanford explores a teaching program that is backed by decades of research and has been found to work with all kinds of students, including neurodivergent kids and the most disadvantaged. This specific program, known as Direct Instruction, favors repetition, scripted lesson plans and correction. Her spotlight on the approach is making some education pundits “very uncomfortable,” she conceded.

When she learned about it as a reporter decades ago, even Hanford bristled at what she saw. “I had little kids at the time, and it didn’t look good to me,” she told me.

The method is fast-paced, with a call-and-response format led by the teacher. Critics call it robotic, authoritarian or even militaristic, but it can be highly engaging and interactive. Hanford says it aligns with cognitive science research about how people learn. It requires students to stay on their toes, actively listen and produce answers.

Direct Instruction was created in the 1960s by Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann. Hanford’s podcast opens with a scene of the energetic Engelmann leading a group of pre-schoolers who shout out answers demonstrating their grasp of basic algebra. Notably, Hanford says, these were poor Black children whom many people expected to struggle in school. Yet they exuded self-confidence. As the late Engelmann is heard saying in the podcast, referring to kids who learned under his model, “They knew damn well they were smart.”

Engelmann operated under the principle that if a student hadn’t learned a concept, it was because a teacher hadn’t taught it.

A federal study spearheaded by President Lyndon B. Johnson found that Direct Instruction outperformed every other teaching model included in the review. But the program never gained traction, Hanford reports, because it contradicted some of the foundational beliefs that educators hold about how kids learn.

The criticism I’ve heard from teachers about the podcast is that it simplifies or exaggerates what classrooms look like today. Many say they adopt a balance of explicit instruction and inquiry-based learning. And I’d bet most did not get into the profession to read a script.

Direct Instruction may also suffer from a branding problem, with critics confusing it with the kind of classroom lecturing encountered by Ferris Bueller. (“Anyone? Anyone?”)

Even Hanford told me she’s not suggesting Engelmann’s program is the answer for American schools. But she set out to show that it works, amid a sea of other methods that do not.

Both students and teachers may be frustrated by the lack of clear and explicit direction offered in the classroom today, she added. When Hanford visited classes that incorporate Engelmann’s approach, a group of boys told her something surprising when asked what they liked most about school. “It’s more structured,” they told her. “I feel safer. The teaching is more clear.”

Perhaps the notion of young boys clamoring for more structure is not so far-fetched.

When I attend a pickleball clinic as a beginner, I’m paying for an instructor to explicitly show me how to perfect an overhead smash. She does not let me flounder until I can discover the technique on my own. In the same vein, my fourth-grader will find it much easier to grasp more advanced mathematics if he can practice and memorize his multiplication facts.

Four years ago, Hanford’s reporting led to sweeping reforms in how we teach reading. If her latest revelations can help dial back our disdain for explicit instruction in other subjects, her investigation will be just as meaningful. It shouldn’t be heresy to believe that before kids can learn deeply and enthusiastically, they must be taught.