The release of international literacy results and Australia’s poor performance (27th out of 45 countries in year 4 reading, the lowest of any English-speaking nation) has prompted leading academics and clinicians to write an open letter to Federal and State Ministers of Education. The letter points to problems with the way teachers are trained to teach reading; that is, they are not. It urges Ministers to take the vast scientific literature on reading and reading difficulties into account when making policy. We can but hope.

The letter and on a companion piece from The Australian newspaper is attached below. Here is a link to Jennifer Buckingham’s excellent op-ed in The Financial Review on the same topic.

Open Letter to all Federal and State Ministers of Education copy

A decade of lost action on literacy _ The Australian

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It feels like 90% of the products being hawked as treatments for learning and developmental disorders like dyslexia, language impairments, autism, Asperger’s and ADHD make claims about the brain. Claims include:

• “based on brain science”.
• “designed by neuroscientists”
• “brain based”
• “neuroplasticity”
• “sharpen memory and attention with brain games and tools”
• “change your brain”.

There’s a good reason why companies invoke brain science in selling products. Research has shown that consumers are more likely to rate a claim as credible if it is accompanied by a picture of a brain image (McCabe & Castel, 2008). This seems to happen even if the claim is complete nonsense. Is it any wonder that programs and products (see here, here and here for examples) invoke the brain in the marketing process? It seems human lose their powers of reasoning when presented with a brain.

The neuroscientist Molly Crockett has given a recent TED talk titled “Beware neuro-bunk” in which she cautions against placing too much stock in claims ‘based on neuroscience’.

Crockett cautions us that there’s always more to the story than the brain images. She says “if someone tries to sell you something with a brain on it, ask to see the evidence. Ask for the part of the story that’s not being told.”

Here are other cautionary tales on the same subject:

Psychology Today

The New Statesman

The New Yorker

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

The Conversation (Max Coltheart)

The Conversation (Anne Castles & Genevieve McArthur)

Dorothy Bishop

Happy holidays.