#192 There’s No Such Thing as a Kinesthetic Learner

It’s common knowledge that every student has a learning style: visual, auditory or kinesthetic. But what if those classifications are not just inaccurate but dangerous? That’s the argument made by education historian Tom Fallace in his provocative new book, You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea. Fallace argues that learning styles took hold as teachers were asked to do more and more in response to social and economic divides. Not only is the research behind learning styles flimsy, but as Fallace documents, but the classifications end up lumping together whole racial and ethnic groups as kinesthetic learners.