but if you notice, you’ll see the reading scores keep going down—or hardly going up—in spite of the fact that we continually use these same people to improve the methods.
I wonder how Feynman knew this. The usual source of US reading score data is the NAEP, but AFAIK the earliest nationally representative NAEP results are from 1971 & 1975, and Feynman gave that speech in 1974. (Wouldn’t it be painfully ironic if...?)
He had probably seen data on a state or local level and then extrapolated to the rest of the country, reasoning that teaching methods were similar nationally.
I wonder how Feynman knew this. The usual source of US reading score data is the NAEP, but AFAIK the earliest nationally representative NAEP results are from 1971 & 1975, and Feynman gave that speech in 1974. (Wouldn’t it be painfully ironic if...?)
1974 is well after the publication of Why Johnny Can’t Read. (You may not be familiar with it, but it was a big influence at the time.)
He had probably seen data on a state or local level and then extrapolated to the rest of the country, reasoning that teaching methods were similar nationally.