Related to your 4th footnote, I can say that when training to be a teacher (2015-2019) here in the U.S., I was also fed an "undiluted diet" of progressive ideas. Any sort of traditional views on teaching were derided by my professors as antithetical to "best practices." Direct instruction was described as malpractice. In a course specifically covering reading instruction, we were taught all about whole language and three-cueing, and phonics was labelled as a long-debunked approach to teaching reading. I could go on and on with examples, but this kind of progressive worldview is still pushed on teachers in college.
I think that’s remarkably common, at least across the English-speaking world. However, we are now more than a decade into a traditionalist counter-revolution in England. While I was still encountering the products of ultra-progressive teacher training 5 years ago, I think there may have been a change more recently.
Related to your 4th footnote, I can say that when training to be a teacher (2015-2019) here in the U.S., I was also fed an "undiluted diet" of progressive ideas. Any sort of traditional views on teaching were derided by my professors as antithetical to "best practices." Direct instruction was described as malpractice. In a course specifically covering reading instruction, we were taught all about whole language and three-cueing, and phonics was labelled as a long-debunked approach to teaching reading. I could go on and on with examples, but this kind of progressive worldview is still pushed on teachers in college.
I think that’s remarkably common, at least across the English-speaking world. However, we are now more than a decade into a traditionalist counter-revolution in England. While I was still encountering the products of ultra-progressive teacher training 5 years ago, I think there may have been a change more recently.