In Sunday's New York Times, Benedict Carey turns in an especially rosey take on cognitive science and education.

Do I think early grades need better, more algebraic math? YES. Without question. Do I buy the idea that cognitive science is going to suddenly and dramatically improve the curriculum?

Well...

The trouble is that too often limited studies become the basis of gadgets and curricula and dreaded "programs" that have their own sales force. This means what teachers end up being asked to do in the classroom in the name of brain science may not be validated by what actually happened in the lab.

Sophisticated imaging and experiment structures may be new, but I have a feeling this sentence, "the teaching of basic academic skills, until now largely the realm of tradition and guesswork, is giving way to approaches based on cognitive science," could have been written 50 or 75 years ago. Maybe we'll get lucky and Diane Ravitch will tell us. And there are some serious skeletons in the cognitive science closet when it comes to determining what some kids can or can't do. Cheers to the brain science community for landing this on the front page, but color me skeptical.

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