Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen

The book “Urban Myths about Learning and Education” by Pedro de Bruyckere, Paul A. Kirschner, and Casper Hulshof ends with a section on why myths in education are so pervasive and stubborn. One of the most remarkable examples was drawn from Farhad Manjoo’s book True enough: Learning to live in a post-fact society. It’s what he calls the Photoshop explanation. Self-declared experts can publish anything they want thanks to the Internet. They even have access to “recognised” platforms to share their “expertise” (for example, recently two ladies from a foodie business called “The Green Happiness” claimed on Dutch television that a chicken’s egg is basically a chicken’s menstrual period and therefore it was not healthy to eat eggs. Or take the “Food Babe” who ‘discovered’ carcinogens in your toothpaste and just about everywhere else. These are only…