I think that what most critics are concerned/suspicious about is that it seems to be just the latest FAD in education philosophy.
The more troubling thing about that is that good educators have always used in-class applications/discussion/activities in order to promote learning, and have always (or nearly so) included outside-of-class reading, research, or exercises to better utilize class time-- which begs the question--
where have these educational theorists been observing and spending their time, eh?
Probably not in those classrooms, right? And what is it with this need to embrace EXTREMES?? How much more evidence will it take before those rolling out educational "change" finally figure out that extremes (in testing-obsessed teaching, in homework, in pedagogy, etc) really do NOT work for very many students at a time?
I do sort of shake my head at that. There doesn't seem to be any major push to keep what is working for the students for whom it IS working, while offering up solutions for the others (for whom it isn't). Nope-- one ring to bind them all, as it were.
Where I worry about that most (as a parent) is that this attitude treats ALL students as roughly interchangeable parts in the machine, and deviations simply don't compute. This is what we've found in my DD's flipped/virtual experiences. The exception is with highly skilled teachers who are willing to be more flexible than the curriculum intends. Otherwise, she masters "the curriculum" in short order, (without much depth, of course-- because there isn't any in "the curriculum" which is intended to serve as a checklist for ALL students) and then waits... and waits... and waits... for classmates.
