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I think, just from observation of other popular theories of education, it comes from a place where education isn’t supposed to feel like work for the students and therefore things like phonics (which would require memorizing phonics rules like what a_e sounds like, or the sounds of the letters) or times tables or vocabulary unpopular. Even in foreign language learning, there’s a tendency to go for immersion without having to memorize vocabulary or grammatical rules.
This kind of approach is attractive because it’s not boring for the kids (who wants to spend time memorizing rules or math tables?), it’s easier for teachers (you can just speak Italian to the kids, they’ll figure it out), and you make initial progress fairly quickly (if I memorize a dozen words, I can “read” a Dr. Seuss book. Cat in the Hat isn’t that hard) but you’ll eventually hit the limits of the method. A word like coagulation or bipedal or function isn’t easy to guess from context. You certainly wouldn’t get a picture in a text complex enough to use words like that. But those problems don’t crop up for years. Long after you’ve been able to issue glowing reports about how well the dumb kids are reading. And the kids feel good about it too.
These methods are the perfect solution to the education problem they’re actually trying to solve. The problem isn’t “how do I teach skills in such a way that the kids truly learn the skill in question,” but “how do I get these kids to do well on a standardized test and keep them from being disruptive.” Whole language, neo-math, and immersion work for that. Duolingo works on the same issues— how do I make people feel like they understand something without making it feel like work? What actually works is much closer to the old school classical model — memorize the basic information, and use that as a base to build on. The problem is that it’s too boring and too slow.
The old method didn't work for me. When I was learning a second language (Russian) at school I memorized perfectly all declension tables and all grammar rules and still wasn't able to form a single sentence. I only learned it later with immersion when I had to live among Russians and learn to communicate in Russian. Now I have forgotten all the grammar rules but I can speak almost fluently.
Then I wanted to live in Spain, so I started learning Spanish by Pimsleur method which starts by using real sentences in conversion. It was great and motived me a lot. I am not fully proficient in Spanish yet but it enabled me to be able to deal with all practical matters in Spanish.
My observation is that memorizing rules do not translate well into internalizing them and being able to use in practice. Those kids who were good in Russian actually had exposure to Russia on the street or by watching cartoons in Russian.
It is possible that with this method you eventually reach a limit. Probably you then need to learn more things and appropriate training should be prepared. Sometimes knowing the detailed rules are necessary. But let's remember that people create these rules in their native language without being literate. Even a small child can sometimes correct my grammar.
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