You make Gawande's claim about C-sections sound much like claims for certain drill-based and test-oriented-- but, apparently, effective-- teaching methods used in elementary and middle schools with poor students, methods whose great attraction is that you can get decent results (not just better scores but things like better school attendance and fewer dropouts in subsequent years) even with badly-trained teachers. Good teachers hate these methods, but they would. (The best-known among such methods has a four-letter acronymn, but I forget what it is.)