Beginning chess: Is there any agreement on how to learn?
That is because there is no one right answer, but there are certain guidelines.
For instance, beginner should play longer time controls, rather than speed chess. He/should study chess in some capacity - youtube videos, chessable courses, books, chess.com lessons, there are many ways... Studying tactics as well from books and in practice.
This is how I did it for instance:
https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement
Of course, this is not the only way, but it provided some result and I didn't spend any money for now. In the future I will have to hit some books however, if I want to get better, study master games, and even after that maybe even memorize some opening lines etc.
As long as you put in some effort and expose yourself to chess knowledge in some capacity, you will get better, especially as a beginner.
If you are a beginner and want to learn chess there are really 2 good way s to do so. The first is The Steps Method. it is the program that is used to teach chess in schools in Europe. the whole course consist of 20 work books and 6 instructor manuals. You can purchase the instructor manuals and first 5 step workbooks from the USCF store for around 135.00. The additional work books are nice to have but you can just do the 5 main work books and be fine. 2 method is Coach Jay's chess academy. It is very similar to the steps method. It consists of 7 workbooks and 7 puzzle books. This is also sold by the USCF store or you can buy straight from coach Jay. Coach Jays chess academy is steps method light. both will teach you how to play the game and win.
A few reasons. Firstly everyone has different learning preferences and Dyer, professional educators will have a range of approaches and tools in their repertoire and adapt their teaching to the student. If you ask two students the question you may get two different answers even if they see the same teacher.
sorry pressed send by mistake. The issue isnt unusual. In the UK a number of techniques were used to teach primary school children to read, the government decided to standardise so ran an RCT (Randomised Controlled Trial) to find out which was the best and then standardised on Phonics approach. It was controversial at the time as teachers wanted to maintain amore
a more flexible approach. My point is that if this issue exists in primary education it's not surprising that it is in chess education. Ask for advice on the forum and people will give it based on what they think is helping them progress. Find methods that you enjoy and that you think help you develop. You will get frustrated if you attempt to discover one best approach.
@Exploring. My kids learned with phonics
Dear Brian,
I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. 
Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to teach and learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analysing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem that it can't explain you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why is it so good or bad.
You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.
So, the question you asked is not so easy to answer, but I can tell you one thing for sure. In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.
I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck for your chess games!
There are many different ways to learn.
I know some people who got to 2000+ rating by reading heaps of books. They never used the internet at all.
Meanwhile, I haven't read a single book on chess, but I hit 2000+ rating by watching lots of YouTube videos and using online resources.
What it really comes down to is: you need to play a lot of games + do some kind of study outside of playing. As long as you do those 2 things, you'll improve.
As a subject of study, chess is quite different from, say, high-school math. You either do your math homework or drop out (at least this is how things work in my place). But chess is, for most learners, something played for fun. There's no apparent consequence for losing a chess game (except for an insignificant rating loss). So it's OK to play and learn chess however you wish, so long as you're having fun in the process.