Knowledge Isn't Dirt in the Way of Deeper Learning — It's the Foundation
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that knowledge is not a superficial obstacle to deeper thinking — it's the essential foundation that makes deeper learning possible.
Key Takeaways
- Knowledge enables deeper learning - You can't think critically, solve problems, or create without a foundation of factual knowledge
- The 'deeper learning' framing is misleading - Treating knowledge as surface-level trivializes the most important ingredient in education
- Content instruction matters - Schools that skip knowledge-building in favor of 'skills' leave students with nothing to think deeply about
Transcript
It's so weird to me the way people talk about surface level learning or shallow learning or recall, regurgitation.
We even describe it as getting sick, like regurgitating facts to know stuff.
And I think this campaign against knowing stuff, this campaign against knowledge is turning out to be really counterproductive when it comes to student learning.
I'm very excited to see This book come out, Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking, The Knowledge Revival.
This is a free book.
It's open access.
You can download it and print it yourself as I did.
The contributors to this come from, I think, eight different countries, and it's an incredible list.
It includes John Hattie, Dylan William, Paul Kirshner, and many others.
And I'll put the link in if I can find it.
The idea here is that students need to be taught knowledge in order to reach higher levels of understanding, in order to do higher order thinking, in order to acquire further information.
Students need knowledge because knowledge, in a very real sense, is what we think with.
It is the building block.
It is the foundation.
And when we flip over that metaphor and we say, okay, knowledge is not the foundation.
Knowledge is just the surface.
It's just the shallow level, and we really want deeper learning.
No, no, that's backwards.
To say that knowledge is shallow is to misunderstand the role that knowledge plays in in learning.
If we want students to go, you know, quote unquote, deeper with their learning, we have to see it flipped over.
We have to see knowledge as the foundation and then think of students as doing higher order work with that knowledge and not see knowledge as like the layer of dirt that we have to get through to find the treasure.
And I think our metaphors for how we think about knowledge, how we think about higher order learning really matter.
But I want to encourage you to check out this book, Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking, The Knowledge Revival, and let me know what you think.