I think the on guard stance really inhibits learning –as Mortimer Adler writes in his Paideia Proposal, real learning requires a certain docility and receptiveness, not self-assertion and wariness. Through this intensive internalizing and learning phase, a human will acquire the wherewithal to be meaningfully skeptical later on. (Often I come back to the metaphor of plant growth cycle: sowing, fertilizing, cultivation…harvest comes at the end. So many current education approaches seem to want harvest NOW.)

Sadly, I think one reason many teachers shy away from trying to be the authority is that many lack authority in their subject matters –they themselves are victims of flimsy educations. Most of my English teacher colleagues profess weak grammar knowledge (my own could stand some brushing up as well). Even literature majors at Ivy League Penn (according to one literature professor I spoke to there) “don’t know anything” except for techniques of deconstruction.

The good news is that we’re the grown ups and can bone up on what we need to teach –if only we start to understand that this is the key to improving American education.

Now, if a textbook is really stupid, we shouldn’t have to use it in the first place. We should be able to select the best books available and then expect the students to trust the material in it.

They may question it, of course. But we should not encourage them to distrust everything we give them. We should not treat trust in authority as a character weakness. They need to trust in authority. They should not have to do so recklessly. If we do not offer authority ourselves, they will seek it elsewhere–in their slightly older or more confident peers, in popular culture, in advertising, on the internet, and in various groups and gangs.

I teach medieval world history to twelve year olds.

I’m not sure who these unthinking young knowers that you write about are. In my experience the kids who know a lot tend to be the ones who pose the best, most-penetrating questions. In any event, I don’t think America has to worry about having too many youth whose heads are overstuffed with facts given the content-doesn’t-matter-too-much attitude of most teachers.

Your talk about calling BS on the authorities prompts me to try to articulate inchoate thoughts I’ve had for a while… I understand that you use this technique to pique kids’ interest, and I hesitate to argue with anything that manages to pull off this difficult feat, but something about it stirs deep unease in me. Why is this a necessary or desirable way to have kids approach academics? Is there really some conspiracy among adults to pull a fast one on kids, to insert dubious facts into the curriculum? Should the mental posture of kids, when it comes to academics, be on guard, rather than docile and receptive? Do we really need to be assiduously sowing seeds of suspicion about the veracity or intentions of textbooks or other authorities?

I am no fan of most textbooks, but mostly because they tend to be vapid or confusing, not because I think they’re trying to dupe or manipulate students. And I definitely want educated adults to be leery of and think critically about certain authorities, etc. But I worry that encouraging our kids to hold a suspicious posture toward the very materials we’re providing them is not at all constructive or needed. You and I should have a suspicious posture, but once we’ve chosen the materials, their trust in us should transfer to the materials. Why can’t the kids just listen and learn and grasp, and not have to apply scepticism? (And, by the way, who provides the tools for meaningful scepticism –the teacher, no?) Some of my twelve year olds already sport this kind of pan-critical stance. For example, many students will simply scoff when I tell them that Finding X has been supported by scientists at most of the world’s most prestigious institutions, if the finding doesn’t seem sensible to them: they readily place the authority of their own judgment over the judgment of eminent scientists. This is an empty, ignorant and destructive “critical thinking” –an unearned worldliness.

I think a lot of adults in America have a problem with authority. The attitude seems to be that it must always be questioned. But there is such a thing as genuine authority (albeit never perfect) and such authority should be listened to, not roughed-up with jejune scepticism.

I think a lot of adults have problems BEING the adult. They try to be on the kids’ side always –against THOSE people, the fraudulent ones who claim to be authorities, the ones who make stupid rules, the ones who must always be questioned, the ones who must earn our (the kids’) respect… These adults are loathe to be seen on the adults’ side, and unwilling to take on the mantle of authority (except in the matter of pronouncing the need to question authority).

Sorry –thoughts haven’t crystallized as well as I’d hoped. But it’s late, and I’ll let this suffice for now.

That last question is too huge for 2.13 a.m. Korea time, but it’s a good one. Let me sleep on it. (Really, get your webmaster to put a notify me of new comments plugin on this blog, I’m begging you.)

But you’ve never seen the inverse, i.e., students who were whizzes at “critical thinking” (whatever that means) but who didn’t know how to read, had never heard of the institution called “Congress,” who thought the sun revolved around the earth (as a substantial minority of American adults still believe), and who thought that 2 + 2 = 5.

At best, your point is that wide knowledge isn’t sufficient to be a critical and creative thinker. But it’s definitely necessary.

There is nothing wrong in teaching western civilization; indeed it is right to teach it to those of us whose whole culture and thinking are rooted in this history. What I find wrong is to teach it as though this view of history and culture were all that exists, and not to teach about other cultures and history.

About individualization: not an individualized curriculum, but individualized attention. Every child needs on a regular basis to have time with the teacher, whose task here is to help that child understand when he doesn’t, to encourage when needed, to point out things that will further learning, all the many ways to help each student’s own ways of learning and viewing strengthen study of the core curriculum. Also and always, to help each child take on his or her personal responsibility for learning.

It seems to me that–in a way–the specific content is less important than the fact that there is content: substantial, sequential content. As Professor Hirsch keeps pointing out, learning something new is advanced when there is already information. Yet, in another way, the content needs to FIRST show children what their own culture is and help them function in the world they inhabit, and next provide a foundation for further study.

Thanks for the opportunity to express some of my thoughts.

I agree that knowledge is foundational. I think it’s “mere” if it leaves students “bookful blockheads,” to quote Sam Johnson, who consider their ability to win at Trivial Pursuit as a sign of high culture or education.

If you teach, what subject do you teach? So much of my own point of view comes from my role as a humanities teacher. And in that role, I can tell you that I’ve seen high school students able to spout off facts (and learn them impressively), without the slightest ability to ask the basic questions that _thinkers_, not mere _knowers_, ask about received knowledge, be it from teachers, parents, preachers, politicians, textbooks, the media or the press.

If they’re only taught to know the stuff, and not trained to ask questions about it, then whatever “innate” critical thinking they may be capable of at birth is still going to whither in schools. (We’re all innately capable of playing the piano, too, but without training we don’t get beyond Chopsticks.)

I’m starting to feel like a broken record on this space by repeating my question: why are we framing knowledge and critical thinking (and other skills like writing) as mutually exclusive? In my practice they’re not at all.

And I’ll tell you this: Nothing turns students on to a textbook like a teacher who starts the year by saying, “As we learn the material in this thing, we’re also going to talk back to it, criticize it, ask why it left these facts out while including those, and what sort of person it’s trying to mold you into. We’re going to reward anybody who comes up with a good case for calling bullsh*t on the textbook.”

Calling BS on any authoritatively packaged knowledge is mere slang for “critical thinking.” It keeps students awake, makes the knowledge more interesting, and the future less prone to demagogues.

I think the reason many of us harp on knowledge is that it is utterly undervalued –if not completely discounted –in the minds of most educators. For all intents and purposes today, it is the handmaiden to “critical thinking skills” –would you disagree? Even your own post betrays this bias when you say “mere ‘knowledge’”. The way I see it, there is no such thing as MERE knowledge. A doctor reads a ton about ticks and Lyme disease –MERE knowledge –and yet this knowledge enables him to make an accurate judgement about whether or not to prescribe antibiotics when he looks at a patient’s tick bite. The knowledge BREEDS the high-level thinking. Thus it is with ALL knowledge –it’s never MERE. It spawns, breeds. The MERE fact that enters the kid’s brain makes all sorts of neural ripple effects, sending dendrites in new directions, so that even if he forgets that the Black Death hastened the decline of feudalism, he retains the understanding that epidemics can have profound social consequences and his ears now perk up when he hears “bird flu”. There is a deep, deep prejudice against facts in this country –unwarranted and possibly catastrophic. The lovely higher-order thinking that we all appreciate is the fruit of knowledge-acquisition, not its enemy. We have more to worry about from a skills-heavy curriculum than a knowledge-heavy curriculum, since knowledge, well-taught, will yield great thinking almost of its own accord, whereas “skills” instruction will not. In fact, while I acknowledge that teachers can show kids a few tricks that will catalyze kids’ USE of thinking skills, I do not believe that any teacher has ever TAUGHT a thinking skills. They are innate. Our brains naturally compare, contrast, analyze and sythesize. Yet most of my colleagues will say that they are trying to TEACH these skills. They’re fooling themselves. They might provide students a chance to exercise these capacities, but the teacher does not give the capacity. What we manifestly CAN teach is knowledge. But in America today, one does so in a shame-faced way, apologizing for implanting facts in kids’ memories as if they were rocks that will hamper the light, springy, nimble critical thinking they’re supposed to be doing. Until this wrong-headed conception of knowledge is overturned, I for one will continue vaunting the paramount importance of knowledge.