KEEPING KNOWLEDGE CENTRAL TO EDUCATION

There seems to be a movement in education to replace simple, basic knowledge of facts with an awareness of principles and ideas. Thus, for example, sometimes rather than knowing the names of various countries and being able to find them on a map, it is considered sufficient to simply know that maps exist; if we ever need to know the name of a country, we can just scrounge our eyes across the map until we find it. 

It would be unfair to say that this state of affairs is found in all educational settings, but it can safely be said that it is found in far too many. When I taught in secondary education, I was shocked to realize that many of my students not only could not find countries on a world map, but did not fully understand political divisions such as cities, counties, provinces, states, nations and regions. To cite another example, I was thrilled when my daughter studied Latin in high school, but halfway through her first year when I asked her how she was handling the case endings, she simply gave me a bewildered look and asked, "What do you mean by a case?" She later explained that the class focused primarily on watching videos and discussing bits and pieces of Roman history (at least they got that much). I knew the teacher personally and knew that she understood Latin completely, but she, like the students, was a victim of our prevailing educational philosophy. Later on, the school received an award for the strength of its Latin program, but we had already removed our daughter from that school. I wonder if the school administrators had ever studied Latin, the mother of so many languages....

Knowing how to think is important, and we need to teach that. Concepts and principles are important. But without a library of knowledge in our brains, we can scarcely apply critical thinking and understanding.

How can you determine if a person, young or old, possesses a storehouse of knowledge in their heads? Easy. Just observe or ask questions to see what they know--a good start might be to find out if they know, say, whether Canada is divided into states, or has a monarch. And remember that none of us possesses complete and total knowledge, and sometimes it is not our fault if we don't. We need to hold our schools, and the administrators who run them, accountable. And always, we should recognize that outstanding teachers do exist and give them all the support and gratitude we can. Sometimes we meet them in schools, good or bad, and sometimes we find them in all sorts of unlikely places that we might not expect.