Nobody’s actually against knowledge are they?

I’ve written many times about those who wish to deny the debate in education. Sometimes the debate denial is so ridiculous it can be safely ignored, for instance when people express their disagreement with traditionalists and simultaneously claim that it’s all a false dichotomy and nobody really disagrees. Sometimes it’s just an attempt to disassociate one’s self from the history of one’s own ideas; for instance, when people complain about labels like “progressive” and “traditionalist” being recently introduced to the debate, even when those terms are over 100 years old. But occasionally, it is a sincere belief that what traditionalists are saying about something, particularly if it is something hard to argue against, is what everyone really believed all along.

The most recent outbreak of this seems to have been about knowledge. Traditionalists have recently been describing their position as being in favour of “knowledge based” education. I don’t really object to this term, but it has led to some progressives pretending to be mystified about the boundaries of the debate. So for instance:

Sane friends: I keep reading blogs arguing passionately why we should teach knowledge. Can you point me to those they're arguing against?

— DisappointedIdealist (@DisIdealist) December 16, 2016

Or (from this blogpost):

There’s a narrative, mostly found on Twitter, but also evident in other social media and education commentary in the press, that teachers somehow eschew teaching ‘knowledge’. That knowledge is almost incidental to ‘better’ ways of teaching like group work, problem solving etc. On top of this, teacher training, we are told by others, teach theory like ‘Bloom’s taxonomy’ which is also ‘anti’ knowledge.

Such attacks are convenient sticks with which to beat the ‘progressives’ who, themselves, it is claimed, are anti-knowledge. To be honest, I’m getting quite tired of this obviously flawed logic and rhetoric.

Teachers are teaching ‘knowledge’ all the time – regardless of the methods they use. Even in group work knowledge is being delivered. I’ve yet to see any curriculum document that does not contain some form of knowledge. I’ve yet to see a lesson where a child has never engaged with any knowledge at all.

To imply that teachers – any teacher – does not deliver knowledge in teaching is frankly silly.

Of course, some of this is about a straw man, that those calling for more knowledge are simply opposing a position of teaching no knowledge and, therefore, their position is of no significance if you admit to occasionally passing on some information to your students. But it also seems to be an attempt to air brush out of the debate the anti-knowledge stance that was pretty mainstream among progressives until this sudden bout of denial. The same day I read the blogpost I quoted above, I also read another blogpost, that was advice for teachers in a school in England from a few weeks ago:

Skills Over Content

Whether or not we agree, there is a paradigm shift happening around us in education as knowledge becomes increasingly available and accessible. So our role as teachers must change to accommodate this. We need to start thinking of ourselves as developers of skills rather than deliverers of content.

In practice, this means starting our lesson planning by considering the skills which need to be developed rather than the content that’s next in the syllabus.

I think this sort of thing has been fairly common in recent years. I heard it very many times. I think it may have gone out of fashion now – I see it more often from overseas sources than English ones – but it is still in the culture. I find it hard to believe that this could have been missed completely by anybody. I gave this example because it was recent, not because there weren’t hundreds of other examples out there. If one really wanted to find multiple examples of people denying the importance of knowledge then I’d recommend buying Seven Myths About Education by Daisy Christodoulou, as the vast majority of the myths she addresses are about the lack of importance of knowledge, and she gives multiple examples of each one, usually from influential and important sources.

If I could only pick one source to establish that a hostile attitude to the teaching of knowledge was the orthodoxy in recent years, I don’t think there’s a better example than the letter signed by 100 educationalists when Michael Gove tried to increase the amount of knowledge in the GCSE curriculum. Here are just some of the ways they described the teaching of knowledge.

…The proposed curriculum consists of endless lists of spellings, facts and rules. This mountain of data will not develop children’s ability to think, including problem-solving, critical understanding and creativity…

Much of it demands too much too young. This will put pressure on teachers to rely on rote learning without understanding. Inappropriate demands will lead to failure and demoralisation. The learner is largely ignored. Little account is taken of children’s potential interests and capacities, or that young children need to relate abstract ideas to their experience, lives and activity…

…The mountains of detail for English, maths and science leave little space for other learning…

…A recent CBI report argued that “we need to end the culture of micro-management”, and (citing the Cambridge Primary Review) that “memorisation and recall are being valued over understanding and inquiry”…

…Schools in high-achieving Finland, Massachusetts and Alberta emphasise cognitive development, critical understanding and creativity, not rote learning…

This is what I, and most traditionalists, are opposing when we say we favour the teaching of knowledge. We support the teaching of actual specified knowledge over the teaching of vague generic qualities like “creativity” or “cognitive development”. We don’t think teaching more knowledge means understanding is not passed on. We don’t fear facts, detail, recall or memorisation. If you don’t disagree with us, then good, but let’s not pretend that there were not people fighting against these things. Let nobody pretend there weren’t those who were appalled by the idea of teaching more knowledge in the curriculum. We cannot forget all those comments about Gradgrind, regurgitating facts, or rote-learning out of the debate. Don’t pretend to be for knowledge if the moment anyone celebrates teaching it, or recommends testing it, you will be the first to complain.