Know-nothings: It's hard to think in a vacuum

"Facts are out of fashion," writes Dan Lerman, a professor of cognitive science at Columbia, in The Free Press. From pricey private schools to urban school districts, teachers brag that students aren't expected to memorize math facts, spell correctly or know what happened when. As Bluto said: "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

In 2014, the AP U.S. History curriculum "was revised to focus on broad themes and historical thinking skills," dropping or spending less time on "important dates, names, and events," he writes. Students are supposed to understand history in a knowledge vacuum.

Education isn't a "trivia contest," he writes. "Knowing facts isn’t the end goal, but facts are a prerequisite to higher orders of thinking, of the ability to separate reality from fiction."

Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham writes in Why Don’t Students Like School?: “Thinking well requires knowing facts. . . . The very processes that teachers care about most — critical thinking processes like reasoning and problem solving — are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge.”

If the well of knowledge is empty, we're left with "disparate voices, each talking about their feelings and perspectives, with no respect for factual relevance," Lerman writes. "Yap, yap, yap."

The disdain for knowledge is not a culture war thing, and it's not new, responds Karen Vaites. In blue, red and purple states, schools began "spending less time on knowledge-rich teaching" decades ago. The problem "emerged from misunderstandings about how kids really learn, not social justice movements."

"Background knowledge is key to reading comprehension," Vaites writes. Schools need to build knowledge for students who don't have educated parents taking them to libraries, museums and so forth. "Content knowledge is an even greater predictor of comprehension for English language learners," she writes. You want equity? Teach science, history, geography and general knowledge about the world.

Schools often choose allegedly "high-quality," science-of-reading-aligned curricula light on books and knowledge building, Vaites writes for the Curriculum Insight Project. "Collectively, the entire “knowledge-building” category, which crosses ten curricula, has roughly 35% market share."