Breeding Knowledge: It's like Gold

“If I need to learn something, I can just look it up on the Internet.”

Yes, you can look it up. But how much would you actually learn? That’s the subject of an American Educator article almost twenty years ago. In the Spring 2000 edition, E. D. Hirsch wrote an article titled ‘You can always look it up’… Or can you?

The premise of the article is that knowledge breeds new knowledge. Hirsch backs this up with multiple examples from cognitive psychology. But his main point can be summarized by one paragraph in the article.

Those who repudiate a fact-filled curriculum on the grounds that kids can always look things up miss the paradox that de-emphasizing factual knowledge actually disables children from looking things up effectively. To stress process at the expense of factual knowledge actually hinders children from learning to learn. Yes, the Internet has placed a wealth of information at our fingertips. But to be able to use that information – to absorb it, to add to our knowledge – we must already possess a storehouse of knowledge. That is the paradox disclosed by cognitive research.

It turns out that when I want to learn some chemistry, I (the professor) can do this very quickly and efficiently. Having knowledge in the field means that I can quickly absorb most of what I’m reading because I already know most of it, and I just need to pay attention to the small amount of new knowledge I’m trying to acquire. What I learn is effectively integrated into my existing scaffold of knowledge. My students, on the other hand, sometimes flail on an assignment that requires them to “look up stuff”. And I’ve noticed that the degree of flailing is dependent on the amount of background knowledge already present. The more you already know, the easier it is to zero in on the new information you looked up. One’s search strategy is also more efficient.

This is why, as an instructor, it is important to scaffold an open-ended assignment. I’ve learned this by trial and error. Even though I’ve been teaching for a long time, when I want students to try something novel and creative, gauging the degree of scaffolding can still be challenging. You don’t want it to be too easy nor too difficult. Hitting that ‘zone of proximal development’ can be tricky.

Breeding knowledge is like breeding gold. You need some ‘starter’ gold to build up your hoard, slowly but surely. Like sourdough bread. Or like when your father (Thror) gives you (Thrain) one of the seven, as in: Seven rings for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone. In the “Durin’s Folk” appendix in Lord of the Rings, Thror says to his son at their last parting. “This may prove the foundation of new fortune for you yet, though that seems unlikely. But it needs gold to breed gold.” Well, a golden hoard was built up. But then a greedy dragon named Smaug decided he wanted it. Oh, well.

Thankfully, knowledge isn’t subject to being stolen by a greedy dragon in the same way as gold. (We’ll skip over Glaurung the Golden and his dealings with the children of Turin.) But you have to work at building it up, brick by brick. This has to do with cognitive load and the limits of our memory and processing capabilities. In short, you cannot learn anything more complex if you haven’t mastered the basic steps. By mastered, I mean the knowledge is so ingrained that you no longer need to look up an external source. This year, I’ve been particularly trying to impress upon my G-Chem students the importance of knowing key definitions. Being able to recall the definition from memory is necessary before one can apply it to explain a concept in chemistry. Using it in context further strengthens the memory of the definition – a virtuous cycle.

Hirsch opens his article with an anecdote from his ninth-grade curriculum. Instead of the more traditional knowledge-brick-building approach, his cohort had two large projects that in today’s ‘progressive’ education terminology would be ‘integrated’ and ‘multidisciplinary’. Hirsch says: “I was excused from ordinary classes. It was great fun. Fortunately for my education, I just spent one year at that school.” I don’t think Hirsch is against projects or having integration among disciplines. But if these approaches detract from learning basic knowledge brick-by-brick, the students might ‘feel’ that they learned a lot, but in reality they have not. Yes, it’s possible to breed knowledge through projects and integration, but cognitive psychology has taught us that it needs to be carefully scaffolded. Chemistry is conceptually very challenging thanks to Johnstone’s Triangle. That doesn’t mean it cannot also be fun and interesting, but students must still do the work to master the basics. This includes memorizing definitions. Every year many students in my G-Chem classes will misuse electronegativity, even after multiple exhortations and examples.

Hirsch closes with another anecdote:

A few days ago, a student asked me to fill out a recommendation form for admission to my university’s school of education, where disparagement of “mere facts” may still be heard. Nonetheless, the very first item on the admissions form asked for an estimate of the candidate’s breadth of knowledge. This is standard practice on admissions forms, because studies have shown that general knowledge is the single most reliable index to a person’s ability to perform a variety of tasks. I wouldn’t have noticed this glaring inconsistency if I hadn’t been writing this piece…

How do you “learn to learn”? Hirsch would say that you build up the preparatory knowledge. Knowledge breeds knowledge; gold brick on top of gold brick. Perhaps a pyramid is an apt picture of a treasure hoard, be it gold or knowledge. The foundation needs to be wide to support its height (or depth). As a teacher, it’s important for me to keep learning new things. Sometimes I feel lazy and I think the Internet at my finger-tips will magically help me learn what I need or want – without systematically building the foundation. And when I flail, it’s a reminder that I should practice what I preach. And this means constantly figuring out where my students are, and how I can keep moving them forward. As they gain expertise and learn to learn, behold, they will find they can look things up profitably and effectively.