The Role of Content Knowledge - 2025 CE

Learning... that is to say, true learning... is far more than simple memorization of facts and the assembling of data. Learning connotes understanding, and in order to achieve understanding, one must have a degree of expertise with the content. A student can memorize data and know that the French & Indian War ended in 1763. He can absorb facts and know that the American Revolution began in 1776, and may even know some of the more popularly-known causes (taxation without representation and all that). But without content expertise - the ability to make connections and inferences between facts and data and draw logical conclusions that may go beyond the raw data - he may never realize or understand just how inextricably commingled these two historical points are, or why it is of such importance for modern American citizens to appreciate this link.

Where do students get that content expertise? Up until now, the only source has been the teacher. Textbooks contain data, facts and figures, but it has been teachers who provide the student with the means of putting it all together. Teachers explain, illuminate, decrypt and build upon that raw information and help the student turn it into something meaningful. Teachers must, therefore, be experts in their field. They must possess content knowledge to be effective educators.

However, in this progressively technological and informationally connected world, there is another source of not only information but interpretation and analysis that is literally at the fingertips of almost every student in America: the internet. By the year 2025, it is entirely conceivable that anything a middle-school student would need to learn would be available online, not only in the form of pure information, but accompanied with detailed (or not so detailed) analysis and explanation. The question is, does this ready source of content knowledge render the teacher obsolete?

Not by a long shot.

No matter how pervasive the technology is, no matter how easily it can be interfaced and referenced, a massive electronic clearinghouse of data and information can never sufficiently match the vitality and potential of having a conversation with an expert who is willing and eager not only to share his expertise, but to admit that it is not complete and can only grow with the sharing. Students may search online databases for the Intolerable Acts and find tomes of writing that will help them regurgitate any and all vital figures and numbers, but chances are they will not have truly learned the material until they have had a chance to discuss it and hear it critiqued, reviewed, and debated.

Most importantly, the ubiquitous nature of online information means that not all of it can be trusted to be accurate or complete. Websites like Wikipedia are wonderful sources of information, but must be reviewed with care, since anyone can, at any time, alter any data there that they see fit. Without the expertise of a teacher who deeply understands what the content should be to serve as a filter, many students could learn the wrong things. This is part of what teachers (particularly history teachers, I dare say) are there to do; They are there to help students understand how to see and recognize the difference between fact and fiction.

Thus, the single-most important skill that students of 2025 must master in order to be productive is the ability to discern for themselves the veracity of what they see and hear. I hear you cry that the ability to skillfully interface with technological advances must surely be more important... but I maintain that it is not. In fact, it is the inexorable pace of those advances that calls this need into sharp focus! In the face of an overwhelming flood of information from sources that range in reliability from respected news sources and researchers to sidewalk bloggers and agenda-peddlers on virtual soap-boxes, students must be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. And it is our job as teachers to help them learn how to do it.