Factual knowledge must precede skill

I am back to finally review Chapter 2 of Daniel Willingham's book.

It is a commonly held but erroneous concept that we should focus on teaching critical thinking skills but not be concerned with teaching factual knowledge. Willingham gives many quotes to illustrate how common this feeling was among great men of our society. Many of us did not enjoy memorizing facts that we would not use again but when we look at the science of learning it is clear that factual knowledge is critical for learning.

This is the simple model he uses to discuss the thinking process.

Working memory is the site of awareness and thinking. Thinking is combining knowledge in a new way. We can alter both the environment and our long term memory in order to allow us to think more efficiently.

He first uses the example of reading to show how prior knowledge is critical to that task. If you look at even some very simple text you can see that writers leave gaps in knowledge. They assume the reader knows many things. He uses an example of someone describing the players on a baseball field making a double play. If you know baseball the sentence is simple but if not you have to think very hard to follow along. You could get a sense of this with any novel if you open it to the middle and start reading. It is unlikely that you would understand much of what was going on if you miss the first part of the story.

One of the key mental techniques we all use is chunking. This is when we encounter a large group of facts and see them as a whole. We do not have to think hard but rely on our long term memory. A good illustration is to compare how easy it would be to memorize these letter groups:

• KZB
  
• QAF
  
• AXT
  

Compared to:

• CIA
• FBI
  
• CNN
  

You probably sense that you could remember the second group better because they are not random sets of three letters but three memorable "chunks" of information that you have some knowledge of.

He then points out how prior factual knowledge allows readers to retain a higher percentage of the information read. It is a classic case of the rich getting richer. Studies show that even poor readers with a high degree of knowledge will retain more than good readers with low knowledge.

Four ways that background knowledge is important to reading (he admits that there are more than these four).

1. Better vocabulary
2. Allows reader to bridge the logical gaps left by the writer
   
3. It allows chunking
   
4. Guides interpretation of ambiguous sentences

Background knowledge is needed for cognitive skills as well as reading

He gives a great example using chess players. It turns out that if you force really good chess players to go very fast the outcome is the same as if they go very slow. The better players still win. The reason for this is that they don't use a great deal of working memory to make their next move. They rely heavily on their long term memory to choose from options. They don't think through all the different moves the way a beginner might do.

Factual knowledge improves your memory

This is very simple - The more facts you know the more new facts you will retain.

Science has looked at the question of where to go for content and it has some bad news for our generation. It turns out that TV, Internet and video games are very poor at giving us the information we need to expand our factual knowledge. Newspapers, magazines and books are still much better tools if our goal is to be better readers and thinkers.


Implications for the classroom

• How to evaluate which knowledge to instill
  • For general reading the knowledge most beneficial is what the writer will assume most people know. This is generally superficial knowledge.
    
  • For technical knowledge it requires much more depth. It would be best to go very deep in a few concepts so that the material will be maintained.
    
• Be sure that the knowledge base is mostly in place when you require critical thinking
  
• Shallow knowledge is better than no knowledge
  
• Do whatever you can to get kids to read
  
• Knowledge acquisition can be incidental
  
• Start early
  
• Knowledge must be meaningful
  

I think this chapter most people would not find too surprising. It does show the need to fix any sensory integration problems as soon as possible. We see many patients who built enough ability to read at a slow level but not with speed. They are at a significant disadvantage to those who have read a large amount of material. It is truly a game of the rich getting richer. If you want your child to succeed do whatever you can to help them to read as much as possible. It is a very powerful brain builder.