The Knowledge Challenge
Knowledge-rich education should start early.
This is the fourth of a series of posts focused on teaching and learning in kindergarten through third grade (K-3) motivated by the importance of getting students off to a good start.
My previous post on learning in early childhood discussed how the development of oral language and imagination in the early years prepares children to learn about things that are long ago, far away, or not immediately obvious from everyday experience.
The schools can make a huge contribution to developing children’s knowledge by teaching a knowledge-rich curriculum beginning in the early grades—kindergarten through third grade. Parents and active citizens need to work with teachers to make this happen.
Why Knowledge is Important
Knowledge—information stored in long-term memory—is what you think with. It enables you to understand what others are talking about, evaluate the credibility of what you hear, make sense of ideas, solve problems, and learn things more easily because you can relate them to something you already know. It enables you to develop new interests and helps “make the inside of your head an interesting place to spend the rest of your life.”1
What Is a Knowledge-Rich Curriculum?
A knowledge-rich curriculum is one that is structured around a sequence of knowledge-building topics in science, history, geography, civics and the fine arts as well as English Language Arts and mathematics. For example, here is the list of first-grade science topics in the Core Knowledge Sequence:
· The Sun, Moon, and stars
· Plant and animal survival
· Light and sound
· Simple machines
· Human body systems
· Science biographies.
Note that with six topics and roughly 180 days in a typical school year, this allows 30 instructional days for each topic—enough to cover the topic in enough depth and detail to develop students’ interest.
Why Teach Knowledge-Rich Curriculum in the Early Grades (K-3)
The children are ready for it! The development of oral language and imagination in early childhood makes them ready to learn such a curriculum, provided it is taught in a child-friendly way with lots of show-and-tell, storytelling, and hands-on examples.
It contributes to their interest and enjoyment of school. One parent’s story provides an example:
My husband and I used to joke with our own kids. They’d come home from school, and we would say at the dinner table, “What did you learn today?” And they would say, “Nothing.” And my husband would then say to them, “Well, then don’t go back.”
And then once they got to a Core Knowledge school we’d say, “What did you learn in science today,” or “What did you learn in history and geography?” And they talked and talked about it. These are the conversations that the kids themselves are having. And I will tell you, the parents of our Core Knowledge school will say to me, “You know, Dr. Hudak, I cannot get over, my son and my daughter come home, and they are excited about school.” When kids come back after the summer, they cannot wait to come back to school. There’s not this dull “Oh gosh we’re here again and we’re filling out packets of worksheets again.”2
It prepares children to learn more about the same subject later. That’s because people can learn things more easily if they can relate them to something they already know.
It helps children become better writers. It really helps to know more about the topic you are writing about.
It reduces the pressure on teachers to race through content in the upper grades. The bane of middle and high school education is teachers being pressured to “cover” lots of information quickly because students know so little of it. But if students enter middle and high school already knowing a lot, then teachers’ jobs can change to more in-depth exploration of topics that students already know something about.
How to Tell if Schools Are Teaching a Knowledge-Rich K-3 Curriculum
Here are steps that parents and active citizens can take to learn about the curriculum in the local schools:
Explore the school and district website. These websites usually make it easy to enroll and figure out the school calendar and activities. Yet often information on the content of the English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies curriculum is buried a few layers farther down. If the website refers you to the state standards, you need to take a close look at those standards.
Learn how to tell the difference between a curriculum that is knowledge-rich and one that is not. A good way to start is to spend time on the Knowledge Matters Campaign website with their curriculum evaluation tools and stories of schools teaching knowledge-rich curricula. Such curricula are focused on specific knowledge topics, not on context-free “strategies” or “skills.” The curriculum does not assume that exposing students to random knowledge snippets is the same as teaching knowledge. Instead, it is designed so that what is taught in the early grades prepares students to learn what is taught in later grades.
Talk to teachers. If looking at publicly available information leaves you with lots of questions, talk to teachers of early-grades students in the school district and the school where your child is or will be attending. Find out what knowledge units are being taught, how much emphasis is placed on science and social studies in addition to reading and mathematics, and what you as a parent can do to work with the schools.
Be wary of misconceptions about knowledge. If local educational leaders disparage knowledge as “mere facts” or “rote memorization,” if they imply that traditional knowledge is now obsolete and students don’t need to learn much in the age of Google and AI because they can always look things up, or if they treat “21st century skills” as substitutes for knowledge, then those are reasons for concern.
What To Do Next
What happens next depends on what you learn about the curriculum.
To the extent that the curriculum is knowledge-rich, parents and active citizens can work with teachers to spread the word that this is a very good thing – not every school or school district has this.
If the English language arts curriculum is focused on “skills” with little emphasis on building knowledge, and science and social studies are given relatively little time in K-3, then parents, active citizens, and teachers are faced with the more difficult task of making the case for such a curriculum in the face of potential obstacles and opposition. For example, parents and teachers can make the case that a knowledge-rich curriculum is the best way to meet the goals reflected in the state’s academic standards.
In general, conversations about curriculum should stimulate discussion about the purposes of education. If these purposes include preparing well-informed, intellectually curious, and open-minded citizens, then a knowledge-rich curriculum is an important part of the recipe.
The original quote is by Barnard College president Judith Shapiro, speaking to a group of students: “You want the inside of your head to be an interesting place to spend the rest of your life.” Quoted in Andrew Delbanco, College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be, 2nd ed. (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2012), p.33.
Quoted in E.D. Hirsch, Jr., The Ratchet Effect: Shared Knowledge, Shared Values (Core Knowledge Foundation, Charlottesville, VA, 2024), p. 34. A “Core Knowledge school” is one that uses the Core Knowledge Sequence curriculum.