Jennifer M. Baldwin

I’m trying hard not to frame this is a “back in my day” vs. “kids these days” thing. I don’t know that people back in the day were more culturally literate than they are today. I suspect not. And cultural literacy changes as culture changes, so the references to things that meant a lot to my parents’ generation or my generation may simply be outdated and that’s cool.

But I do think there’s value to knowing stuff. Not necessarily pop culture ephemera that may wax and wane depending on the year, but deeper stuff. Mythologies. History. Arts and culture that have withstood the test of time. Not just European and American culture either. All cultures and art that are part of the great human repository of imagination and ideas.

But knowing stuff is important. Knowing stuff is how we come to know more stuff; it’s how we come to create more stuff and imagine more stuff and do more stuff.

When I listen to my children talk about their school days, when I see what the curriculum is at our school’s curriculum night, I’m always struck by how little time is given to science and social studies. I often wonder if they are learning about great artists and art movements, great composers and musical genres, mythology, folklore, history, etc.

I really should ask; that’s on me as a parent for not inquiring. I should ask because I do wonder. I think the reason I don’t ask is because I’m afraid the answer is, “Not much.”

Again, I’m not saying things were better when I was in elementary school. I was naturally inclined to be curious about stuff like Greek mythology and the Middle Ages, so I read a lot of that stuff on my own. I can’t disentangle what was my own study from what we did in school. My memory’s not that good.

Natalie Wexler’s The Knowledge Gap book posits that the lack of content-based curricula in American schools has been a detriment to education overall, and maybe I’m inclined to agree because of my own biases in the matter. But when I speak to my high school students about things I assume they know — like who the Greek Olympian gods are, or where Iran is, or what art movement we associate with Vincent Van Gogh, or when World War I took place — I’m always astounded by what they don’t know. I suspect that Wexler’s book is on to something.

Again, I’m not saying it hasn’t always been thus. My high school teachers were probably appalled by the ignorance of my generation too.

But even if this is not a new problem, I still kinda, sorta think it’s a problem. Or, if not a “problem,” then at least something we could try to address.

For my older son, who is in second grade, the lack of any systematic delivery of content and information has been a detriment to his enjoyment of school since almost the beginning. He finds school boring partly because he wants to KNOW STUFF and his school doesn’t seem to be able to deliver the goods. He’s immensely curious about geography, prehistory, paleontology, archeology, earth science, and biology. He’s curious about mythology and folklore and monsters. We provide him with books, let him watch documentaries, share our knowledge with him in conversation, but these are all things that happen outside of school. For him, school is almost a distraction from the real learning, which he does on his own at home.

I’m not particularly worried about my children when it comes to cultural knowledge-y stuff. As their parents, we’re able to provide what doesn’t seem to be coming from the school.

But as a teacher, I do kinda, sorta do worry and wonder what I can do to help. I suppose I might give students a chance to learn this information in my own classroom. I’ll admit, this feels daunting because I’m supposed to be “covering” all kinds of other stuff, like how to write. And it’s also daunting because the way we learn about stuff now is to search the internet, and I’m more and more convinced that what we really need to do is go back into the children’s section of the public library and read those books instead.

I wish my high school had a portal that could take my students directly to the local library so they could easily read books and magazines instead of websites. We don’t even have a library in the school where I teach. The access to books is incredibly limited. Even if I wanted to have my students study Greek mythology, we have no ability to do so without hopping on the internet.

Perhaps the solution is to design a research project that demands they use only books. It’s possible. But as with all things education, there’s the question of, “Is this worth it? Is this the best use of our time?” I don’t know the answer. I do know I like books, and there’s more to be learned from reading a stack of non-fiction kids’ books than we might realize.

And yes, I sound incredibly stuffy by simply rejecting the internet out of hand. I understand the Luddite vibes I’m giving off.

I don’t care. I think we need to do some kind of RESET with our students. Give them a solid base of “stuff” — learned from books — before we let them back onto the web. Once they have that base, they can be more discerning and critical about what they encounter online (though nothing’s foolproof); but the goal isn’t to help them figure out which websites are “trustworthy” and which are not. The goal is to get them some knowledge about the world. A base with which to start. Then they can start the process of being critical about sources and biases.

Or not. Maybe I’m just cranky. These are the times in which the so-called problems of education seem insurmountable, and yet, maybe all of this is a tempest in a teapot and none of it really matters.

I do feel an urge to set some general principles and challenge the students to follow them.

1. If you have a question, sit with it for a while and try to come up with your own answers before looking elsewhere.
2. If you have a question, have sat with it for a while, and are ready to seek answers outside of yourself, look in a book first. Look in lots of books. Go to the library and ask the librarian for help in finding these books. Also, as an option, TALK to a trusted someone who is more knowledgeable and wiser than you.
3. After reading books and talking to others, go back into your own thoughts and consider what you’ve learned. Weigh it all against your own ideas. Ask more questions and repeat the steps.
4. Old books are good to consult. Magazines and newspapers (in print) can count too.

I’m not sure if these general principles are even feasible in this day and age. But they might be worth the challenge. I should challenge myself to follow them too.

What’s the stuff I don’t know? What’s the knowledge I could use a refresher on? Which section of the children’s library should I explore first?