[Review] Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival
Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time a group of academics got together and came up with a plan to fix education… and thought this time might be different.1
When you’re finished laughing, can I at least tell you the plan? Joking aside, there’s a lot of value here. I’m glad I read it and the ideas might be worth your time, too. Will it fix education- that’s a big ask.
Tim Surma and a number of other education researchers and would-be reformers think that knowledge has been underrated in education. They claim that the move toward skills and competencies-based curricula has pushed much of the specific content (the knowledge) out of school curricula since, roughly, the early 2000s. Core educational goals, such as ‘developing critical-thinking skills’ or ‘analyzing and drawing conclusions’ have supplanted more fact-based educational goals like ‘Name the battle where Napoleon was defeated.’
The problem with this is that critical-thinking skills and other general skills like reading comprehension unfortunately aren’t general - they don’t transfer. These skills are frustratingly domain specific because they rely on knowledge. This is why your super-smart programmer friend probably shouldn’t moonlight as your cardiologist.2
The book does a good job of summarizing why this is the case. Essentially, the limits working memory and information processing require that we retrieve knowledge from our long term memories in order to perform complex thinking tasks.
Another problem is that curricula based on skills and competencies can be frustratingly vague and therefore cause teachers and schools to diverge wildly from one another in the actual lesson content. This can be a problem because the authors claim that certain types of knowledge are useful and indeed necessary for students to flourish in contemporary life. Less privileged students are less likely to encounter this knowledge outside of school, so when this ‘better’ knowledge or ‘powerful’ knowledge is absent from the curriculum it exacerbates inequality. Furthermore, the authors note that a common foundation of knowledge is vital for democracy in that it promotes healthy civic discourse and a sense of shared cultural identity.
If knowledge is so crucial in the first place, why did we take out of schooling in the first place?
I’m sure that proponents of skills and competency-based curricula would claim that the knowledge is there. The authors claim that the problem can be traced to neoliberalism and wishful thinking.
In the 1990s-2000s, as globalization increased demand for a highly-skilled workforce, and at the same time increased the rate of change in the variety of workplace demands, businesses started casting around for highly-skilled, adaptable workers. The kind of employees with people skills and problem-solving abilities and digital literacy. Educators, who do typically want to improve the lot of their pupils, decided to simply train students in the skills that modern jobs were demanding. Unfortunately, this was wishful thinking: these complex thinking skills are more like emergent properties of lots of tiny pieces domain-specific knowledge and experience.
The first part of the book was a really useful outline of both the value of a strong knowledge base outlining the perils of removing it and why knowledge might be removed. That leave just one thing.
So… what is the plan to fix education?
The authors propose implementing a knowledge-rich curriculum. It is a content-rich curriculum that should be designed with a special priority placed on coherence and clarity.
One criticism leveled at knowledge-based curricula is that they are little more than a random assortment of facts thrown at students. Developing a vertically coherent curriculum addresses this problem by carefully attending to the progression of knowledge across the years of study. Horizontal coherence addresses the connections between knowledge across subjects by suggesting that topics facilitate deep engagement with selected ‘big ideas’ across disciplines.
Clarity is all about keeping everyone on the same page. National-level curriculum organization is necessary if you want to provide a common foundation of knowledge for all. Teachers also need specific, clearly-stated goals so that they can be sure to impart the knowledge the curriculum demands.
You may wonder what content that the authors propose to teach in a knowledge-rich curriculum. That is a matter for societal debate. They do suggest some guidelines for selecting content: first, not to choose to much. Better not to go a mile wide but an inch deep.3 They also suggest prioritizing content around ‘Big Ideas’ based on specific disciplines. Disciplinary knowledge is privileged, according to the authors because it reflects long-standing traditions of thought that are less likely to be encountered outside schools. The authors also think that the skills vs knowledge is a false dichotomy and both should be included in the knowledge rich curriculum. However, rather than spending time on generic skills, the book suggests teaching skills within the context of specific disciplines.
The core idea is to develop powerful knowledge, that is, domain-specific knowledge that is essential for understanding and contributing to modern life.
My take on Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking
I agree that knowledge is important for thinking. I wish we had more of it injected into education. The big question is: What Knowledge? Perhaps you could imagine a world in which educational experts from various disciplines could form a committee to determine the contents of the knowledge-rich curriculum. I don’t know if we live in that world. I wish we had that amount of coordination.
Whose knowledge gets in? If the knowledge selected is supposed to be a product of societal debate, I'm skeptical that we could form a consensus. It’s not just that people mistakenly believed we could teach critical thinking as a magic bullet; We’ve moved away from whole-society specific-knowledge curricula because people can’t agree on the knowledge that we would teach! Although many countries may suffer from less political division than the United States4, it is not an easy task to get educators, administrators, parents and politicians to agree on content. Given the focus on disciplinary knowledge, there is likely to be heated debate among academics on which aspects of their disciplines are essential knowledge.
Even in a less polarized environment there are inherent tensions. For example, how much teacher autonomy should exist in this curriculum when autonomy cuts against the stated values of clarity and coherence? Sure, you may want all members of society to have access to a similar core knowledge base. How does this priority interact with learner diversity? It may be awkward to retrofit essential ‘big ideas’-based teaching priorities onto vocational programs, for example. The authors, to their credit, are aware of these tensions, but they don’t propose solutions for many of them.
Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. I think that Developing a Curriculum for Deep Thinking diagnoses some problems basically correctly but it is only a first step. I would love to see more evidence supporting these knowledge-based curricula. Although there is a lot of cognitive research supporting the idea that knowledge supports skills and complex thinking, there are fewer studies on curriculum impacts. The book primarily discussed the promising recent Grissmer Core Knowledge Study, but more would be better.
I think one of the core problems facing new teachers is one of lack of knowledge, both knowledge of students and of the subject matter. Kieran Egan would argue that teachers with insufficient knowledge will fail to capture what is truly important about their topics and thus fail to engage their classes. Building knowledge early seems like it could give future generations a head start. Given enough positive research results to establish broad support, knowledge advocates will also need to start thinking about how to build a consensus on what large-scale national curricula will actually cover.
Full disclosure: I also have ideas that I think could fix education. Lots of people have lots of ideas.
Though, I’m sure that someone knows a person who’d be great at both, statistically they’re unlikely to be reading this blog.
Egan and any Learning in Depth proponent would certainly agree.
The lead author, Surma, is Dutch and the other authors hail from a number of countries.
Thanks for this thoughtful review. It brings to mind Kieran Egan’s three (often conflicting) goals of education from The Educated Mind: socialization, academics, and individual development (for those interested, Brandon's epic review of the book is here: https://losttools.substack.com/p/the-book-review).
The strong emphasis on skills seems to lean toward socialization—preparing individuals for jobs, citizenship, and participation in society. Now, with this renewed focus on knowledge, the pendulum swings back toward academics—ensuring students grasp what is deemed true, good, and beautiful. But, as you point out, who decides what that knowledge should be? The answer inevitably varies by region, culture, ideology—and a whole lot more.
The more I think about it, the pursuit of a universal, standardized curriculum—a shared body of knowledge that defines an “educated person”—feels like a fool’s errand. But if we abandon that, do we risk an education that becomes too fragmented, too localized, reinforcing narrow worldviews instead? It’s a tricky balance.
Acknowledging my bias here (since we're both involved in the project!), I think that Egan's Learning in Depth concept overall *could* come close to balancing these competing priorities.