Comparing education systems internationally is a tricky business because contexts vary widely. But England and the U.S., along with some other countries, have long shared a similar problem: Education orthodoxy conflicts with what cognitive science tells us about teaching and learning.
Orthodoxy vs. Science
In both countries, prospective teachers have been told they should serve primarily as facilitators, allowing children to direct their own education as much as possible through inquiry, discovery, and free choice. It’s considered more important for students to acquire skills—for example, in reading comprehension or critical thinking more generally—than to acquire any particular knowledge. Some argue that requiring students to retain factual information is not only unnecessary but harmful.
Cognitive science, on the other hand, indicates that when learners are new to a topic, what works best is explicit instruction that incorporates lots of teacher-directed interaction with students. And studies showthat learners need to acquire knowledge through a content-rich curriculum in order to apply “thinking” skills. The more information you have about a topic stored in long-term memory, the better able you are to understand a text on that topic or to think about it critically.