The chapter starts out with the concerns from teachers about the time factor in teaching skills and preparing for standardized tests. Is fact learning useful or useless? Willingham states that the cognitive principal guiding the chapter is, “Factual knowledge must precede skill.” (pg. 25) He gives examples where having background knowledge on a topic allows the student to learn and remember more taught about that topic. He discusses how background knowledge is stored in long-term memory which aids in critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving. (. 28) He then goes on to talk about how working memory, which has a limited capacity, can keep more stuff it in it by “chunking” together separate pieces of information from the environment. He demonstrates this with examples such as how the letters F B and I can be remembered better if chunked together as FBI. He says, “. . . background knowledge allows chunking, which makes more room in working memory, which makes it easier to relate ideas, and therefore to comprehend.” (p. 35) I agree with his statement, “. . . comprehension depends on background knowledge, and that’s where kids from privileged homes have an edge. They come to school with a bigger vocabulary and more knowledge about the world than underprivileged kids. And because knowing things makes it easier to learn new things, the gap between privileged and underprivileged kids widens.”(p. 37) I see this as a growing concern in our district. We have an increased number of students coming to school each year from lower economic families. He ends the chapter with the following suggestions for helping children learn background knowledge to aid in making cognitive processes work better:
· 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 with knowledge.
· Knowledge must be meaningful.
