“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

These often-cited words of Alexander Pope are, perhaps ironically, not what he actually said - it should be “a little learning”.

However, regardless of the word choice, it serves as a succinct distillation of how education policy has evolved over the last ten years to focus on the importance of a “knowledge-rich” curriculum - and to highlight the problems it may be storing up.

Of course, schools have always focussed on knowledge.

But since 2012, and the introduction of Michael Gove’s version of the national curriculum, teachers have been increasingly pushed to make sure the children they teach acquire knowledge and knowledge of “the right sort”.

Yet, the extent to which that translates into learning is less clear - as a recent long-form article on Tes elucidated thoroughly. As such, it would be dangerous to think all of this is preparing pupils for life beyond school.

Lofty words but little clarity

Indeed, for all the ministers in the government that have espoused the benefits of a “knowledge-rich” curriculum being at the root of improving schools, they have never really explained what they mean by this.

It is a term that trips off their tongues as easily as “aspiration”, “equity”, “equality”, “social mobility”, “social justice” or “levelling up”, without being properly considered.

Even Ofsted’s deep-dive investigation into subjects is to determine the extent of subject knowledge and whether the knowledge they find is substantive, disciplinary or inter-disciplinary.

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Exam specifications also demand the accumulation and recall of knowledge.

Rosenshine’s model of instruction from 1982 has permeated our classrooms and we seem to have suddenly remembered Ebbinghaus’ forgetting theory of 1885.

As such, Gove and Nick Gibb, too - the willing enforcer - wanted to return to traditional values and content, to stop children from spending time on “skills for learning” or on fripperies such as learning about environmental sustainability or health or social and emotional learning.

This was made plain with Gove’s introduction to his curriculum: “The national curriculum provides pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge they need to be educated citizens. It introduces pupils to the best that has been thought and said, and helps engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.”

Well yes, but is that all? Surely there is more to growing up in the 21st century than that.

False dichotomies

Do we want them to think for themselves and act for others? Would we like them to grow up fulfilled and committed to the fulfilment of others?

Do we want to equip them to play their part in solving some of the world’s pressing problems such as climate change and a lack of equity in our own and other societies?

Do we want our children to grow up able to make good judgments, whether in their own interests or those of others, and to do that will require them to follow certain value systems and recognise that these change over time and in different communities?

It seems not. Or perhaps it is the narrowness of definitions that creates unnecessary arguments.

To justify their stance, Gibb and Gove leaned heavily on the work of E.D. Hirsch, an American educationalist who had produced texts Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and Core Knowledge Sequence.

Hirsch made strong arguments about the importance to a functioning civil society of people having sound knowledge of its development and the vital role of the school in implanting facts in children to build a schema.

Few busy teachers had time to read Hirsch’s books but, though he made good points and coherent arguments, he was used by Gove and Gibb to polarise falsely arguments and create images of “traditionalists and progressives”.

Hirsch was simply updating the image of the elders of a tribe acquainting their young with the stories of their development, their heroic people, famous days, catastrophes and traditional enemies.

There has always been a suspicion that some politicians want to limit the learning range in our schools for fear that our population would be too thoughtful, too questioning, too aware of how our society has evolved and works: far easier to rein in.

Yet a knowledge-rich curriculum would surely counter that - giving children more knowledge, insights and understanding upon which to base argument, conjecture and debate. A decade on from Gove’s version of the curriculum, are our children more knowledgeable?

Facts upon facts

Well, six-year-olds are learning about Stonehenge and nine-year-olds write about Cézanne or Mozart. Seven-year-old children talk about the Neolithic, Mesolithic, and Palaeolithic eras and teenagers report the horrors of the Somme and the triangular trade.

As they accumulate and learn this knowledge, children are typically enthusiastic about it.

Teachers are typically feeling satisfied and often inspired by how much children can remember. Parents, too, are impressed often because their children can recount facts that they either don’t know or have forgotten.

This accumulation of knowledge has certainly addressed one of those perennial issues that has beset teaching and learning, as teachers have tried to blend knowledge, skills and understanding over the last fifty years.

The Newsom Report of 1963, in its title Half our Future, had drawn attention to the significant proportion of secondary pupils who found their knowledge-dominated curriculum irrelevant leading to school failure for a large percentage.

Meanwhile, The Plowden Report of 1967 had argued for a more integrated approach to learning in primary schooling.

Yet, as these outlooks were implemented, there persisted the concern that rigour was lacking. The lens of time-honoured subjects blinkered and distorted visions of how a whole curriculum, that was broad and balanced, would be configured in and out of the classroom.

If a primary pupil, having spent all afternoon painting a picture of a Roman soldier, neither improved in painting nor knew more about Roman soldiers, was it time well spent?

A secondary pupil measuring personal performance in PE might be making little progress in mathematic skills nor getting fitter.

Nowadays, the focus on the pedagogy of knowledge transmission indicates measurable progress in learning…a particular approach to pedagogy.

A lack of rigour?

But, as we have already implied, could it be that the enthusiasm for knowledge richness masks a similar lack of rigour about knowledge itself?

After all, our current emphasis is based on the building of facts that Gove promoted: knowledge as “what, who, when, where” and what he described as the essence of subjects.

The simplicity of history being “when” and geography being “where”, and the “who” and “what” linking with “when” in so many other subjects is seductive.

Detractors call it pub quiz or game show knowledge, where the prizes go to those who remember: we used to call these things “general knowledge”.

And the approach to curriculum today does offer an accumulation of abundant general knowledge.

Subjects, though, are more subtle than that. What, in school, we called subjects to represent the access to disciplines of learning.

The disciplines represent the big branches of learning: history, geography, the arts, languages and sciences.

In science, for example, branches split further into chemistry, physics and biology and those branches split even further into astrophysics, botany, zoology and others.

As these branches specialise in to twigs, they overlap with other disciplines: marine archaeology links science and history, geological oceanography links science and geography, meteorology links geography and physics.

As we stand back from this tree of learning, we can no longer see the individual twigs and branches. What we see is these disciplines interacting with each other to create an ever-expanding canopy of learning.

Does all this learning comprise the tree of knowledge? Not entirely.

The art of ‘knowing why’

As well as the knowledge of “what, when, who, where” facts, children need to be knowing other things.

Most subject disciplines expect a degree of “knowing why...”; seeing causal links between pieces of knowledge that build an understanding of phenomena, circumstances or events.

There is also the “knowing how…”; understanding the necessary factors and actions that create desired outcomes, as in science experiments or decisions in design technology processes.

Without these understandings, built on the necessary practical activity that goes with the building of knowledge, pupils will be left hamstrung when it comes to further study or apprenticeship work, for their knowledge risks being at the superficial - rather than conceptual - level.

This is why plans to focus GCSE languages in French, Spanish and German on pupils learning 1,700 high-frequency words have been criticised by many linguists, even as the Department for Education argues this “knowledge” will improve performance in languages.

Again, the learning of the “what” will only go so far.

Most people improve in speaking a language by being with people who speak it. If we wanted to learn to speak Chinese, would going to a room with thirty other people where only one can speak it (the teacher) be the best option?

If we want our pupils to learn languages, would they benefit from a young age from a daily visit via the web to a school in France, Spain or Germany?

Or, in other examples, what about the sinking of the Titanic. It is an enduring historical story of hubris and most pupils appreciate the horror of the catastrophe. But if the opportunity to learn “why icebergs move” is missed, then a link between historical events and geography and science is missed too.

Pupils who know of the horror of the Somme, but are not aware of where the Western and the Eastern fronts ran, or why, are only building piecemeal knowledge.

Too many see the Great War as muddy trenches, a front line and an armistice day.

They lack the knowledge of how propaganda is used, mistaken judgement in warfare or how remembrance is coordinated and why… all of which would lead them to question events in their own time.

“Knowing how…” comes alive in art and design as Bridget Riley’s work is explored and “knowing why…” in looking at her purposes.

The same would be true for a study of Picasso’s Guernica or Anthony Gormleys’ sculptures.

Truly deep knowledge

These sorts of knowledge are much deeper than the general knowledge currently being enjoyed and celebrated.

This is deep knowledge that opens doors to profound learning as we become conversant with big ideas and intellectual concepts.

It is this that will prepare our pupils as thinking members of society and help them into careers and jobs as they leave the education system.

Our schooling system has always taught knowledge. Knowledge has always been a key part of the national curriculum.

Gove’s trick was to make it sound as though having knowledge would ensure that our young are successful in life.

Instead, we might be preparing our young for a world that no longer exists rather than the world they will inhabit and influence in the 21st century.

Tim Brighouse and Mick Waters have each spent a lifetime working in the school system as teachers and in high-profile leadership positions. Their new book About Our Schools: Improving on previous best (Crown House Publishing, 2022) is out now. All royalties will be donated to Barnardo’s and The Compassionate Education Foundation