Attitutor Blog: The Curse of Knowledge in Teaching

This post is an excellent summary of how the curse of knowledge can be a significant obstacle to good teaching.

About Don Berg

over 15 years experience leading kids of all ages in mostly informal educational settings
Author of the books:

Teacherpreneur, Home schooled other people's kids for about 5 years

Executive Director, Deeper Learning Advocates

Ex-co-founder & Ex-Treasurer, Portland Clean Air

2018 Attended Stanford d.school K-12 Lab

2012 Graduated Reed College, B.A. in Psychology

1991 Graduated Northwest Nannies Institute, Certified Professional Nanny

1986 Graduated Lakewood High School, Lakewood California (Attended PACE magnet program at Long Beach Polytechnic High School)

Schooliness Meme Collection

Schooliness: The quality of seeming or being felt to be educative, even if not necessarily educative. Adapted from Oxford Languages listing for “truthiness”
Schooly Day: As the doors open, the minds close. Hat Tip to Diane Cordell
Schooliness 2: A disease that confines the mind to a hot stuffy box created by teachers, unnecessary rules, and bureaucracy. Side affects include lack of passion, mind numbing, and extreme functional fixedness. Hat Tip to Lindsea
Schooly Schools: Places that prepare children for the world by separating them from it. Hat Tip to Clay Burrell
Schooliness 3: The process of leaching creativity from the soul of a student. Hat Tip to Diane Cordell
Schooly Discipline: Punishing disengaged learners by removing them from school grounds for periods of 1 to 5 days at a time. Hat Tip to Clay Burrell
Schooliness 4: The fear of evaluation when colleagues visit your classroom. Hat Tip to Chris Watson
Schooly Gaze: Looking at every new technology, event, or idea only in terms of how it can be used for the purposes of schooliness. Hat Tip to Penelope Millar
Schooliness 5: Believing that there are certain texts that all students need to read. Hat Tip to Chris Watson
Schooly Library: A collection of outdated tomes arranged so that no student can locate them without the assistance of a highly trained professional who is usually unavailable. Hat Tip to Diane Cordell
Schooliness 6: Teaching English as if all the students are on a literature professor career track. Hat Tip to Chris Watson
Schooly Concerts: Teacher-directed mindless entertainment that allows the administration to brag about music programs in parent newsletters and press releases. Hat Tip to Ken Pendergrass
Schooliness 7: The void between what teachers know about how to learn and what students have to guess about how they learn. Hat Tip to Chris Watson
Schooly Music Lessons: Using auto harps to teach outdated songs by rote with outdated accompaniments that sound nothing like music in the real world. Hat Tip to Ken Pendergrass
Schooliness 8: Preparing students for challenges and careers that don’t exist yet by teaching them about challenges and careers that don’t exist anymore. Hat Tip to pwoessner
Schooly Standards: Mandated tests that measure a student’s ability to regurgitate facts. As expectations rise, passing grades are lowered to achieve the statistically impossible goal of having every student test “above average.” Hat Tip to Diane Cordell
Schooliness 9: The assumption that becoming a doctor or a lawyer is the pinnacle of academic accomplishment, and the purpose of secondary education. Hat Tip to Chris Watson
Schooly Professional Development: Staff are forced to attend and remain passive. Administrators decide what will happen before, during, and after. Students do not enter into the mix except incidentally. Hat Tip to Diane Cordell
Schooly Writing: Assignments to students who don’t want to write them, by teachers who don’t want to read them; upon which hinges the student’s future and the teacher’s livelihood. Hat Tip to Lindsea

Attitutor Blog

15 January 2009

The Curse of Knowledge in Teaching

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