Is That a Fact?

Jan 25

Today’s episode will deal with the role of facts in learning. I will argue below that a fixation on facts is not the way to learn.

I lead with the photo of RFK, Jr. to point out that facts are important—crucial even. RFK is the most unqualified nominee to lead HHS—a cabinet position—in my lifetime. Donald Trump in X said of RFK, “ [He] will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research.” Quite the contrary. RFK styles himself as a skeptic, but he is a enamored with fake science that confirms his quixotic biases and has demonstrated no qualification or disposition to evaluate reputable scientific studies. All of this to say that I believe in the importance of facts. In this case hard won scientific facts about public health measures that have saved millions of lives and produced an unprecedented surge in life expectancy.

Facts are not enough. Ideas organize and give logical structure to seemingly disparate facts. RFK has even voiced skepticism about the organizing principle called the Germ Theory of Disease. This is the principle that infectious diseases are caused by specific microorganisms. It probably began with the work of Louis Pasteur and was imbued with scientific rigor through Robert Koch’s postulates which are used to establish disease causality. The work of these scientists and others gave us the knowledge that now allows most children, at least in the first world, to survive childhood diseases and live to adulthood.

The Germ Theory of Disease has born practical fruit for over 150 years. Likely RFK himself has lived this long because this web of logically connected ideas organizes and empowers much of our modern approach to health and hygeine.

Learning is catalyzed by a compelling question; how about this:

What is the evidence [facts] that human infectious diseases are caused by specific microscopic organisms [Germ Theory]?

What follows is an approximate transcript of the podcast “Is That a Fact?”

Intro:

Cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham’s practical book, Why Don’t Students Like School? is the provocation for this season of podcasts. Willingham’s book unpacks what he calls 10 principles of how the mind works. I disagree almost as often as I agree with him, but like Willingham, I intend these podcasts to equip you to restore the joy of real learning in your child.

Today’s principle from Willingham is:

Thinking skills depend on factual knowledge.

This principle may well be the one where I most heatedly disagree with Willingham. Give me the next twenty minutes to explain why this is a bone of contention and what that controversy means for you in your effort to coach your child to the higher pleasures of learning motivated by curiosity and aimed at understanding rather than mere recall.

Podcast:

Willingham attempts to defend the practice that is probably the main reason why students don’t like school and why school is generally both boring and ineffective in catalyzing lasting learning. He begins his argument in chapter 2 of his book by asking,

“How useful or useless is fact learning?”

Good question. Let’s start by defining fact learning. Learning facts is attempting to add true statements to a mental catalog. Facts are normally incontestable; they just are. Facts are a what. Water boils at 100 C. Jimmy Carter was the 39th US president and he died on December 29, 2024. Facts are normally “learned” in school by memorization and students are later tested for fact recall.

Alain de Botton observed,

The problem with facts is that there is no shortage of sound examples. . . .we don’t know what to do with ones we have. (de Botton, The News: A User’s Manual (2014).

De Botton was referencing the news in this quotation, but just as there is more news (most of which we fondly hope is true and therefore factual) than we can assimilate and make sense of, so it is with facts that vie for inclusion in school curricula.

The first problem with fact learning is to determine which facts are worthy of attention and potentially, therefore, retained.

This is not a trivial question. The OED says a fact is,

That which is known (or firmly believed) to be real or true.

There are many things that are true, but not especially important. Facts as facts are true statements that are inert. They do not require human interpretation to exist. They just are. The brain was not designed to be a fact database, and we are not particularly good at loading facts into our brains, much less retaining them. Willingham observes, “We remember much better if something has meaning.” (P. 43) That’s true and evidence of the problem with fact learning. A fact is a what. It doesn’t have to have meaning.

Most school curricula, however, are fact dense and the defense for this approach is that standardized tests require students to retrieve facts as evidence the school and the student have done their jobs.

Probably no one listening today has the power to alter the use of standardized tests in the schools. Teaching to the test is never the right approach for learning, however. There are more effective approaches to teaching and learning that target the development of intriguing and powerful ideas. As a famous book title reminds us, Ideas Have Consequences. Besides providing crucial motivation, the learning of ideas is durable and numerous facts come along for free—as a byproduct of true understanding.

This isn’t hyperbole. I encountered similar objections when I remodeled the biology curriculum in my university from the ground up. The gatekeeper exams were the GRE, the MCAT, and the DAT. High scores on these exams were a prerequisite to graduate and professional schools. Our newly modified curriculum produced significantly higher scores on these fact-oriented tests because students understood ideas deeply and had hooks to remember factual examples as outworkings of those ideas.

Alfred North Whitehead back in 1929 criticized fact orientation,

I am sure that one secret of a successful teacher is that he has formulated quite clearly in his mind what the pupil has got to know in precise fashion. He will then cease from half-hearted attempts to worry his pupils with memorising a lot of irrelevant stuff of inferior importance.
In “The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline”, The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929), 46.

Nearly 100 years later our schools are still “worry(ing) . . .pupils with memorising a lot of irrelevant stuff of inferior importance.”

The second problem with the fact orientation is how to get the facts into the brain and then to hold onto them.

An admittedly weak analogy is to try to use the application Word as a spreadsheet instead of Excel, which was invented to create spreadsheets. You can make tables and do searches and even some calculations in Word, but it wasn’t designed to major on those things. Similarly, the brain wasn’t designed as a database for facts and it shows when we ignore that fundamental reality. This is indeed the kind of thinking we are not good at which Willingham referenced in his first principle that we discussed in the last podcast.

Here is Willingham’s 2nd principle again: “Thinking skills depend on factual knowledge.” Willingham is responding to those who prioritize critical thinking and analytical reasoning in the classroom. He insists (rightly) that students have to have something to think critically about. He says we have to establish this base of factual knowledge, but he isn’t clear about how to do that. He does say (p.26) “That it [establishing factual knowledge] should be done in the context of practicing thinking skills.” I agree with that as far as it goes.

Without being too didactic (I hope), I think the problem is Willingham’s use of the phrase “factual knowledge.” Facts are generally construed as inert true statements of reality that exist independent of human knowers. Knowledge, however, requires a human knower. Knowledge is classically defined as justifiable belief. The knower who truly knows must at least be able to use the knowledge and, ideally, demonstrate that he or she understands what they say they know. “Factual knowledge” is a fanciful chimera. I think Willingham should simply reference knowledge. He uses his fabricated chimera to try to legitimize fact orientation, but most of his second chapter really appeals to the development of ideas as the base upon which critical thinking and analytical reasoning is exercised.

When we focus on ideas rather than facts, we are working with the brain’s strengths.

While we are very poor at databasing facts, we are pattern makers par excellence. It is through pattern formation that we attempt to master physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual reality. We construct categories which are populated with concrete examples—that is facts. The fact orientation ignores the brain’s propensity and need to organize facts. Fact orientation normalizes William James’ blooming buzzing confusion as though it is inevitable. It isn’t. Concepts are ideas constructed around a group of examples that share some set of attributes. There are a nearly infinite number of examples; the brain wants to organize them into a manageable number of concepts.

I mentioned on my way out of the last podcast that this emphasis on facts is a red herring and perhaps you can see why. It is impossible for us to ignore the reality we experience through our senses (the facts of our existence), because we are born conceptualizers. We create categories as soon as we are born. These are patterns from which we reason, and they are populated with specific examples. By the way, did you notice that red herring is a concept and not simply a kind of dried fish? A red herring is fishy, which is why it is also a label for a group of concrete examples in which there is a distracting or misleading element. Something is indeed fishy in Willingham’s reasoning.

The emphasis in the development of thinking should be directed to the enriching of conceptual categories because these are the ideas from which we reason. I don’t think Willingham’s second principle is an actual principle of learning, so let me replace it with two genuine principles of cognition.

Willingham, “Thinking skills depend on factual knowledge.”

My replacement principles:

Critical thinking is the construction of logical connections between concepts.

Concepts are produced by recognizing patterns in objects or causes.

In our early childhood concepts are developed through encounters with physical objects and parents can aid this through trips to the zoo or botanical garden, watching nature programs, or gardening or hiking together. Asking your child questions about the new animals or plants they encounter can help them to see these as part of a pattern they’ve previously constructed such as birds or lizards. Trying to impose your categories and asking children to remember them is back to fact orientation—not very efficient nor durable.

Image by 👀 Mabel Amber, who will one day from Pixabay

As children grow, questions can be used to nudge them to think about facts that would lead to a deeper understanding of some categories they’ve already formed. For example, the concept of freezing can be extended by observing things like coconut oil or bacon grease which “freeze” around normal room temperature. By freeze, I mean they turn from a liquid to a solid.

As I work on this episode wildfires are devastating the Los Angeles area. You could ask, “what is the role of the Santa Ana winds in causing the fires to intensify and spread?” This would help your young kids develop their understanding of fire and the need for oxygen as well as dry fuel. For older kids you might ask, “why did firefighters run out of water from the fire hydrants?” This would help them leverage understanding about the water cycle and the reality that much of California’s water comes from snow melt through the Colorado river. The area has chronic water shortages because of this dependence.

Critical thinking and analytical reasoning are exercised routinely as facts are encountered. It is both/and, not either or.

I know of many professionals who attempt to teach mostly facts. I know of none who try the futility of teaching critical thinking about nothing or very little. If those who try to teach reasoning encounter a knowledge gap, we surface the nature and extent of the gap and we address it. We don’t fix the gap by providing facts only, but by asking questions about what is missing motivating a search for missing concepts or developing logical connections between existing concepts.

Thinking can be taught. Hundreds of my students say I taught them how to think and none of them would say it was in a fact desert. We are back to application of the principles we talked about in the last episode. Curiosity is provoked by compelling questions and satisfied through the development of concepts. Concepts are ideas and ideas serve to organize facts.

Facts ground ideas and make them concrete. Facts hold ideas accountable to reality. Facts may serve as examples of ideas. Facts record the conclusions of other people’s thinking. Facts play an important support role, but the main actor in the brain is always the idea.

Knowledge is power because knowledge is about understanding and justifying ideas.

The most powerful ideas are principles. Principles explain. They answer how and why questions and allow inferences to be drawn and predictions to be made. That makes them extremely powerful and should give them priority in the learning environment of your child. I can virtually assure you that will not be the case in the school your child attends.

Alfred North Whitehead said back in 1917,

The really useful training yields a comprehension of a few general principles with a thorough grounding in the way they apply to a variety of concrete details. In “The Rhythm of Education”, The Aims of Education: & Other Essays (1917), 41.

Even Willingham confesses in chapter two (p. 49):

Students can’t learn everything, so what should they know? Cognitive science leads to the rather obvious conclusion that students must learn the concepts that come up again and again—the unifying ideas of each discipline. Some educational thinkers have suggested that a limited number of ideas should be taught in great depth, beginning in the early grades and carrying through the curriculum for years as different topics are taken up and viewed through the lens of one or more of these ideas. From the cognitive perspective, that makes sense.

I am tempted to view Willingham’s arguments early in chapter two in favor of accumulating a fact base as a prerequisite to teaching thinking as merely a provocative attention getting device. Certainly it doesn’t square with his admission in the paragraph I just cited where he prioritizes concepts. Unfortunately, Willingham himself squelches this charitable accommodation by doubling down on fact orientation as he closes the chapter.

Willingham closes chapter two with a table containing quotes from four influential thinkers of the past century who disparage fact orientation. Here’s one from Henry Brooks Adams,

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts. (p. 47)

Willingham takes umbrage:

I don’t know why some great thinkers (who undoubtedly knew many facts) took delight in denigrating schools, often depicting them as factories for the useless memorization of information. . . but I for one don’t need brilliant highly capable minds telling me (and my children) that it’s useless to know things. (p. 46)

Willingham appears to be confused about basic epistemology. Fact memorization is not knowledge. Fact retrieval doesn’t show that you know things. Knowledge is not recall of things, but comprehension of ideas. It appears the topic of facts triggers a defensive reflex in Willingham rather than the thoughtful, reflective response we would expect.

If a cognitive psychologist can be confused at such a basic level, so can you. I suggest you go back to the 3rd and 4th episodes of my first season of podcasts from back in October of 2021. These are called “Confusion Says” and “Coming Out of the Fog.” These deal with the distinction between facts and knowledge.

As you try to improve your own learning as well as helping your child, I suggest you develop an intolerance for the notion of “content” or “material.” These vague categories can include anything. When you encounter them alarm bells should go off in your head. Get in the habit of examining so-called content for patterns and themes. Help your child look for ideas (concepts) that organize and give meaning to a collection of facts. Try to articulate motivating questions that pique their curiosity. Good questions can unlock logical relationships that emanate from powerful ideas called principles. When you discover a principle, you’ve struck gold!

Outro:

My website deepanddurable.com is filled with blog posts and other resources to help you on this quest. You can also equip yourself by starting with my first season of podcasts and working your way to the present. Finally, my book, Unforgettable: Enabling Deep and Durable Learning, was created to lead you step by step through this process. If you have questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.

The next podcast episode will explore memory. Why we remember and how to improve our ability to remember. Willingham’s Third Principle is one I wholeheartedly endorse: “Memory is the residue of thought.”

See you in two weeks!

Michael Gray