December 8th, 2021 at 4pm ET

How many times have you heard that “learning how to learn” is more important than learning something in particular? Or that skills matter more than knowledge? Or that learning something by heart suppresses student creativity?

Such ideas are commonplace in the United States. Mainstream education has emphasized skills over content for more than a hundred years. Unfortunately, this emphasis has had negative consequences for our young people – particularly young people from first-generation and low-income families.

Learn more about recent scholarship on why knowledge matters, what some districts and states are doing about it, and findings from Johns Hopkins’ research on knowledge-building in American schools.