Fast n' Faulty Knowledge versus Schools?

Fast n’ Faulty Knowledge Versus Schools?

Fast n’ Faulty Knowledge didn’t exist when I was at school, and not in the least because I just invented the term. If some of what we learnt was faulty then it wasn’t ever fast. My teachers were in competition with only three things: libraries (books), BBC2 and Things Other Adults Said. Given that library visits weren’t compulsory and access to books was largely dependent upon parents/guardians, schools had a strong, upper-hand when it came to knowledge and learning. They were at an advantage. They held a position of respect, even if it was sometimes begrudging.

Roll on several years and things have changed. Two articles this week make it apparent. One cites this year’s Edurio report, highlighting that fewer than three in ten pupils are interested in what they’re learning and that under half feel happy at school. The second article is about recruitment and retention of teachers. Does it suffer from high work-load and low pay or is it more to do with a failure to sell the positives? It raises an important discussion without getting to the root of the problem.

A False Sense of Education Security

I think the problem is Fast n’ Faulty Knowledge. Fast n’ Faulty Knowledge is what all of us consume on a daily basis via screens. It’s like Fast Food: convenient, tasty, cheap, easy to get hold of and not particularly good for us. But what is it?

For me, it’s a false sense of education-security provided by access to the internet: social media, streaming services, 24hr news sound-bites, AI content-generation tools, massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPEGs), online encyclopaedia, AI-driven, voice-activated assistants in the home and an ever-growing swathe of TV channels covering every niche you could imagine.

My teachers had it easy; schools today are now in competition with all of these because we can literally “learn” anything in five minutes. We can feel informed and know nothing worthwhile. Getting our Fast n’ Faulty Knowledge surely lights up certain reward-pathways in our brains, perhaps even avoiding the positive workout schools give to our working memory. But I digress.

Fast n' Faulty Knowledge: Changing a Plug doesn't make you an Electrician...

For anybody with a baseline level of knowledge in a subject, such access to information is undeniably great – you can double-check a fact in 30 seconds using your phone, or quickly brush up on a more obscure aspect of something you already know about - but for those who are starting out on their learning journey, it’s a false idol; seductive and quick, an educational crutch instead of a tool amongst others.

Watching a 5-minute YouTube tutorial on changing a fuse makes you feel suddenly knowledgeable and skilled, but it doesn’t make you an electrician. Reading a Wikipedia account of the origins of the Great War may get you (and your AI Chatbot) a great mark in your coursework essay, but it doesn’t make you an historian. In short, these learning tools are flawed because they promote expediency over depth and understanding. They give us a false sense of knowledge-security that undermines rather than underpins true learning; a false sense of confidence that, when confronted by the real world, crumbles all too easily.

The "Illusion of Information Adequacy"

“Naïve realism” certainly plays a role here – the mistaken tendency to confuse your subjective understanding of the world with an objective understanding – as well as new research highlighting “the illusion of information adequacy.” This showed that “Those with only half the information were actually more confident in their decision… than those who had the complete story.” The research sadly doesn’t make it clear whether this is a symptom of the technological era or a psychological predisposition which helps explain its rise.

In my mind, schools are therefore locked in a battle against this Fast n’ Faulty Knowledge. It renders hour-long lessons boring compared to 5 minute sound-bites. The way it delivers information makes nuanced answers unsatisfactory to young minds. Fast n’ Faulty Knowledge has surely deprived us of the discipline and privilege of learning. It denies our children the reward of hard-won, deep knowledge. It replaces critical assessment of ideas with hasty summaries of hackneyed views. It’s ended hours of reading and study – and with it destroyed the resilience and discipline that such effort required. Perhaps the reason school seems boring is because our children think they already know enough about things and if they don't, well, they can find out at the touch of a button. So what?

Remove phones and experience the world... with a teacher!

People once thought such access to information would make people brighter and emancipate them, but if the internet has democratised knowledge, one unintended consequence has been to erode its value. Knowledge without the skills to filter, sort and apply it judiciously is pointless at best and outright dangerous at worst.

We shouldn’t expect to find a perfect fix any time soon (it would surely be a Fast and Faulty Fix), but plans to remove phones from schools altogether are to be welcomed and opportunities for children to experience the world should be embraced, whether it’s a creative lesson, a trip to a local museum or, yes, a school trip to France.