CHAPTER 7 Knowledge-Based Education vs. Process-Based Education Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice. —Martin H. Fischer In our society we have set up schools to teach knowledge. We concern ourselves with what facts children know, we test to make sure they know them, and then we complain that the schools are failing when they don’t. This idea is so ingrained in our way of looking at school- ing that when people like me complain about it, we are seen as people who are rambling around muttering to ourselves. There are so many people having anxiety attacks about what kids know, it seems one can find an article about it in every news segment on education. I happened on an article in Huffington Post written by someone named Schweitzer who is listed as “having served at the White House during the Clinton Administration as Assistant Director for International Affairs in the Office of Science and Technology Policy.” Here is a piece of what he said: The health care debate cannot be understood in historic context because many Americans have never heard of Thomas Jefferson. Extrapolating from state surveys, only 14% of American high school students can name who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Nearly 75% do not know that George Washington was our first president. ... We can say that our educational system has failed when the vast majority of American students do not know enough to pass an exam to qualify as American citizens. This is an astonishing statement. 75 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023821