.4 New Knowledge

Now, I would like to give a case study. Given that knowledge everywhere is changing, let's look at how schools deal with all this change in knowledge. First of all, knowledge becomes known. That sounds like an obvious thing but you know it isn't obvious when knowledge becomes known because, for example, in December of 1903 an absolutely momentous event occurred which nobody noticed, the Wright brothers' first flight. We now know that it was a very momentous event but at the time nobody noticed, nobody really understood that it was a momentous beginning of some very important new things. Knowledge does not necessarily become known with the tag: "Momentous Knowledge Here" applied to it. As a matter of fact often new knowledge is controversial.
New knowledge is not immediately accepted. There is a long process from the time something becomes known until something is agreed upon and until the knowledge becomes agreed upon. After it is known, it is agreed upon, and then we go to the third level that it is disseminated. After knowledge is disseminated, we have yet another process. We have to accept it for the schools because not all knowledge is acceptable for schools. As a matter of fact it is very controversial what kind of knowledge should be accepted for schools. How are we going to decide what knowledge we are going to teach? What can we agree upon? First of all, there is the idea as to what knowledge is there and then secondly is that knowledge's importance. Every year that passes that our schools and our children don't learn about China, we are putting our society at risk. China is one of the most powerful nations on earth and is going to get more powerful and with one quarter of the world's entire population, we better know about China. Is there any urgency about this anywhere? Not that I can see, I worry about that because there isn't any agreement yet about what we should to know about China in schools. The knowledge is there, it has been agreed upon, accepted and we know a lot about China. Yet we have chosen not to teach this.

	What steps must first be taken before knowledge is accepted for textbooks?	Answer Here
	Mrs. Stewart is a sixth-grade social studies teacher. Her students have gone through five years of social studies without learning anything about foreign nations or foreign policies. Why should Mrs. Stewart teach more about foreign nations and policy this year rather than reteach the American history that the students have had over and over again for the past five years?	Answer Here