On knowing

Here's a sad little story about a teacher who discovers that an honors student doesn't know that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Small wonder, what's with all the time wasted in school on various forms of drool. A faction in modern education maintains that it's not necessary to have a personal store of knowledge given that all information is available on the Internet ... but if you don't know what you don't know, you can hardly know how to learn it on the Net, now can you? My favorite teacher, Miz May Kirkman, was at some time-wasting edu deal when some hotshot said, "We're not going to teach the students facts ... we're going to teach them how to think." Sensible Miz Kirkman asked, "If they don't know any facts, what the hell are they going to think about?"