When we begin to think about learning, we begin immediately to ask about knowledge. It is very difficult to think about education without thinking about the knowledge we want to impart to students. We live in a world in which knowledge reigns supreme. In the popular culture, games like “Trivial Pursuit” capture the country's attention; television focuses on “Jeopardy” and other “knowledge games” that test who knows what. Far more important, school focuses on the same sorts of “trivial” knowledge. Schools are driven by tests that focus on fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice questions, thereby making success in school dependent upon memorization of facts. Even outside of school, in the workplace, companies train employees to do their jobs and then worry how to assess what the employees have learned (Brinkerhoff and Gill, 1994). The need to assess has focused everyone on things that are assessable. Thus facts have become “the currency of the educated” because they are so easy to measure.

The problem with all this is twofold. When our institutions of learning focus on test results, it follows that they need to focus on teaching what is testable. This leads to throwing out the baby with the bath water. The question of what to teach gets perverted by the measurements that are already in place, thus making curriculum change impossible. But, perhaps more important, there is a second problem revolving around the issue of our understanding who we are and what makes us tick.