Chicken and Egg?

I tend to agree with the sentiment behind the pondering post on people being the curriculum--the post beginning with Wes Fryer. Wes states, among other things, that

"Yes, of course we want students to gain more knowledge and skills as a result of their school experiences--so content is important... but an authentic environment of teaching and learning is all about helping others change and expand their perceptions."

Two things: First, I'm not sure that it is necessarily my role to change a student's perspective--but perhaps we are simply dealing with semantics here.

Secondly, my argument always comes back to this: How can a student create relationships/synthesize outside information/draw analogies if she does not have prior knowledge of content. I read the history of the middle ages and the fall of Rome being based on lack of cities/agricultural economy based on forced labor and I immediately relate that to the ante bellum South. Again, I read a book called Blue Like Jazz which makes some iffy statements about the crusades and I know exactly where/how/why to search for that information on the web.

So, I do believe in--and hopefully practice in large part--the sentiment that passion and teachable moments and growth in students lives (not test scores) is what education is all about. But there has been a breakdown in reading education as well as parental involvement over the past X years. That, of course, doesn't mean let's give up and teach the test and play along with the smoke and mirrors of government style schooling, but it is a factor that must be considered. Content is important.