The product vs. process concept is some particularly crunchy food for thought.

Such an interesting post…have been thinking about many similar issues recently, in part prompted by your comments. Clearly I am going to have to get Gardner’s book!

My thinking went in similar fashion to yours: Schools so desperately need to turn out the product that they screw the natural way we learn. By this I mean that there seems to be an endemic (if unwritten) assumption amongst school educators that knowledge can be poured into the minds of children much in the same way that you would pour water into a bucket…but it is clear that learning only takes place when the mind of the learner is actively engaged.

In practical terms, this best means that the learner’s question comes first and this again often best seems to happen when a learner encounters something in the real world that arouses his curiousity. You are far more likely to be interested in the forces involved in levers if one has spent loads of time mucking about on a see-saw, for example. The learner is also much more likely to understand the solutions if he has spent so much time involved in the experimental real-world, real-problem stage.

I remember a similar study to the one you mention where biology graduates were asked to name the principal source of nutrients of plants. Most mentioned the soil rather than photosynthesis. My guess is that if they had spent more time pottering about in their veg patches, they would have a better grasp of this and would anyway be certainly much more interested in the answers!