In Cultural Literacy E.D. Hirsch discusses the importance of a wealth of shared background knowledge in teaching in learning. “The more you know, the more you can learn.” He argues that as you acquire information—even through simple memorization—you create frameworks, or “schemata”, for integrating future learning. The more schemata you possess, the less effort is required to integrate new information, making it easier to learn overall.
It follows that there is great benefit to having a diversified set of schemata; the more subjects we know, the easier it is to learn. This is part of the basis for liberal education.This diversified set not only allows us easier access to broad knowledge, it also allows us to make connections that we wouldn’t have otherwise made, and understand things in different (and sometimes unusual) ways.
