"Well, Johnny! What did you learn in school today?"
        "Nothing."
        "Oh, come on!  You must have learned something!"
        "Well, yeah, I learned that the Nile is the longest river in the world, that a short pendulum swings faster than a long one, and that John Adams was the next president after George Washington. Oh! Almost forgot! I learned  to say my sixes times table without making any mistakes!"
         "Good boy, Johnny! Here's a dollar. Keep up the good work."

        The commonsense, widely shared view of what education is all about is wrapped up in that brief exchange.  Education is thought to be about information transfer--moving information about geography, history, physics and so on from the heads of those who know to the heads of those who don't.
  

        In establishment jargon, this process of transferring information is called "inculcating knowledge."
        We think of knowledge in quantitative terms.  It can be "passed on," "handed down," "absorbed," "stored up." "Empty-headed" students "cram" for exams, "pounding information in" until heads are "stuffed" with knowledge.  "Material" is "covered." 

        Our metaphors mislead us.