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The Knowledge Gap
The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System—and How to Fix It
Why do many children learn to pronounce written words yet struggle to understand increasingly complex texts? Natalie Wexler argues that a major cause lies in the way American elementary schools often teach reading comprehension: as a collection of general-purpose skills, such as identifying a main idea, rather than as an ability grounded in vocabulary and knowledge of the world. Combining classroom reporting, intellectual history, cognitive-science research, and education-policy analysis, she traces how content-light literacy instruction became widespread and why it particularly disadvantages children who cannot rely on home environments to supply missing background knowledge. The book also follows educators experimenting with coherent, content-rich curricula organized around subjects such as history, science, and the arts. Wexler’s larger claim is that curriculum is an equity issue: schools cannot narrow educational disparities unless they deliberately give every child sustained acce…