But the biggest challenge—and the most important—is this: Recent research shows that reading comprehension, deep thinking, and even creativity all rely heavily on prior knowledge. Although you can find a thousand articles claiming that knowledge is essentially irrelevant nowadays—that mere facts are not worth teaching in the age of Google, when anyone can look up anything at any time—in fact, cognitive scientists now mostly believe that this apparently tidy logic is wrong (Allington & Cunningham, 2006; Deans for Impact, 2015; Willingham, 2006). The brain's active processing capacity is finite, so unless knowledge is encoded in long-term memory, having to search for it actually crowds out other forms of cognition. Knowing things helps you think and read successfully.

At the same time, reading is a primary way to come to know things. Every time we read and comprehend a text, we add to the knowledge that helps us make sense of further texts.

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