ABSTRACT
This chapter deconstructs the interrelationship of schooling, power, education, and knowledge. It begins with a focus primarily on knowledge as content to be taught, and we begin a discussion of the ways in which the authors construct knowledge through critical thinking. One way to consider what knowledge is through epistemology, which focuses on the theory of knowledge. For philosophers, there are many debates about knowledge and its nature. The difference between truth and belief. The term “truth decay,” used by the Rand Corporation to describe the “diminishing role of facts and analysis” in American public life has joined the growing post-truth lexicon that includes such familiar phrases as “fake news” and “alternative facts.” Philosophers have examined the nature and history of knowledge, and this is an extraordinarily complex field of study open to debate.
