I thought Adrian touched on some salient points about the division between know what and know how.  Reflecting on my high-school experience, the emphasis was heavily on acquiring a lot of know what and only sometimes was light shed on the process in which we think or learn – and these tended to be the more enjoyable and memorable experiences – at least for me.  I remember excelling in Biology, which was all about know what and rote learning various names, species, standard and static definitions, and so on.  Your success was directly attributable to how much stuff you could cram in in the lead up to an exam.  After studying Biomedical Science at University for a year or so, I grew tired of more of the same; while the knowledge became increasingly specialised, the process was very monodisciplinary and gave very little room to move for a would-be creative mind.

While I use the example of biology, I think this applies to much of the way in which high-school education functions – where knowledge is hierarchial and there is very little way to personalise the way in which you learn as an individual.  I think this is why a lot of students coming straight from high school can find the adjustment to University a difficult one – the sudden freedom, and the imprimatur (particularly in a course like Media) to cultivate your own method for learning (while adhering to certain ‘best practices’).  Certainly this was the case for me.

Perhaps this is the way it must be – learning and unlearning and relearning, acquiring a certain requisite amount of knowledge (through high school) and then taking a step back and learning to become more critical(discerning?) of the knowledge ingested and how it is digested.