Adding Friction. What Is Common Knowledge?

FACTS AS COMMON KNOWLEDGE

When students work on in-text references or footnotes, they often ask, “What is common knowledge?” In response, some educators instruct them to omit tertiary sources like World Book or Wikipedia from their works cited list, in effect treating anything found in a general encyclopedia as common knowledge. But this is misleading. While some factual information is common knowledge (e.g., the first seven digits of pi; the date of the Magna Carta), other facts and statistics are uncertain or likely to change over time (e.g., the number of suspected and confirmed cases attributed to the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak) and must be cited.

In "How do I teach students to summarize in their own words?” we saw how reading through sources before taking notes can help students establish the common knowledge about a particular topic. However, what is common knowledge also depends on one's level of expertise.

In history, for example, the general public thinks of July 4th as the date on which the Declaration of Independence was signed, but scholars know from the historical record that the Declaration was adopted, engrossed (a legible, final version written on parchment paper), and finally signed over a period of months rather than on a single date.

In science, an elementary school student thinks that a planet revolves in a circle around the sun. A high school or college student who has taken physics knows that it actually moves along an ellipse. A physicist knows that the axis of the orbital ellipse precesses at a rate which was finally explained by Einstein in his theory of relativity. As students gain expertise in a subject, they learn that common knowledge is a relative concept, often nuanced and conditional.

CORROBORATION AS A TEST FOR COMMON KNOWLEDGE

When instructors are reluctant to provide the time that is needed to thoroughly read through multiple sources, they may suggest that students test for common knowledge by finding the same information in three or four sources. This informal rule of thumb only works if multiple types of sources (a magazine, a journal article, a newspaper article, a research report) are consulted. In social media, interesting content goes viral, repeatedly echoed but unverified in source after source. Corroboration of online content must go hand in hand with a judgment about credibility.

Recently a student asked us whether he could treat “Michelangelo's grocery list” as common knowledge. If you do a phrase search, you'll see that this drawing (http://www.businessinsider.com/grocery-shopping-list-of-michelangelo-2013-12-shopping-list-of-michelangelo-2013-12) is identified in many blogs, tweets, pins, and news sites as an illustrated shopping list created by Michelangelo for an illiterate servant. To corroborate this information, we suggested that the student search by image, which led him to “Figure 6. Michelangelo (1475-1564). Michelangelo List and Sketch of Three Meals. Casa Buonarroti, Florence. Photo courtesy Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita Culturali/Art Resource, New York,” a snippet preview from a scholarly book (Biow 7). The drawing is described as “three separate meals eaten while he was working in 1518 on the daunting project of the facade for San Lorenzo” (7). Rather than a shopping list, the sketch is evidence of Michelangelo's manner of presenting himself as too involved in the creative process to eat: “…[he] was actively involved throughout his life, even in informal letters dashed off to friends and family, in presenting himself as a man so captivated by his work, so thoroughly caught up” that food was a secondary consideration (6). A quick e-mail exchange with Louis Waldman, an art historian referenced by Biow, confirmed that the “common knowledge” about this grocery list is unsupported by the historical record. “I don't believe we know exactly what servant it was written for. Unless it was a young child, I think it's unlikely he would have been totally illiterate. The drawings could have been there to help him a little, but urban kids who weren't out following a plow like peasants usually got taught to read” (Waldman). Therefore, we suggested that the student could discuss “Michelangelo's grocery list” as erroneous common knowledge without citing it, unless his point was to document how widely this meme has spread, in which case he might cite multiple instances as examples. The book and e-mail should be cited because they are the unique claims, reasoning, and conclusions of individuals.

COMMON KNOWLEDGE IS CONTEXTUAL

Some teachers define common knowledge as what the class knows. As a “discourse community,” the class develops a shared set of understandings through discussion and reading. The lectures, class work, and texts are treated as common knowledge that doesn't need citations. In an essay for this class, a student will cite other sources that he analyzed in order to contribute fresh thinking to the class discourse.

Using this instructional approach, common knowledge is decided contextually. The MLA Handbook names two complementary conditions under which documentation is unnecessary: “Consider the status of the information and ideas you glean from sources in relation to your audience and to the scholarly consensus on your topic” (59). When students are in doubt about common knowledge, add friction by asking them to clarify who their audience is and what its members are likely to know. In problem-based learning the audience may be parents or the town council, but in many situations classmates and a teacher may be the only audience. In all cases, a student's hypothetical audience includes the discourse community of scholars and experts whose sources he has read and cited.

Rather than creating an atmosphere of hypervigilance around plagiarism by urging students to “cite everything,” remind them about why, for example, their peer group is irritated by and critical of “lectures” about the obvious. To any knowledgeable group, over-citation is not just superfluous or condescending, it is seen as a sign of a writer's naiveté and ignorance. Rather than citing common knowledge tell students to signal it with verbal markers like “it is known” or “people agree” (Koutsantoni 146), thus presenting themselves as well-informed. When students appropriately identify and use common knowledge, they establish their authority and expertise within a discourse community.

COMMON CORE ANCHOR STANDARD: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.8