Author Jaime O'Neill's article, "No Allusions in the Classroom," emphasized the communication problem between teachers and

students due to the students' lack of basic knowledge. he author supports this assertion b! using a combination of personal e"perience, e#idence obtained from recent polls, other professors' opinions, and the results of an e"periment he conducted in his own classroom. he e"periment O'Neill conducted was an ungraded eight!$si" %uestion "general knowledge" test issued to students on the first da! of classes. On this test, "most students answered incorrectl! far more often than the! answered correctl!." &ncorrect answers included fallacies such as' "(arwin in#ented gra#it!" and ")eningrad was in Jamaica." Compounding the problem, students don't ask %uestions. his means that their teachers assume the! know things that the! do not. O'Neill shows the scope of this problem b! showing that, according to their teachers, this seems to be a t!pical problem across the *nited +tates. O'Neill feels that common knowledge in a societ! is essential to communicate. ,ithout this common knowledge, learning is made much more difficult because teacher and student do not ha#e a common bod! of knowledge from which to draw. he author shows the deterioration of common knowledge through poll results, personal e"perience, other teachers' opinions, and his own e"periment's results.