By studying the core's rocks and fossils, the team has been learning about the past temperature and behaviour of Antarctica's massive ice sheets.

ECONOMIST: The South Pole as location and metaphor

As for the difficulty of learning about our past, just recognize how incomplete the fossil record really is: The 280 million Americans alive today collectively have some 60 billion bones in their bodies.

FORBES: Fact and Comment

In an interview with The Washington Post last year, Michelle Obama talked about learning her family's past and understanding the history of slavery.

CNN: Tracking Michelle Obama's slave roots

It's not about copying, about transcribing and learning solos from the past.

NPR: Stefon Harris Blackout: E Pluribus Urban

Coleman and Schmidt also properly warned about the possibility that competency-based learning might mean students just zipping past concepts without truly mastering them (Tom Vander Ark has written about this concern more here).

FORBES: Could Competency-Based Learning Save the Common Core?