Why is it that schoolteachers are obsessed with the "pre-teaching" of cultural experiences? Like, if a young women's chorus will be singing in the cafeteria, why must the children be shown a YouTube of the group beforehand? If the K kids are getting bussed to Merrill Auditorium to watch a children's musical, why must they first be read the book from which the musical has been adapted? I mean, I know the answer—I'm sure every tanning-booth bimbo from state teacher's college mostly remembers that there's "research" that shows that kids retain more information from a presentation when the material's been pre-taught. Isn't it kind of clear, though, that narrating someone's experience in advance, planting in their brain a script to frame and shape and ease the processing of the event when it finally happens, that this going to preempt the sort of shocking, transporting encounter with difference that is the whole point of experiencing artworks, even when that artwork is Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical? (The research summarized in this recent article from the Economist suggests that kids disengage from novel objects more quickly when they've been told in advance what the thing is and what to do with it.)