AbstractThis article by David Aldridge concerns the promise of knowledge “insertion.” The promise can be elucidated as follows: knowledge could be inserted by a less time‐consuming (and possibly in many senses less expensive) technological process than traditional learning, whereby, for example, some relatively swift procedure of implanting or more radically transforming the structure of the brain could save its subject the trouble of spending several years studying for a university degree. Such a promise, if coherent and realizable, would certainly count as an instance of “cheating education” in that it would appear to circumvent or evade the learning process. Here, Aldridge develops a phenomenological account of knowing that emphasizes a background of practical understanding, which he then contrasts with an account of knowing as the possession of an internal representation that he understands as underpinning claims for the promise of knowledge insertion. The incoherence of “knowledge insertion” is not, however, the end of the story, according to Aldridge. He closes by exploring how a flawed concept of “information insertion” already pervades contemporary educational thinking and practice. It is not, that is to say, merely an impossible science fiction dream, but an example of how technological modes of thought do indeed threaten to “cheat” education — not by helping us to “cheat” in our learning, but by cheating us of an experience that might properly be called educational.