Ok, I'm speaking as someone currently doing an Education degree at a rather progressive thinking university with up to date ideas. So I kinda have a clue what I'm talking about. So here is where I say: NO NO NO NO NO!
If you want to emphasise and teach facts, you are teaching in a modernist fasion. Modernism is based around rationality, science, efficiency and such; it promotes a single truth to the universe, a single correct truth and viewpoint of the world, excludes those who don't fit into this truth and rejects anything not logical, like God or art. In a modernist school, which is teacher centric, students are taught answers - the, single, correct answers, by rote. This is WRONG and STUPID.
Intepretation is a much better idea, but not the whole deal, just part of it.
We live in "New Times" or "Postmodernity". In our current worldview, all speaking points are viewed as equal, and there is no one correct truth - essentially, the modernist stance is rejected. Similarly, Informatiopn and Communication technologies have significantly changed access to information and such.
So here's a problem. You set a task, and the students easily plagerise by copying off the internet. Which is a better solution:
1) Use an essay verification engine to stamp out the plagerists.
2) Design the task differentlly, so that students can't plagerise.
Hold up, a task students can't plagerise? Simple, emphasise the skills and method. Work in teams (Since teamwork is a modern skill EVERY SINGLE PERSON will find useful when they want to get a job) and have them assign different group roles, journal their progress, and such. Give some marks for the final product, more marks for the journal and reflection. This is going to help people a lot more. Instead of just learning the facts they need to do the assignment, thewy are learning the skills they need to do the assignment, the ones that will actually be useful in later life. Essential, in fact.
It has been suggested a modernist teaching style is based on the three Rs: Reading, 'riting, 'rithmatic. In 1993, William E. Doll, Jr. suggested a matrix based on four Rs: Richness (Having an open curriculum with multple layers of meaning) Recursion (Reflection on previous and finished tasks.) Relation (Having tasks relate back to odler ones, and those in other classes so that they become more relevent) and Rigor (A curriculum that suggests alternative ideas and - you guessed it - intepretation)
Now, in this four R curriculum, you get constructivist rather than instructivist tasks which teach skills, ideas, knowledge and such, things that are a lot more useful than facts. Especially since in New Times, there are no facts. When every viewpoint is equal, (which it is) and science disproves itself regularly (How many studies are conducted with coporate interets in mind? like those ones that proved smoking wasn't harmful or such)
By just teaching facts you're not so much a bad teacher, as one several decades out of date.