Why Not
Do I detect a hint of anti-intellecual bias here?
Hardly. I adore intellectuals.
There is, however, more than a hint of anti-obfuscation bias here. 
I think there is a big difference between what you call disinterested knowledge (which I call learning for learning’s sake) and understanding. Understanding can come from very interested knowledge. Understanding happens when everything falls into place, and a collection of facts makes sense, and you can extend this to solve problems beyond applying rote methods. I’m sure that sin ome course you had you started the term just memorizing formulas, and by the end knew why the formulas existed, and could derive them simply. I had a programming linguistics class where I struggled through problem sets all year. When studying for the final I suddenly got it, and went and redid the whole term’s worth of assignments in about two hours.
I wrote a column about this not long ago, since at work I suddenly understood a certain instance of why chips fail and don’t fail. Once I got this insight, really understood this, the entire world changed. The cool thing is that I’ve noted that I’ve been able to teach this understanding, so that people from my company have a very different perspective on this at meetings, something our vendors don’t have. Even cooler, when I presented this at a conference last fall, my session chair, a very smart and well known engineer, started explaining it to someone, and it was clear he got it too.
So, I can read lots of books on WW I say, to get disinterested knowledge. But if I really understood it, I’d know not just what happened but why, and know why the players did what they did.
Voyager
It is my opinion that understanding only comes as a result of curiosity and caring. Understanding is generally not required for the job and is not taught often in school and college.
I imagine comprehension to be a hierarchy, resembling a pyramid, with awareness at the base followed by consciousness, succeeded by knowing, with understanding at the pinnacle.
Understanding is a long step beyond knowing and most often knowing provides the results that technology demands. Technology, I think, does not want understanding because understanding is inefficient and generally not required. The natural scientist, with their paradigms, is puzzle solvers. Puzzles require ingenuity but seldom understanding.
I suspect our first experience with ‘understanding’ may be our first friendship. I think that this first friendship may be an example of what Carl Sagan meant by “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy”.
I also suspect that the boy who falls in love with automobiles and learns everything he can about repairing the junk car he bought has discovered ‘understanding’.
Understanding does not come easily but it can be “a kind of ecstasy”.
I think of understanding as being a creation of meaning by the thinker. As one attempts to understand something that person will construct through imagination a model–like a papier-mâché–of the meaning. Like an artist painting her understanding of something.
Does this kind of agree with your idea of understanding?
Caring? Maybe. Curiousity? Definitely. I agree that it is not usually required for a job - most people who are working just have tasks to get done. I’m very lucky in having a job where I get paid to think and understand, and a boss who chartered me to do that when I moved into his group. As for school, I wouldn’t know how to teach understanding. The reason I was a crappy teacher, and went into industry and not academia, was that I found I did best teaching the few kids who easily moved into understanding.
That sounds reasonable at first blush.
Disagree with you here. Even technology does better with understanding. I started programming on a machine without even an assembler. I learned more on fairly simple machines, like PDP-11s, with small operating systems. On an absolute sense, I don’t know much about Windows, since I’m blessed with not having to use it at work. However, I’m reasonably good about diagnosing PC problems because I understand how a computer works at a fundamental level. I bet you are also. Compare that to someone who knows what clicks to make, but not what it all means.
I think scientists (and engineers) compare their work to puzzles since they both involve problem solving. But, as a fanatical puzzle-doer, there is a big difference, though the skills that make you good at one can help with the other. Puzzles are close-ended, while science isn’t. In any case, one becomes better at some puzzles not just by memorizing crosswordese, say, but by understanding how Will Shortz thinks.
I’m not sure about friendship, but I understand exactly about the ecstasy. If you’ve never experienced the ecstasy of understanding I feel sorry for you. When the kid, while fixing up the car, truly gets how all the pieces fit together, I’d say he has understanding indeed.
I don’t see it as the creation of meaning, but rather the perception of the underlying interconnectedness and cause of things happening. In my job, at least, most things happen for a reason, though they superficially seem random. Some people might represent this as a model - I see it more as a graph, but then I’m not a visual thinker. But I think our understanding of understanding is basically the same.
Voyager
I am glad we agree. My experience leads me to conclude that most people have never experienced understanding. The reason I conclude this is that even though they appear well educated and intellegent they just cannot get the idea of understanding as being anything but some form of knowing.
The following is one way that I try to explain my model of comprehension.
Awareness–faces in a crowd.
Consciousness—smile, a handshake, and curiosity.
Knowledge—long talks sharing desires and ambitions.
Understanding—a best friend bringing constant April.