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The Schools We Need & Why We Don`t Have Them
Instead of preparing our children for the highly competitive, information-based economy in which we now live, our American school practices have severely curtailed their ability, and desire, to learn. But renowned educator E. D. Hirsch, Jr. has a solution.
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First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
E.D. Hirsch Jr.
82 books111 followersE. D. Hirsch, Jr. is the founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of several acclaimed books on education in which he has persisted as a voice of reason making the case for equality of educational opportunity.
A highly regarded literary critic and professor of English earlier in his career, Dr. Hirsch recalls being “shocked into education reform” while doing research on written composition at a pair of colleges in Virginia. During these studies he observed that a student’s ability to comprehend a passage was determined in part by the relative readability of the text, but even more by the student’s background knowledge.
This research led Dr. Hirsch to develop his concept of cultural literacy—the idea that reading comprehension requires not just formal decoding skills but also wide-ranging background knowledge. In 1986 he founded the Core Knowledge Foundation. A year later he published Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, which remained at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for more than six months. His subsequent books include The Schools We Need, The Knowledge Deficit, The Making of Americans, and most recently, How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation.
In How to Educate a Citizen (September, 2020), E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began thirty years ago with his classic bestseller Cultural Literacy, urging America’s public schools, particularly in Preschool – Grade 8, to educate our children using common, coherent and sequenced curricula to help heal and preserve the nation.
A highly regarded literary critic and professor of English earlier in his career, Dr. Hirsch recalls being “shocked into education reform” while doing research on written composition at a pair of colleges in Virginia. During these studies he observed that a student’s ability to comprehend a passage was determined in part by the relative readability of the text, but even more by the student’s background knowledge.
This research led Dr. Hirsch to develop his concept of cultural literacy—the idea that reading comprehension requires not just formal decoding skills but also wide-ranging background knowledge. In 1986 he founded the Core Knowledge Foundation. A year later he published Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, which remained at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for more than six months. His subsequent books include The Schools We Need, The Knowledge Deficit, The Making of Americans, and most recently, How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation.
In How to Educate a Citizen (September, 2020), E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began thirty years ago with his classic bestseller Cultural Literacy, urging America’s public schools, particularly in Preschool – Grade 8, to educate our children using common, coherent and sequenced curricula to help heal and preserve the nation.
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January 21, 2008
If there is one thing that American educators I have known love to do (other than share stories about their time in the trenches), it is to complain about the state of education in America. And we are not without any basis for our complaints. I teach at a community college, and I am a product of a California public high school. I know first hand how unprepared many students (a disproportionate amount of them from disadvantaged groups) are to do college level work after graduating from public schools. I have students that come to me unprepared in terms of attitude, experience, and content. Every class I teach, I have students (NOT older students or students who are attending school in the US for the first time, but students who I am sure graduated from high school here) who tell me that their greatest accomplishment in my class was that they actually turned in all of their assignments on time and completed all of their work. It is mind boggling.
With all of these thoughts running through my head, I ran across The Schools We Need sitting out on my mother's bookshelf over Christmas Break. I was slightly familiar with Hirsch's ideas about cultural literacy and content-based education. By "familiar," I mean that when I was in... was it the fourth grade? It must have been... Anyway, when I was in my late elementary school years, my father got his hands on some version of The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, which Mr. Hirsch edited, and had me read him entries while he drove me to school in his late 60's model Bronco.
This book charges that the reason that so many American schools are failing is that the classroom methodology currently in favor is both ineffective. The methods that Hirsch is so up in arms about include "Whole language," "discovery learning," and other progressive-sounding practices. He shows how these practices grow out of a Romantic view of education as a natural process that should happen smoothly and without effort. To sum up a great many of the ideas he argues against, children should be allowed to discover knowledge for themselves because they will remember such discovered knowledge at a much greater rate than information that is imparted to them by their teachers. Hirsch's argument against this particular group of ideas is that the accumulation of the knowledge that a child needs in order to function at a high level in society is not a natural process. It may be made more interesting or boring depending upon the competency of the teacher, but no child is going to naturally pick up the broad spectrum of general knowledge in which lower-grade schooling purports to give its students a grounding. In a perfect world, every child would be at least marginally interested in learning a little bit about every subject for learning's sake, but this is not a perfect world, and if we are going to produce halfway competent students, there must be some outside incentive for students to learn and master the material being taught, and the teaching of that material is necessarily going to involve a great deal of listening and practice on the student's part. (Don't even get me started on the whole "Grades hurt students' self esteem" nonsense.)
The second trend that Hirsch is concerned about is the undue emphasis based on "accessing skills" and "metacognitive skills" over subject matter. This approach assumes that students only need to be taught how to access information, rather than being forced to learn and internalize a set of unconnected facts (which is not what good subject matter instruction does, but that is beside the point). It also assumes that skills like critical thinking can be taught once and applied to multiple situations. In response to these ideas, Hirsch argues that accessing skills without content-related knowledge are of little use (how can a student sort out good information from bad without some background knowledge in the subject? For a humorous example, I point you to the site warning us all about the dangers of di-hydrogen monoxide. ) and that critical thinking skills cannot be applied to situations in which a student has little background. For instance, if I gave my students an essay about an unfamiliar topic and told them to "think critically" about it, or to "consider both sides of the issue," they would probably be unable to do very much with it. Let's say I tell them, "Think critically about the problem of illegal immigration." In order for them to do a decent job of this, they're probably going to need to know a bit about economics, a bit about the history of immigration in the US, a bit about nationalism, a bit about politics, a bit about the relationship between Mexico/Latin America and the United States... and the list goes on. This is not to say that a person without a strong grounding in these subjects can't have valid insights based on personal experience or observation, but in order to really analyze the problem, a student is going to need some basic knowledge in the areas I've just listed.
To reverse this trend, Hirsch suggests that schools in any successful national system need to have content-based standards for each grade level. By "content-based," he means that a standard would list a specific set of knowledge that each child would acquire in each grade. This seems to make an immense amount of sense to me. I have seen lists of standards that have been so vague as to be completely useless. However, the point of the book isn't to outline his content-based standards system. It is more to show the difference between his ideas and a great deal of current educational thinking. There are apparently those who would disparage content-based teaching because it presents information in a compartmentalized, isolated fashion, and that students will never learn how all of it is connected, and they'll be nothing more than little parrots giving the teachers back what they want to hear. Of course this is not the goal of teaching children facts. Of course it is assumed that the child will also be learning how the pieces of knowledge he or she is learning are interconnected and how to synthesize and analyze them. As I read, it seemed as if Hirsch felt he needed to defend content-based learning from those who think that learning "mere facts" is useless. This isn't an attitude I've ever come across in any of my educational experiences, but then again, I grew up in a very traditional, conservative area of California. I was fortunate enough to have teachers who taught content and made the process of learning interesting enough that I enjoyed it, even in subjects where I was not "naturally" inclined, such as science and math. I have to wonder how wide-spread it has been elsewhere, though...
The consequences of not having a great deal of content taught in schools, especially at an early age, is staggering, but it is especially detrimental to students who come from economically or socially disadvantaged homes. Hirsch writes (and I am inclined to agree with him) that students from educated homes will pick up the content knowledge they need from their parents if they are not getting it at school. However, students who have no other source of "intellectual capital" (the knowledge needed to function at a high level in public discourse) are left behind, and traditionally, these are students from disadvantaged homes. So the ones who are most hurt by "naturalistic" methodologies are the ones who are the least likely to make up for gaps in their learning elsewhere.
Some people may call Hirsch a reactionary, but I tend to agree with him. His arguments about the cumulative nature of learning are very compelling, and my own experiences as a student and as a teacher tend to bear him out, especially when I am teaching objectively measurable skills like writing. I have found that a mixture of lecture, whole-class instruction, and guided practice gets much better results than letting students "discover" the rules for themselves ever would. In fact, I shudder at the thought of uninformed students "discovering" grammar rules about comma placement, pronoun usage, or any of the other more complicated things I get to teach. Sometimes, just presenting students with the information in an organized fashion really does work, surprising as that may sound.
With all of these thoughts running through my head, I ran across The Schools We Need sitting out on my mother's bookshelf over Christmas Break. I was slightly familiar with Hirsch's ideas about cultural literacy and content-based education. By "familiar," I mean that when I was in... was it the fourth grade? It must have been... Anyway, when I was in my late elementary school years, my father got his hands on some version of The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, which Mr. Hirsch edited, and had me read him entries while he drove me to school in his late 60's model Bronco.
This book charges that the reason that so many American schools are failing is that the classroom methodology currently in favor is both ineffective. The methods that Hirsch is so up in arms about include "Whole language," "discovery learning," and other progressive-sounding practices. He shows how these practices grow out of a Romantic view of education as a natural process that should happen smoothly and without effort. To sum up a great many of the ideas he argues against, children should be allowed to discover knowledge for themselves because they will remember such discovered knowledge at a much greater rate than information that is imparted to them by their teachers. Hirsch's argument against this particular group of ideas is that the accumulation of the knowledge that a child needs in order to function at a high level in society is not a natural process. It may be made more interesting or boring depending upon the competency of the teacher, but no child is going to naturally pick up the broad spectrum of general knowledge in which lower-grade schooling purports to give its students a grounding. In a perfect world, every child would be at least marginally interested in learning a little bit about every subject for learning's sake, but this is not a perfect world, and if we are going to produce halfway competent students, there must be some outside incentive for students to learn and master the material being taught, and the teaching of that material is necessarily going to involve a great deal of listening and practice on the student's part. (Don't even get me started on the whole "Grades hurt students' self esteem" nonsense.)
The second trend that Hirsch is concerned about is the undue emphasis based on "accessing skills" and "metacognitive skills" over subject matter. This approach assumes that students only need to be taught how to access information, rather than being forced to learn and internalize a set of unconnected facts (which is not what good subject matter instruction does, but that is beside the point). It also assumes that skills like critical thinking can be taught once and applied to multiple situations. In response to these ideas, Hirsch argues that accessing skills without content-related knowledge are of little use (how can a student sort out good information from bad without some background knowledge in the subject? For a humorous example, I point you to the site warning us all about the dangers of di-hydrogen monoxide. ) and that critical thinking skills cannot be applied to situations in which a student has little background. For instance, if I gave my students an essay about an unfamiliar topic and told them to "think critically" about it, or to "consider both sides of the issue," they would probably be unable to do very much with it. Let's say I tell them, "Think critically about the problem of illegal immigration." In order for them to do a decent job of this, they're probably going to need to know a bit about economics, a bit about the history of immigration in the US, a bit about nationalism, a bit about politics, a bit about the relationship between Mexico/Latin America and the United States... and the list goes on. This is not to say that a person without a strong grounding in these subjects can't have valid insights based on personal experience or observation, but in order to really analyze the problem, a student is going to need some basic knowledge in the areas I've just listed.
To reverse this trend, Hirsch suggests that schools in any successful national system need to have content-based standards for each grade level. By "content-based," he means that a standard would list a specific set of knowledge that each child would acquire in each grade. This seems to make an immense amount of sense to me. I have seen lists of standards that have been so vague as to be completely useless. However, the point of the book isn't to outline his content-based standards system. It is more to show the difference between his ideas and a great deal of current educational thinking. There are apparently those who would disparage content-based teaching because it presents information in a compartmentalized, isolated fashion, and that students will never learn how all of it is connected, and they'll be nothing more than little parrots giving the teachers back what they want to hear. Of course this is not the goal of teaching children facts. Of course it is assumed that the child will also be learning how the pieces of knowledge he or she is learning are interconnected and how to synthesize and analyze them. As I read, it seemed as if Hirsch felt he needed to defend content-based learning from those who think that learning "mere facts" is useless. This isn't an attitude I've ever come across in any of my educational experiences, but then again, I grew up in a very traditional, conservative area of California. I was fortunate enough to have teachers who taught content and made the process of learning interesting enough that I enjoyed it, even in subjects where I was not "naturally" inclined, such as science and math. I have to wonder how wide-spread it has been elsewhere, though...
The consequences of not having a great deal of content taught in schools, especially at an early age, is staggering, but it is especially detrimental to students who come from economically or socially disadvantaged homes. Hirsch writes (and I am inclined to agree with him) that students from educated homes will pick up the content knowledge they need from their parents if they are not getting it at school. However, students who have no other source of "intellectual capital" (the knowledge needed to function at a high level in public discourse) are left behind, and traditionally, these are students from disadvantaged homes. So the ones who are most hurt by "naturalistic" methodologies are the ones who are the least likely to make up for gaps in their learning elsewhere.
Some people may call Hirsch a reactionary, but I tend to agree with him. His arguments about the cumulative nature of learning are very compelling, and my own experiences as a student and as a teacher tend to bear him out, especially when I am teaching objectively measurable skills like writing. I have found that a mixture of lecture, whole-class instruction, and guided practice gets much better results than letting students "discover" the rules for themselves ever would. In fact, I shudder at the thought of uninformed students "discovering" grammar rules about comma placement, pronoun usage, or any of the other more complicated things I get to teach. Sometimes, just presenting students with the information in an organized fashion really does work, surprising as that may sound.
July 4, 2008
Powerful and enlightening. I have always felt like our schools were getting worse, not better but never understood why. I would read tests given to 3rd graders in the early part of this century and laugh because high school students today couldn't even answer many of the questions. Dr. Hirsch explains the change in the educational culture, starting in the 1920s, that has resulted in our intellectual decline. Though not an easy read like a novel, definitely worth the time investment. I highly recommend it.
August 21, 2009
This book was a wonderful read as I had been wondering why the educational theorists could not meet halfway. Why people just don't do what is working? This book explained alot. I did not always agree but I don't read to agree. I read to be challenged and to think.
August 7, 2009
A must read for those in elementary and secondary education; but it is is a bit dry. But stick with it. Lots of research, statistics adn facts to support arguments. Despite unpopularity, the author's criticisms of 'progressive' education is founded on a commitment to our youth and our future. One of many underlying premises of book:
" ...those who are well educated can make money without inherited wealth but those who lack intellectual capital are left poor indeed. ... Those children who possess intellectual capital when they first arrive at school have the mental scaffolding and velcro to catch hold of what is going on and turn that knowledge into more intellectual capital. But those who arrive at school lacking the relevant experience and vocabulary, they see not, neither do they understand. They fall further and further behind. The relentless humiliations they experience continue to deplete their energies and motivation to learn. Lack of stimulation has depressed their IQ's. The ever increasing differential in acquired intellectual capital that occurs during the early years ends up creating a permanent gap . . . In short, an early inequity in the distribution of intellectual capital may be the single most important source of avoidable injustice in a free society."
Can I get an amen? He then goes on advocate an old school approach tempered with modern research and modifications for how to achieve a general cultural literacy that is currently missing.
" ...those who are well educated can make money without inherited wealth but those who lack intellectual capital are left poor indeed. ... Those children who possess intellectual capital when they first arrive at school have the mental scaffolding and velcro to catch hold of what is going on and turn that knowledge into more intellectual capital. But those who arrive at school lacking the relevant experience and vocabulary, they see not, neither do they understand. They fall further and further behind. The relentless humiliations they experience continue to deplete their energies and motivation to learn. Lack of stimulation has depressed their IQ's. The ever increasing differential in acquired intellectual capital that occurs during the early years ends up creating a permanent gap . . . In short, an early inequity in the distribution of intellectual capital may be the single most important source of avoidable injustice in a free society."
Can I get an amen? He then goes on advocate an old school approach tempered with modern research and modifications for how to achieve a general cultural literacy that is currently missing.
December 18, 2007
One star is generous. Hirsch's weak attach of progressivism suggests the movement is the fault of one individual (Kirkpatrick) and one institution (TC), suggests that higher order and lower order skills are only taught in isolation from one another, and completely neglects to address the social context of schools as institutions. Too bad he's a decent writer. I liken him to Diane Ravitch--THIS is what's wrong with the current (popular) discourse around educational change today!
August 7, 2014
Required reading for anyone who cares about education, children, or the betterment of America. The fact that this book is necessary, which uses history, logic, and countless studies to explain what should be common sense, is regrettable, but it is necessary nonetheless.
May 20, 2012
A must read for anyone wondering why our public schools are in such a mess. You can tell by some of the other reviews just how divisive this issue is, but as a teacher I KNOW what I experienced in the classroom, and I know that Hirsch is right. However, I'm not as sure as he is in his faith that public education can be repaired.
May 15, 2008
Ideologically, I just don't agree with Hirsch. I think that he puts a rather biased slant on everything, particularly on schools of education and the progressive stance toward education. He oversimplifies the problems and offers little by way of solution. If I were bolder, I might accuse him of racism for his ignorance of and lack of respect for cultural issues.
There are parts of his argument to which I am amenable, such as having clearer national standards for curriculum. His argument about the transience of the American family is legit.
To claim that progressivist techniques have been tried and have failed is a bold lie. As a teacher in public schools, I know that most of my colleagues use traditional forms of teaching and plow through the curriculum with little regard to students' retention of material. However, he is justified in noting the flaws in the "project" method... BUT only because the "project" method has not been appropriately implemented. There's too much to it to get into in a simple GoodReads review that no one will read, but I hope many people are not swayed by Hirsch's voice of "authority."
The conclusion to the book was just dreadful - who needs twenty-odd pages to summarize what they've just read over 200 pages?
There are parts of his argument to which I am amenable, such as having clearer national standards for curriculum. His argument about the transience of the American family is legit.
To claim that progressivist techniques have been tried and have failed is a bold lie. As a teacher in public schools, I know that most of my colleagues use traditional forms of teaching and plow through the curriculum with little regard to students' retention of material. However, he is justified in noting the flaws in the "project" method... BUT only because the "project" method has not been appropriately implemented. There's too much to it to get into in a simple GoodReads review that no one will read, but I hope many people are not swayed by Hirsch's voice of "authority."
The conclusion to the book was just dreadful - who needs twenty-odd pages to summarize what they've just read over 200 pages?
September 20, 2010
This book helps explain the reason why America's scores on achievement tests suck when compared to other nations. Hirsch is a pretty cool guy---has a great sense of humor!! I enjoyed all of the chapters except Chapter 5---which I am about to read again! Hirsch's view is that progressive education----discovery learning, teaching the "whole child," project-based learning has been around for almost a century and is the cause of the downfall of our education system. Why do we do this and not practice what the research says is best----direct instruction---learning of basic facts and a mixture of the two (progressive) is best because we have to know about basic facts in order to expand our knowledge and develop critical thinking skills.
Hirsch is a bit extremist in some aspects (he wants a national curriculum) but makes many valid points. Educators should read Chp 6 where he discusses the need for standardized tests. What is coool about Hirsch is that he is not a politician, some guy in an ivory tower, or a psychologist. He is simply (!) an educator that wrote this in the 90s and I'm sure has had many criticisms from his peers. Rock on, Hirsch---you are hardCORE!!!! (Hirsch developed the schools called Core Knowledge).
Hirsch is a bit extremist in some aspects (he wants a national curriculum) but makes many valid points. Educators should read Chp 6 where he discusses the need for standardized tests. What is coool about Hirsch is that he is not a politician, some guy in an ivory tower, or a psychologist. He is simply (!) an educator that wrote this in the 90s and I'm sure has had many criticisms from his peers. Rock on, Hirsch---you are hardCORE!!!! (Hirsch developed the schools called Core Knowledge).
March 1, 2010
This book provides a great deal of history as to how our educational system developed the way it did. That part is useful. The authors ideas on how to improve education aren't bad, but I did take offense to some of the attacks on teachers of public schools being the problem. The book admits that many times public school teachers are ham-stringed by federal, state, and local rules and regulations (and the great presence of lawyers in schools, which he doesn't mention), but then he blames the teachers anyway. I've visited the charter school that the book mentions in Fort Collins, CO and I think it's wonderful, but I also realize it is so because that school is allowed to disregard some state mandated requirements on how to spend money that the public school must adhere to. I believe that if the public schools were allowed to do the same, you would see better results from them as well.
January 1, 2022
Some who have only heard detractions about this book may be surprised to find it here. Don’t expose your brain to this book if you, like Alfie Kohn, wish to remain convinced that education is a very narrow field with a single one-size-fits-all theory. Do not read it if you wish to remain convinced that everyone who disagrees with Alfie Kohn is either an unthinking bumpkin or reactionary, or that the only possible answers in education are already espoused by the currently dominant group of education professors. If, however, you wish to expose yourself to deep thinking about education from a wider selection of resources, then this is your book. Review on YouTube https://youtu.be/-FcgCOjLpis
July 24, 2019
It was hard for me to rate this book. On the one hand, he's exactly and completely right. I found absolutely nothing with which to disagree on this book. If his ideas were the basis for rating this book, it would be a solid 5. Unfortunately, I realized that there's more to it than that.
FIrst of all, he neglects part of his case. He absolutely nails the "why we don't have them" part, but he says remarkably little about "the schools we need." The little he says is vague generalities. The book is relentlessly boring in places and repetitive in others.
P.S. It's worth noting that this book was written in 1996, and every criticism that he lays at the feet of the educationist establishment is still valid. Literally nothing has improved in a generation.
FIrst of all, he neglects part of his case. He absolutely nails the "why we don't have them" part, but he says remarkably little about "the schools we need." The little he says is vague generalities. The book is relentlessly boring in places and repetitive in others.
P.S. It's worth noting that this book was written in 1996, and every criticism that he lays at the feet of the educationist establishment is still valid. Literally nothing has improved in a generation.
April 26, 2016
Sixteen years later and this book is just as relevant today. While I agree with his arguments, the book itself is too influenced by his understandable frustration and overly dismissive of the other side and where their ideas came from to begin with. Kind of made me feel hopeless that we are a position to do much about any of this and we're stuck in a cycle of have and have nots for a long time to come.
July 24, 2017
The book gives explanations but tends to be a bit of a diatribe.
Want to read
January 31, 2013While America's post-high school institutions are peerless, its K-12 system is in shambles, the author says, and it's all because of a great anti-knowledge, anti-subject matter push whose ideologies were formed in the 1920s and 1930s and was implemented in the 1960s. He calls this "educational progressivism" (examples: doing away with phonics, memorization of multiplication tables, etc.).
For all its egalitarian rhetoric, he goes on, the American educational orthodoxy has fostered inequality. In 1942-1966 (before the anti-knowledge pushers got their way), for example, public education had begun to close the economic gap between races and social classes (evidence?). After this period, though, verbal SAT scores took a steep decline, while the black-white wage gap stabilized (despite a decline for the period mentioned above).
"INTERESTING" INSTRUCTION
Subject matter like ancient history and science is withheld from children in the early grades on the grounds that "true education proceeds from the child's interests rather than from an external imposition. Children learn best when new knowledge is built upon what they already know (true), and the child's interest in a subject will derive on its connection from his immediate experiences or home surroundings. Early schooling should therefore teach subjects that have direct relevance to the child's life, like 'My Neighborhood' and similar relevant topics."
EDUCATIONAL FORMALISM
Educational formalism is a widespread doctrine based on the idea that inculcating formal skills is much more important than the transmission of knowledge.
LACK OF CONTENT SPECIFICITY AT THE LOCAL LEVEL; A NATIONAL CURRICULUM
"What specific content are all children at a grade level required to learn?" This question about minimum content, sadly, often does not have a clear answer in most school districts, even with thick "curriculum guidelines," etc.
The author claims that these local curriculum guides are often vague. The first grade curriculum guide for on district, for example, stated that by the end of the year, the students should be able to know and explain the significance of national holidays. Which national holidays? Doesn't say--that's left up to the teacher. Vagueness avoids controversy.
The author focuses on another guide's geography curriculum--much focus on Asian/African geographical features, but little on American. His theory is that the district figured that getting too specific with American geography would become too political, so they decided to leave the specifics up to the teachers. The problem is, of course, that most teachers don't stray too far from curriculum guidelines. Result? Kids don't know American geography.
What the author would really like to see is a national curriculum. This would especially help students who move schools often. School 1, for example, may teach world history in 6th grade, while School 2 already taught it in 4th grade, so if a student moves from School 1 to School 2 in 5th grade, he/she will not have a foundation in world history before advancing to middle school.
This is especially relevant considering that according to the GAO, 1/5 of Americans move each year. We are among the most mobile of all the developing nations. The problem is even worse for low-income families; in a typical inner-city school, only half the students enrolled in September are still there in May. And low-income families in more rural areas often move as job opportunities come and go.
THE 7 PRINCIPLES, WILLIAM HEARD KIRKPATRICK'S "THE PROJECT METHOD", AND HAROLD RUGG'S "THE CHILD-CENTERED SCHOOL", AND THEIR AFTERMATH
Today's elementary schools, the author says, have little in the way of academic lectures but much in the way of hands-on activities--a course he traces back to items produced in 1918: a government document titled "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education" and William Kirkpatrick's "The Project Method" and the 1926 work of Harold Rugg, "The Child-Centered School."
Results:
"Naturalistic hands-on teaching of cognitive skills is viewed as superior to the lecture, drill, and practice theory of a defined body of knowledge." The problem? Students don't actually learn very much.
Another result of this document is the emphasis on individual learning: teachers need to pay more attention to the individual differences of children. There is no lock-step, one-size-fits-all teaching method.
New schools are seen as places of freedom, activity, and creative self-expression, while the old school is seen as the "listening regime." The concept of self reigns supreme: the whole child is to be educated, and it is to be ensured that he or she feels good while doing it. Learning is no longer informational, but emotional.
Children are expected to take charge of their own learning, actively, rather than passively taking in what adults force upon them.
Factual knowledge is seen as useless in becoming a better person.
Technology is viewed as meaning people don't need as much intellectual capital as they used to.
WHY ARE AMERICA'S UNIVERSITIES BETTER THAN ITS SCHOOLS?
Why, oh why, do we have the best public universities but the worst public schools in the developed world? Because they have not been affected by the educationist point of view, the author says. Our colleges place great on depth, breadth, and accuracy of knowledge--the very thing the K-12 system disparages, writing off such a factual focus as rote learning (the worst phrase in the educationist's glossary).
EFFECT OF ROMANTICISM AND ITS TRUST OF THE INNATE GOODNESS OF HUMAN NATURE ON EDUCATION
The dominant attitude toward children in most educational systems today, and in America's until the late 18th century, was that the child is a still-to-be-formed creature whose instinctual impulses are not to be encouraged but to be molded into the ways of the society in which it is growing up. For Plato, the root of evil would be an education in which instinct and emotion dominated over reason. The historical Judeo-Christian theory of education is similar (e.g., Augustine and the pear-stealing: the aim of education is not to follow human nature, but to correct it [the author ignores grace, but it's not hard to follow what he is saying]).
The framers of the Constitution knew that human nature could not be trusted; hence, checks and balances. "In every government on earth there is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate, and improve" (Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia). Jefferson's writings on public education are the most complete we have of any of the founding fathers, and he was utterly opposed to allowing human nature to follow its natural course in education.
Enter romantic thinking, with its emphasis on the innate goodness of human nature and, therefore, the child. "To young plants and animals we give space and time and rest, knowing that they will unfold to beauty by laws working in each. We avoid acting upon them by force, for we know that such intrusion upon their natural growth could only injure their development. Yet man treats the young human being as though it were a piece of wax, a lump of clay out of which he can mold what he will. Education and instruction should from the very first be passive, observant, protective, rather than prescribing, determining, interfering. All training and instruction which prescribes and fixes, that is, interferes with nature, must tend to limit and injure." (Friedrich Fröbel, German educational reformer and inventor of the concept of "kindergarten"; note the reference to "young plants" in the quote above).
"Any method of opening up man's powers which claims to be natural must be open and easy. Parents should not hurry their children into working at things remote from their immediate interests. By anticipating the ordinary course, they diminish the powers of their children and disturb profoundly the equilibrium of their nature" (Johann Pestalozzi, Swiss educational reformer whose motto was "learning by head, hand, and heart").
No need to push book learning on the child too early, they say. The child is good; the world can only serve to corrupt it. "The idea that civilization has a corrupting, rather than a benign, uplifting, virtue-enhancing effect on the young child is a distinct contribution of European romanticism to American thought."
"The spontaneous tendencies of the child are the records of inborn divinity; we are here, my fellow teachers, for one purpose, and that purpose is to understand these tendencies and to continue them in all these directions, following nature" (Colonel Francis Parker, Father of Progressive Education in the United States).
"It is by now a very deeply-rooted sentiment in American education to think that what is natural works automatically for the good. Everything done naturally has an inner necessity and rightness. Americans have tended to be optimistic that things left to their own devices will tend to work out in the end, which is to say that romanticism is deep-dyed in our culture." Hence the distrust for harsh discipline and bookish hard work.
The goal of civilization and education is to guide and correct the person, not to let the person run its course.
HUCKLEBERRY FINN AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN ROMANTICISM AND THE ENGLIGHTENMENT IN AMERICAN CULTURE
Aunt Sally = Platonic Enlightenment. Culture and books.
Huck = Romanticism. Anti-book. He is going to get his education by "critically thinking" about what he discovers on the river and in the territory; nature and experience will be his teachers. Direct practical experience over lectures. Interacting with people and things in the vast American landscape over reading. Similar to Walt Whitman.
Horace Mann vs. Ralph Waldo Emerson ("the farm is the right school")
The superiority of doing over knowing
Working part-time during high school seen as "educational" >> devaluing of book learning in favor of "real-world" experience
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
American exceptionalism--the ill-founded belief that America is the greatest nation on earth--is much to blame for our reluctance to change our schools. We dismiss the statistical superiority of other nations' schoolchildren, never admitting that, perhaps, those other countries do it better, but comforting ourselves that we have "unique" problems (multiculturalism, etc.) that skews any statistical comparison.
Britain, not having such a high view of itself and more open to honestly comparing itself to other European countries, abandoned progressivism in education over 20 years ago and adopted a content-based national curriculum.
INDIVIDUALISM
Modern thinking: Each child deserves the best. Each child's drawing expresses his or her uniqueness. Every individual is special. A child's academic self-esteem is more important than his or her individual academic effort.
The result: Grade inflation and affirmative action and distrust of standardized test scores.
"The education world is long on the rhetoric of romantic individualism but short on ideas and hope. Passing students by fiat is therapy by illusion. It is analogous to the belief that psychological and social improvement can come from unearned gold stars and ubiquitous smiley faces awarded to whatever work students produce. But the therapy of illusion simply delays the time of reckoning. Students who have been praised for their innate excellence and unique inner worth later find that they cannot hold down good jobs. Meanwhile they have been taught by the schools not to blame the schools, which seem not to grasp the close affinity between condescension and racism, but to blame instead the society beyond the schools for failing to give them a fair shake."
SCATTERED TAKEAWAYS
Classroom that march under the banner of individual attention often result in individual neglect.
Verbal SAT scores in America have long been on the decline, and critical reading skills are at an all-time low.
The author believes we lack informed media criticism of the educational system. Education reporting is usually given to junior reporters. The author wants the shrewdness, skepticism, and probing of our educational system to at least get in the ballpark of that found in our political reporting.
The author believes that today's strong distrust of standardized testing is largely due to the fact that while standardized testing tests actual skills, GPA merely tests how well you can do in the modern, emotionalized, factless school system.
An argument for rote verbal memorization: The more unknown words and phrases you give a young child, the more powerful his or her inferential and language skills become.
"In order to enhance the knowledge of those from underprivileged homes, it is necessary to teach all students in a focused and direct way the knowledge that the children of privilege gain indirectly through constant exposure and repetition at home." The author references Pestalozzi's comments on the children of merchants learning the names of various tools of commerce and, through exposure to the new and unfamiliar, inferential processes.
Due to the work of Edward Lee Thorndike (Teachers College, Columbia), the study of Latin and Greek in modern schools was rejected. Learning classical languages, according to to Thorndike and those who followed him, did not teach one how to think; it simply taught one Latin. Skills are supposedly not transferred from one domain to another.
UCLA was originally a teachers' college.
Kirkpatrick: "activity leading to more activity without badness." He stood for militant separatism--the separation of education from other disciplines, the separation of subject matter from pedagogy.
We need to train students to be "experts" at given tasks. Civilization advances when its people can do more things "automatically."
It is foolish to assume that a (critical) thinking skill in one domain can be readily transferred to another domain.
For all its egalitarian rhetoric, he goes on, the American educational orthodoxy has fostered inequality. In 1942-1966 (before the anti-knowledge pushers got their way), for example, public education had begun to close the economic gap between races and social classes (evidence?). After this period, though, verbal SAT scores took a steep decline, while the black-white wage gap stabilized (despite a decline for the period mentioned above).
"INTERESTING" INSTRUCTION
Subject matter like ancient history and science is withheld from children in the early grades on the grounds that "true education proceeds from the child's interests rather than from an external imposition. Children learn best when new knowledge is built upon what they already know (true), and the child's interest in a subject will derive on its connection from his immediate experiences or home surroundings. Early schooling should therefore teach subjects that have direct relevance to the child's life, like 'My Neighborhood' and similar relevant topics."
EDUCATIONAL FORMALISM
Educational formalism is a widespread doctrine based on the idea that inculcating formal skills is much more important than the transmission of knowledge.
LACK OF CONTENT SPECIFICITY AT THE LOCAL LEVEL; A NATIONAL CURRICULUM
"What specific content are all children at a grade level required to learn?" This question about minimum content, sadly, often does not have a clear answer in most school districts, even with thick "curriculum guidelines," etc.
The author claims that these local curriculum guides are often vague. The first grade curriculum guide for on district, for example, stated that by the end of the year, the students should be able to know and explain the significance of national holidays. Which national holidays? Doesn't say--that's left up to the teacher. Vagueness avoids controversy.
The author focuses on another guide's geography curriculum--much focus on Asian/African geographical features, but little on American. His theory is that the district figured that getting too specific with American geography would become too political, so they decided to leave the specifics up to the teachers. The problem is, of course, that most teachers don't stray too far from curriculum guidelines. Result? Kids don't know American geography.
What the author would really like to see is a national curriculum. This would especially help students who move schools often. School 1, for example, may teach world history in 6th grade, while School 2 already taught it in 4th grade, so if a student moves from School 1 to School 2 in 5th grade, he/she will not have a foundation in world history before advancing to middle school.
This is especially relevant considering that according to the GAO, 1/5 of Americans move each year. We are among the most mobile of all the developing nations. The problem is even worse for low-income families; in a typical inner-city school, only half the students enrolled in September are still there in May. And low-income families in more rural areas often move as job opportunities come and go.
THE 7 PRINCIPLES, WILLIAM HEARD KIRKPATRICK'S "THE PROJECT METHOD", AND HAROLD RUGG'S "THE CHILD-CENTERED SCHOOL", AND THEIR AFTERMATH
Today's elementary schools, the author says, have little in the way of academic lectures but much in the way of hands-on activities--a course he traces back to items produced in 1918: a government document titled "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education" and William Kirkpatrick's "The Project Method" and the 1926 work of Harold Rugg, "The Child-Centered School."
Results:
"Naturalistic hands-on teaching of cognitive skills is viewed as superior to the lecture, drill, and practice theory of a defined body of knowledge." The problem? Students don't actually learn very much.
Another result of this document is the emphasis on individual learning: teachers need to pay more attention to the individual differences of children. There is no lock-step, one-size-fits-all teaching method.
New schools are seen as places of freedom, activity, and creative self-expression, while the old school is seen as the "listening regime." The concept of self reigns supreme: the whole child is to be educated, and it is to be ensured that he or she feels good while doing it. Learning is no longer informational, but emotional.
Children are expected to take charge of their own learning, actively, rather than passively taking in what adults force upon them.
Factual knowledge is seen as useless in becoming a better person.
Technology is viewed as meaning people don't need as much intellectual capital as they used to.
WHY ARE AMERICA'S UNIVERSITIES BETTER THAN ITS SCHOOLS?
Why, oh why, do we have the best public universities but the worst public schools in the developed world? Because they have not been affected by the educationist point of view, the author says. Our colleges place great on depth, breadth, and accuracy of knowledge--the very thing the K-12 system disparages, writing off such a factual focus as rote learning (the worst phrase in the educationist's glossary).
EFFECT OF ROMANTICISM AND ITS TRUST OF THE INNATE GOODNESS OF HUMAN NATURE ON EDUCATION
The dominant attitude toward children in most educational systems today, and in America's until the late 18th century, was that the child is a still-to-be-formed creature whose instinctual impulses are not to be encouraged but to be molded into the ways of the society in which it is growing up. For Plato, the root of evil would be an education in which instinct and emotion dominated over reason. The historical Judeo-Christian theory of education is similar (e.g., Augustine and the pear-stealing: the aim of education is not to follow human nature, but to correct it [the author ignores grace, but it's not hard to follow what he is saying]).
The framers of the Constitution knew that human nature could not be trusted; hence, checks and balances. "In every government on earth there is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate, and improve" (Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia). Jefferson's writings on public education are the most complete we have of any of the founding fathers, and he was utterly opposed to allowing human nature to follow its natural course in education.
Enter romantic thinking, with its emphasis on the innate goodness of human nature and, therefore, the child. "To young plants and animals we give space and time and rest, knowing that they will unfold to beauty by laws working in each. We avoid acting upon them by force, for we know that such intrusion upon their natural growth could only injure their development. Yet man treats the young human being as though it were a piece of wax, a lump of clay out of which he can mold what he will. Education and instruction should from the very first be passive, observant, protective, rather than prescribing, determining, interfering. All training and instruction which prescribes and fixes, that is, interferes with nature, must tend to limit and injure." (Friedrich Fröbel, German educational reformer and inventor of the concept of "kindergarten"; note the reference to "young plants" in the quote above).
"Any method of opening up man's powers which claims to be natural must be open and easy. Parents should not hurry their children into working at things remote from their immediate interests. By anticipating the ordinary course, they diminish the powers of their children and disturb profoundly the equilibrium of their nature" (Johann Pestalozzi, Swiss educational reformer whose motto was "learning by head, hand, and heart").
No need to push book learning on the child too early, they say. The child is good; the world can only serve to corrupt it. "The idea that civilization has a corrupting, rather than a benign, uplifting, virtue-enhancing effect on the young child is a distinct contribution of European romanticism to American thought."
"The spontaneous tendencies of the child are the records of inborn divinity; we are here, my fellow teachers, for one purpose, and that purpose is to understand these tendencies and to continue them in all these directions, following nature" (Colonel Francis Parker, Father of Progressive Education in the United States).
"It is by now a very deeply-rooted sentiment in American education to think that what is natural works automatically for the good. Everything done naturally has an inner necessity and rightness. Americans have tended to be optimistic that things left to their own devices will tend to work out in the end, which is to say that romanticism is deep-dyed in our culture." Hence the distrust for harsh discipline and bookish hard work.
The goal of civilization and education is to guide and correct the person, not to let the person run its course.
HUCKLEBERRY FINN AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN ROMANTICISM AND THE ENGLIGHTENMENT IN AMERICAN CULTURE
Aunt Sally = Platonic Enlightenment. Culture and books.
Huck = Romanticism. Anti-book. He is going to get his education by "critically thinking" about what he discovers on the river and in the territory; nature and experience will be his teachers. Direct practical experience over lectures. Interacting with people and things in the vast American landscape over reading. Similar to Walt Whitman.
Horace Mann vs. Ralph Waldo Emerson ("the farm is the right school")
The superiority of doing over knowing
Working part-time during high school seen as "educational" >> devaluing of book learning in favor of "real-world" experience
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
American exceptionalism--the ill-founded belief that America is the greatest nation on earth--is much to blame for our reluctance to change our schools. We dismiss the statistical superiority of other nations' schoolchildren, never admitting that, perhaps, those other countries do it better, but comforting ourselves that we have "unique" problems (multiculturalism, etc.) that skews any statistical comparison.
Britain, not having such a high view of itself and more open to honestly comparing itself to other European countries, abandoned progressivism in education over 20 years ago and adopted a content-based national curriculum.
INDIVIDUALISM
Modern thinking: Each child deserves the best. Each child's drawing expresses his or her uniqueness. Every individual is special. A child's academic self-esteem is more important than his or her individual academic effort.
The result: Grade inflation and affirmative action and distrust of standardized test scores.
"The education world is long on the rhetoric of romantic individualism but short on ideas and hope. Passing students by fiat is therapy by illusion. It is analogous to the belief that psychological and social improvement can come from unearned gold stars and ubiquitous smiley faces awarded to whatever work students produce. But the therapy of illusion simply delays the time of reckoning. Students who have been praised for their innate excellence and unique inner worth later find that they cannot hold down good jobs. Meanwhile they have been taught by the schools not to blame the schools, which seem not to grasp the close affinity between condescension and racism, but to blame instead the society beyond the schools for failing to give them a fair shake."
SCATTERED TAKEAWAYS
Classroom that march under the banner of individual attention often result in individual neglect.
Verbal SAT scores in America have long been on the decline, and critical reading skills are at an all-time low.
The author believes we lack informed media criticism of the educational system. Education reporting is usually given to junior reporters. The author wants the shrewdness, skepticism, and probing of our educational system to at least get in the ballpark of that found in our political reporting.
The author believes that today's strong distrust of standardized testing is largely due to the fact that while standardized testing tests actual skills, GPA merely tests how well you can do in the modern, emotionalized, factless school system.
An argument for rote verbal memorization: The more unknown words and phrases you give a young child, the more powerful his or her inferential and language skills become.
"In order to enhance the knowledge of those from underprivileged homes, it is necessary to teach all students in a focused and direct way the knowledge that the children of privilege gain indirectly through constant exposure and repetition at home." The author references Pestalozzi's comments on the children of merchants learning the names of various tools of commerce and, through exposure to the new and unfamiliar, inferential processes.
Due to the work of Edward Lee Thorndike (Teachers College, Columbia), the study of Latin and Greek in modern schools was rejected. Learning classical languages, according to to Thorndike and those who followed him, did not teach one how to think; it simply taught one Latin. Skills are supposedly not transferred from one domain to another.
UCLA was originally a teachers' college.
Kirkpatrick: "activity leading to more activity without badness." He stood for militant separatism--the separation of education from other disciplines, the separation of subject matter from pedagogy.
We need to train students to be "experts" at given tasks. Civilization advances when its people can do more things "automatically."
It is foolish to assume that a (critical) thinking skill in one domain can be readily transferred to another domain.
May 25, 2024
"The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them" by E.D. Hirsch Jr. is a critical examination of contemporary American education, arguing forcefully for a return to a more classical and content-rich curriculum. Hirsch, known for his advocacy of cultural literacy, presents a compelling case that the root of many educational failures is the lack of a coherent, knowledge-based curriculum. His arguments are not only thought-provoking but also seek to challenge the prevailing educational philosophies that dominate American schools.
Hirsch’s critique centers around the idea that modern educational methods, which often emphasize skills over knowledge and relativism over factual content, fail to equip students with the broad foundation necessary to achieve true literacy and critical thinking. According to Hirsch, this has led to a widening gap in educational outcomes, particularly affecting students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who do not receive cultural literacy from their environments. He argues that a unified, knowledge-centric curriculum would help level the playing field by ensuring all students, regardless of background, receive the same foundational knowledge.
One of the strengths of the book is Hirsch’s deep dive into the historical and intellectual origins of current educational practices. He traces the development of anti-curricular sentiments back to Romantic origins and progressive educational theorists, critiquing them not just on philosophical grounds but also through empirical evidence that suggests these methods have not succeeded in improving educational outcomes.
Hirsch is particularly persuasive when discussing the importance of cultural literacy—the idea that a shared base of common knowledge is essential for effective communication and community participation. He suggests that without a curriculum that imparts a shared body of knowledge, students are left at a disadvantage both academically and socially. His advocacy for a return to a more traditional, content-heavy curriculum is framed as a necessary step to prepare students not just for college and career but for responsible citizenship.
However, "The Schools We Need" is likely to provoke controversy, especially among educators who favor more progressive, student-centered approaches that Hirsch criticizes. Some may find his views on education reform overly prescriptive or not sufficiently attentive to the diversity of student needs and learning styles.
Despite these potential points of contention, Hirsch's book is undeniably well-researched and rich with insights into what ails American education and how it might be remedied. His call for a unified curriculum resonates as a potential solution to the fragmentation and incoherence he identifies as so damaging.
In conclusion, "The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them" by E.D. Hirsch Jr. is an essential read for educators, policymakers, and parents alike. It offers a rigorous critique of contemporary educational practices and a clear vision for how to improve them that is both challenging and enlightening. Whether one agrees with Hirsch’s conclusions or not, his book is a valuable contribution to the ongoing conversation about how best to educate America’s children and serves as a passionate plea for educational reform that prioritizes knowledge and cultural literacy.
Hirsch’s critique centers around the idea that modern educational methods, which often emphasize skills over knowledge and relativism over factual content, fail to equip students with the broad foundation necessary to achieve true literacy and critical thinking. According to Hirsch, this has led to a widening gap in educational outcomes, particularly affecting students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who do not receive cultural literacy from their environments. He argues that a unified, knowledge-centric curriculum would help level the playing field by ensuring all students, regardless of background, receive the same foundational knowledge.
One of the strengths of the book is Hirsch’s deep dive into the historical and intellectual origins of current educational practices. He traces the development of anti-curricular sentiments back to Romantic origins and progressive educational theorists, critiquing them not just on philosophical grounds but also through empirical evidence that suggests these methods have not succeeded in improving educational outcomes.
Hirsch is particularly persuasive when discussing the importance of cultural literacy—the idea that a shared base of common knowledge is essential for effective communication and community participation. He suggests that without a curriculum that imparts a shared body of knowledge, students are left at a disadvantage both academically and socially. His advocacy for a return to a more traditional, content-heavy curriculum is framed as a necessary step to prepare students not just for college and career but for responsible citizenship.
However, "The Schools We Need" is likely to provoke controversy, especially among educators who favor more progressive, student-centered approaches that Hirsch criticizes. Some may find his views on education reform overly prescriptive or not sufficiently attentive to the diversity of student needs and learning styles.
Despite these potential points of contention, Hirsch's book is undeniably well-researched and rich with insights into what ails American education and how it might be remedied. His call for a unified curriculum resonates as a potential solution to the fragmentation and incoherence he identifies as so damaging.
In conclusion, "The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them" by E.D. Hirsch Jr. is an essential read for educators, policymakers, and parents alike. It offers a rigorous critique of contemporary educational practices and a clear vision for how to improve them that is both challenging and enlightening. Whether one agrees with Hirsch’s conclusions or not, his book is a valuable contribution to the ongoing conversation about how best to educate America’s children and serves as a passionate plea for educational reform that prioritizes knowledge and cultural literacy.
October 25, 2022
Hirsch makes some strong arguments about cultural literacy and core knowledge that are well defended. But at other points he is painfully wordy and devotes whole chapters to what could be done in a paragraph. The summary and conclusion chapter does what the whole book aspired to do but more effectively and succinctly. Nevertheless, there are some good takeaways and a generally valid critique of prevailing educational policies and ideas.
April 8, 2024
Not an easy read but really interesting!
October 17, 2008
It was hard to decide how many stars to give this book, because, let me be very clear, it started out bad and ended up downright CREEPY! However, I think it is a very important book to understanding the Traditionalist debate. If I had not read this, I don't think I would have believed what the progressives say about the traditionalists. A clinching moment was when he criticized a certain method of progressive education as "boring... like reading Charlotte's Web in multipe different grades." First of all, reading a classic book multiple times is what GREAT LEARNING IS ALL ABOUT! Second of all, since when did the likes of Hirsch care about a curriculum being boring??? Another fine moment was when he praised the French system of sending 2 year olds to all day school in order to more effectively erradicate all parental influence. By the end of the book he has created a vision of a completely uniform, nationalized curriculum (his) that will somehow transcend all cultural, religious and socio-economic boundaries. Somehow I just wasn't buying it.
March 2, 2013
I am a new teacher and this book has shed some light on what is wrong with American education system. I student taught in a low income area and was exposed to students that had no interaction from parents at home (mostly because they worked two or more job, making for a long day) and students that entered and exited many different schools in a short period of time. I am only half way completed with the book and I can see how the Core Knowledge program could eliminate these excuses entirely. A some what strict curriculum that is designed to prepare the student for the next grade and is aligned to state core standards.
I am applying to a school that incorporates the Core Knowledge way of teaching. Curriculum based on "What your _____ grader should know" in order to get through to the next grade. I am intrigued to get to the second half of the book.
I am applying to a school that incorporates the Core Knowledge way of teaching. Curriculum based on "What your _____ grader should know" in order to get through to the next grade. I am intrigued to get to the second half of the book.
April 18, 2016
Strongly reiterates Cultural Literacy and offers historical perspective of how we got here and why we are unlikely to get out. Teacher education in America is following the Romantic ideal of teaching the child versus teaching material. The Conservative view is that all kids must learn if they are going to be citizens and active participants in America. While there has never been a national curriculum, what are students learn is significantly dumbed down from the late 1800's and will continue to decline.
All students can learn and the early grades is the right time to catch that up. That effort will bring K-12 education back to the world class standards enjoyed by American Colleges and Universities.
All students can learn and the early grades is the right time to catch that up. That effort will bring K-12 education back to the world class standards enjoyed by American Colleges and Universities.
March 19, 2012
Excellent analysis of the history of American schools and how our intellectual history--that is, our foundations in Enlightenment philosophy and our national "coming of age" in the era of Romanticism--affects our education system. Thoroughly convinced me that education reform that does not address curriculum reform (meaning, a strong content-based curriculum, hopefully one that is nationwide or at least exists in every state) is incomplete reform.
I highly recommend this book to someone who wants to understand the 'long view' of American education beyond the highly charged rhetoric of the current era.
I highly recommend this book to someone who wants to understand the 'long view' of American education beyond the highly charged rhetoric of the current era.
April 2, 2010
Reading this book was like having someone sit down and explain to me personally the way that we learn, that way that schools teach, and why the two don't match up, and do it in a way that made absolute sense to me. By the time I finished this book, I was a dyed-in-the-wool advocate for the Core Knowledge program. It simply made sense. I cannot more strongly recommend this book to people who are going into education, or who are currently in the education field. It will change how you view education, I guarantee it.
July 9, 2010
Ug, I really tried to read this book thoroughly, but there was just too much unnecessary language. Maybe others felt differently, but I really felt the words sometimes detracted from the point. The whole wrapping of the book is intellectual capital, everyone needs it before entering the real world- but the method of attaining it is the question. I see a lot of other people on this board that got the complete story out of this book, but I didn't. In the end, I wish there was a conclusion, instead of leaving me with questions about which method to choose. Maybe that was the point?
March 18, 2015
I think this is an extremely valuable book. This is a book that is thought-provoking and makes me want to change education in this country. Even if you don't agree with everything Hirsch says, I do believe it should make people reexamine their views about the educational status quo.
I wish there would be an updated version in the wake of Common Core and advanced technology, though. The book is somewhat dated in that aspect. The principles, though, that he is fighting against have been around for a long time and still don't seem to be going away.
I wish there would be an updated version in the wake of Common Core and advanced technology, though. The book is somewhat dated in that aspect. The principles, though, that he is fighting against have been around for a long time and still don't seem to be going away.
April 26, 2015
head start needs academic rigor too, late 60s decline, move whole group along repetition core knowledge, need to defeat enemy within, Jefferson need for first elements of morality, too much transition, France head start all day with academic goals, focus on challenging learning, why universities better than K12—competition and openness depth/breadth of subjects, political correctness stifles openness, intellectual monopoly vs competition, Jamaica achievement via expectations, must test rigor develop thirst and desire for learning.
June 24, 2015
Damn, that was depressing. So projects are fairly pointless? The "new, progressive ideals" are from the 1920s? More standardization is needed? As an educator, is saddens me that this book, written in 1995, is still current. With each side claiming their point of view is "research based," how does anyone know what to do? If you are an educator, and you wish to day brought down while also being informed, I strongly recommend this book.
July 1, 2016
Absolutely essential book for educators. Exposes the nakedness of progressives' "child-centered," fact-deficient pedagogy of "critical thinking" and "discovery learning," clothed in the rhetoric woven from the pretended stuffs of "research." Traditional education, Hirsch argues, is actually the most progressive, because it actually confers on those less advantaged the knowledge and ability they need to succeed.
July 2, 2025
Although it contains some interesting ideas and debates in his fight against educational progressivism, Hirsch (who declares himself as a political liberal and an educational pragmatist) is here extremely partial in his opinions and explanations.
Besides, the book is very focused on the particularities of the USA education system... a country in which I have never lived. And unlike in other books of the style, I could hardly apply to my country what Hirsch debated here.
Besides, the book is very focused on the particularities of the USA education system... a country in which I have never lived. And unlike in other books of the style, I could hardly apply to my country what Hirsch debated here.
February 7, 2009
Interesting read about the problems in schools/education. I completely disagree with the author's argument and suggestions for change. He presents an extremely conservative, biased [mainstream, white, middle class:] opinion that does not consider the reality of schools or student populations. It's almost insulting, but Hirsch represents an ideology that's not going away any time soon.
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