“Profound, vital and correct. Hirsch highlights the essence of our American being and the radical changes in education necessary to sustain that essence. Concerned citizens, teachers, and parents take note! We ignore this book at our peril."— Joel Klein, former Chancellor of New York City Public Schools
In this powerful manifesto, the bestselling author of Cultural Literacy addresses the failures of America’s early education system and its impact on our current national malaise, advocating for a shared knowledge curriculum students everywhere can be taught—an educational foundation that can help improve and strengthen America’s unity, identity, and democracy.In How to Educate a Citizen, E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began thirty years ago with his classic bestseller Cultural Literacy, urging America’s public schools, particularly at the elementary level, to educate our children more effectively to help heal and preserve the nation. Since the 1960s, our schools have been relying on “child-centered learning.” History, geography, science, civics, and other essential knowledge have been dumbed down by vacuous learning “techniques” and “values-based” curricula; indoctrinated by graduate schools of education, administrators and educators have believed they are teaching reading and critical thinking skills. Yet these cannot be taught in the absence of strong content, Hirsch argues.
The consequence is a loss of shared knowledge that would enable us to work together, understand one another, and make coherent, informed decisions. A broken approach to school not only leaves our children under-prepared and erodes the American dream but also loosens the spiritual bonds and unity that hold the nation together. Drawing on early schoolmasters and educational reformers such as Noah Webster and Horace Mann, Hirsch charts the rise and fall of the American early education system and provides a blueprint for closing the national gap in knowledge, communications, and allegiance. Critical and compelling, How to Educate a Citizen galvanizes our schools to equip children with the power of shared knowledge.
E. D. Hirsch, Jr., is a professor at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and the author of the bestselling Cultural Literacy and the The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. He is also president of the nonprofit Core Knowledge Foundation, whose curriculum is followed by more than two hundred schools. Recent independent research on these schools has documented significant progress by both disadvantaged and advantaged students.
Rob Shapiro is a musician, writer, voice actor, and Earphones Award–winning narrator. He performed several seasons of radio comedy on Minneapolis Public Radio and voiced the titular lion in Leo the Lion. He is a musician and composer with his critically acclaimed band Populuxe. He is also a business consultant and software system designer.
Table of Contents
Part I The Decline of the Common School
Chapter 1 When Our Schools Abandoned Commonality, We Became a Nation at Risk 3
Chapter 2 The Child-Centered Classroom 31
Chapter 3 "Nobody Leaves": The Dazzling Success of Shared-Knowledge Schools 57
Chapter 4 The Problem Starts at Our Teacher-Training Institutes 77
Part II Science Debunks Child-Centered Education
Chapter 5 Culture, Not Nature, Knows Best-Says Nature 103
Chapter 6 The Lessons of Educational Failure and Success around the World 129
Part III American Ethnicity: Will the Common School Make a Comeback?
Chapter 7 Commonality in a Multiethnic Nation 145
Chapter 8 How to Improve the "Common Core" 159
Chapter 9 Patriotism: Shared Knowledge and Kindness 177
