Publishers Weekly
07/13/2020
Hirsch (The Making of Americans), founder of the education nonprofit Core Knowledge Foundation, delivers an impassioned yet myopic call for U.S. elementary schools to adopt a “shared-knowledge curriculum” as a means of improving student performance and healing hyperpartisanship. A “common stock of knowledge” based on “key concepts, historical figures, and events” and shared ideals such as “liberty, equality, and kindness” is the foundation for a competent and unified citizenry, according to Hirsch. He contends that the child-centered approach of contemporary educational theory, with its emphasis on “standards devoid of specific content” and general skills like critical thinking, has driven down America’s reading and math scores and led to the current divisive political climate. He cites data from the Lyles-Crouch Traditional Academy in Virginia and charter schools in the Bronx as evidence that a “shared-knowledge approach” raises test scores, narrows the achievement gap, and helps educators to achieve the “double goal of quality and equality.” Though he insists that “diversity is not inconsistent with national unity,” and presents some intriguing evidence to back his claims about student performance, Hirsch’s unwillingness to fully grapple with the question of whose knowledge best defines American history and culture weakens his argument. This well-intentioned treatise falls short. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Assoc. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"A fervent plea for reforming American schools." — Kirkus Reviews
“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
“Readers cautious about a nationalistic, uniform approach to educating youth will discover in Hirsch's manifesto several compelling reasons for doing so, including the indisputable fact that a unified nation is better equipped to cooperate on international matters than one as polarized as the U.S. in the 21st century. . . . A persuasive, scientifically sound case for an education revolution.” — Shelf Awareness
“Education-policy thinker and provocateur Hirsch reignites the continuing debate over the content and value of contemporary elementary education in the United States.. . . Valuable for the ongoing education debate.” — Booklist
"Hirsch has long endured accusations of elitism, but he emphasizes here that his work has always been driven by a desire to help the least privileged children succeed. It’s those kids, he says, who suffer the most from faddish educational theories that have stripped schools of academic substance."
— Ron Charles, Washington Post Book Club
“Guided by those words over his long, admirable, and prolific career, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. has worked patiently to correct the errors of the false prophets of progressive pedagogy and to restore the public purpose of American education and its founding ideals. It is up to the rest of us now to follow his lead.” — City Journal
"This kind of shared, unifying, patriotic education is needed now more than ever. Reading Hirsch’s new book is a good starting place." — Jenna A. Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal
“Our dedicated, hard-working teachers across this nation wish to teach children in a manner that will serve them for a lifetime. Let’s give them the skills and freedom to do just that. Whether you agree with him or disagree, a good place to start that process is by listening to people like E.D. Hirsch Jr.” — Daily Memphian
“Readers cautious about a nationalistic, uniform approach to educating youth will discover in Hirsch's manifesto several compelling reasons for doing so, including the indisputable fact that a unified nation is better equipped to cooperate on international matters than one as polarized as the U.S. in the 21st century. . . . A persuasive, scientifically sound case for an education revolution.” — Shelf Awareness for Readers
Jenna A. Robinson
"This kind of shared, unifying, patriotic education is needed now more than ever. Reading Hirsch’s new book is a good starting place."
Ron Charles
"Hirsch has long endured accusations of elitism, but he emphasizes here that his work has always been driven by a desire to help the least privileged children succeed. It’s those kids, he says, who suffer the most from faddish educational theories that have stripped schools of academic substance."
Shelf Awareness for Readers
Readers cautious about a nationalistic, uniform approach to educating youth will discover in Hirsch's manifesto several compelling reasons for doing so, including the indisputable fact that a unified nation is better equipped to cooperate on international matters than one as polarized as the U.S. in the 21st century. . . . A persuasive, scientifically sound case for an education revolution.
Shelf Awareness
Readers cautious about a nationalistic, uniform approach to educating youth will discover in Hirsch's manifesto several compelling reasons for doing so, including the indisputable fact that a unified nation is better equipped to cooperate on international matters than one as polarized as the U.S. in the 21st century. . . . A persuasive, scientifically sound case for an education revolution.
Daily Memphian
Our dedicated, hard-working teachers across this nation wish to teach children in a manner that will serve them for a lifetime. Let’s give them the skills and freedom to do just that. Whether you agree with him or disagree, a good place to start that process is by listening to people like E.D. Hirsch Jr.
City Journal
“Guided by those words over his long, admirable, and prolific career, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. has worked patiently to correct the errors of the false prophets of progressive pedagogy and to restore the public purpose of American education and its founding ideals. It is up to the rest of us now to follow his lead.
Joel Klein
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."
Booklist
Education-policy thinker and provocateur Hirsch reignites the continuing debate over the content and value of contemporary elementary education in the United States.. . . Valuable for the ongoing education debate.
Booklist
Education-policy thinker and provocateur Hirsch reignites the continuing debate over the content and value of contemporary elementary education in the United States.. . . Valuable for the ongoing education debate.
Susan B. Neuman
Hirsch has done it again. He has produced the most clear and well-grounded argument for why a knowledge-centric education is critical for enhancing educational equity. He pulls no punches. Why Knowledge Matters provides thoughtful solutions to important education issues.
Steven Pinker
Anyone [who's] struggled to read an article stuffed with technical or legal jargon, or with arcane references to obscure places and events, has had a taste of what it’s like to be a child who has been deprived of the cultural touchstones that literate adults take for granted. Hirsch is performing a brave and invaluable service by reminding us that proficient reading depends not just on skilled eyes and ears but on an educated mind.
Indianapolis Star on The Schools We Need
"Offers a penetrating and compelling analysis of how, despite the good intentions of educators, bad ideas and failed theories now characterize American education."
Daniel T. Willingham
If you are frustrated and angry about the over-testing of students, the narrowing of the curriculum, the scapegoating of teachers, and the persistence of the achievement gap, you must read this brilliant book. Hirsch persuasively explains how all these phenomena are related, and points the way forward to a better education for all.
Donna Fowler
"A brilliant, combative, and intensely practical discussion of how our education system got into its current mess and what we must do to pull it out."
null Indianapolis Star on The Schools We Need
"Offers a penetrating and compelling analysis of how, despite the good intentions of educators, bad ideas and failed theories now characterize American education."
Kirkus Reviews
2020-06-04
A prominent educator asserts that shared knowledge is crucial for national unity.
More than 30 years after the publication of his controversial Cultural Literacy, Hirsch, now in his 90s, offers his “farewell book about American early schooling,” which reprises his critique of fragmented, idiosyncratic curricula and insists on the importance of shared content. “Elevating rationality and natural science above emotional and religious sentiments,” the author debunks what he calls the “educational romanticism” of thinkers such as John Dewey, who believed that teaching should be based on a child’s interests rather than a teacher-created curriculum. This pedagogy, Hirsch maintains, has led to a dumbed-down, haphazard curriculum of “mush.” Citing research from the National Academy of Sciences, among other sources, the author asserts that falling verbal test scores—and the nation’s low rankings in reading, math, and science in relation to other developed countries—result from the misguided notion that critical thinking, problem solving, and reading comprehension are skills that can be taught apart from content. Here, the author quotes Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson: “there is no such thing as developing a general skill.” Hirsch’s ideal curricula have three important criteria: coherence over time, ensuring that students build on a knowledge base; commonality of references and vocabulary to form an inclusive speech community in the classroom; and specificity of content. The author recounts his interviews with teachers and a school superintendent who express their dismay over contentless curricula and praise shared-knowledge schools, such as those adopting the curriculum that Hirsch created as founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation. In an afterword addressed to parents, the author offers “free downloadable materials” from the foundation. Anticipating critics who worry about “lockstep uniformity,” Hirsch celebrates “unity in diversity” that can bind us “in civic duty toward the good of the whole.” Americans’ lack of civic engagement and ignorance of history, he argues, require nothing less than “an educational revolution.”
A fervent plea for reforming American schools.
