E. D. Hirsch
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Eric "E. D." Donald Hirsch Jr. (born 1928) is an American educator, literary critic, and theorist of education. He is professor emeritus of education and humanities at the
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
. Hirsch is best known for his 1987 book ''Cultural Literacy'', which was a national best-seller and a catalyst for the standards movement in American education. ''Cultural Literacy'' included a list of approximately 5,000 "names, phrases, dates, and concepts every American should know" in order to be "culturally literate." Hirsch's arguments for cultural literacy and the contents of the list were controversial and widely debated in the late 1980s and early '90s. Hirsch is the founder and chairman of the non-profit Core Knowledge Foundation, which publishes and periodically updates the Core Knowledge Sequence, a set of unusually detailed curriculum guidelines for Pre-K through 8th grade. In 1991, Hirsch and the Core Knowledge Foundation put out ''What Your First Grader Needs to Know'', the first volume in what is popularly known as "the Core Knowledge Series." Additional volumes followed, as did revised editions. The series now begins with ''What Your Preschooler Needs to Know'' and ends with ''What Your Sixth Grader Needs to Know''. The "series" books are based on the curriculum guidelines in the Core Knowledge Sequence. The books are used in Core Knowledge schools and other elementary schools. However, they have also been popular with homeschooling parents. Before turning to education, Hirsch wrote on English literature and theory of interpretation (''
hermeneutics Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate ...
''). His book ''Validity in Interpretation'' (1967) is considered an important contribution to
hermeneutics Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate ...
. In it, Hirsch argues for intentionalism—the idea that the reader's goal should be to recover the author's meaning.


Early life

Hirsch was born on March 22, 1928, in
Memphis Memphis most commonly refers to: * Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt * Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city Memphis may also refer to: Places United States * Memphis, Alabama * Memphis, Florida * Memphis, Indiana * Memp ...
,
Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
. His parents were Eric Donald Hirsch Sr. and Leah (Aschaffenburg) Hirsch. His father was a cotton broker who worked for Allenberg Cotton and was honored as "Cotton Man of the Year for 1956." Hirsch was educated in Memphis public schools, the Pentecost Garrison School (Memphis), the
Metairie Park Country Day School Metairie Park Country Day School is a private, nondenominational, co-educational college preparatory school preparatory day school in Metairie, Louisiana, with classes in grades Pre-Kindergarten– 12. The campus is located in the Old Meta ...
(New Orleans), and the Todd School for Boys (Woodstock, Illinois).


Education

In 1950, Hirsch graduated from
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
in
Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named ...
with a B.A. in English. After a brief stint in the naval reserves, he enrolled in the Ph.D. program in English literature at Yale University in
New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134 ...
. He completed his doctorate in 1957.


Work on the Romantic poets

From 1956 to 1966, Hirsch taught in the English Department at Yale University. During this time most of his academic work concerned the English Romantic poets. Hirsch's first book, ''Wordsworth and Schelling'', was a revision of his doctoral dissertation. In the book, he explicates Wordsworth's philosophic ideas and poems by juxtaposing them with the ideas of the German philosopher
Friedrich Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (; 27 January 1775 – 20 August 1854), later (after 1812) von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him be ...
. In 1964, Hirsch published his second book, ''Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake''. In this book Hirsch took issue with "systematic" critics of Blake's work, including
Northrop Frye Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. Frye gained international fame with his first book, '' Fearful Symm ...
and
Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...
. Hirsch argued that Blake's ideas and outlook changed radically over time and that early works like ''The Songs of Innocence'' do not express the same worldview as later works like ''The Songs of Experience''.


UVA and Hermeneutics

Hirsch was hired to teach English at the
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1966. The next year, he published ''Validity in Interpretation'' (1967). This was his first book-length work on
hermeneutics Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate ...
and theory of interpretation. However, it was not his first published work on the subject. He had previously published an article, "Objective Interpretation" (''PMLA'', 1960) and a review of the German edition of Hans-Georg
Gadamer Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 '' magnum opus'', '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode''), on hermeneutics. Life Family a ...
's '' Truth and Method'' (''Review of Metaphysics'', 1965). Both of these early pieces are reprinted as appendices in ''Validity in Interpretation''. In ''Validity in Interpretation'' Hirsch defends what he calls "the sensible belief that a text means what its author meant." He argues that it is possible (at least in some cases) for readers to recover an author's intended meaning—and that readers should make this the goal of interpretation. Hirsch makes a distinction between the "meaning" of a text, which does not change over time, and the "significance" of the text, which does change over time. In addition, he argues that objectivity in interpretation is possible and that we can have objective knowledge in humanistic studies. In a review of important works on interpretation, Sherri Irvin gives the following summary of ''Validity in Interpretation'':
The seminal statement of actual intentionalism: Hirsch holds that ‘meaning is an affair of consciousness and not of physical signs or things’ (23), though he allows that linguistic convention constrains the meanings the author can intend for a particular utterance. He argues that the author's intention is necessary to fix meaning, since the application of conventions alone would typically leave a text wildly indeterminate.
Hirsch's "intentionalist" and "objectivist" views on
hermeneutics Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate ...
are close to those of the Italian jurist
Emilio Betti Emilio Betti (Camerino, 20 August 1890 – Camorciano di Camerino, 11 August 1968) was an Italian jurist, Roman Law scholar, philosopher and theologian. He is best known for his contributions to hermeneutics, part of a broad interest in interpreta ...
. On the other hand, his views run largely contrary to the views of
Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th ce ...
and his student
Hans-Georg Gadamer Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 ''magnum opus'', '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode''), on hermeneutics. Life Family ...
as well as the views of
W. K. Wimsatt William Kurtz Wimsatt Jr. (November 17, 1907 – December 17, 1975) was an American professor of English, literary theorist, and critic. Wimsatt is often associated with the concept of the intentional fallacy, which he developed with Monroe Beard ...
and
Monroe Beardsley Monroe Curtis Beardsley (; December 10, 1915 – September 18, 1985) was an American philosopher of art. Biography Beardsley was born and raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and educated at Yale University (B.A. 1936, Ph.D. 1939), where he re ...
on the "semantic autonomy" of works of literature, as expressed in "
The Intentional Fallacy In literary theory and aesthetics, authorial intent refers to an author's intent as it is encoded in their work. Authorial intentionalism is the view that an author's intentions should constrain the ways in which a text is properly interpreted. Opp ...
." Hirsch continued to publish on
hermeneutics Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate ...
and the concept of authorial intent in the late 1960s and early 1970's, and many of his articles from this period are collected in his second book on hermeneutics, ''The Aims of Interpretation'' (1975). Hirsch's views on hermeneutics have been widely cited—Google Scholar lists more than 4,400 citations for ''Validity in Interpretation''—but they have also been widely criticized.


Composition and Theory of Writing

In the early 1970s Hirsch began working on the theory of writing and composition, publishing several articles and a book, ''The Philosophy of Composition'' (1977). The central concept in this book is the idea of "relative readability." One piece of writing is more readable, in terms of relative readability, than another if it conveys the same meaning but is easier to read and is read more quickly than the alternative passage. ''The Philosophy of Composition'' was widely reviewed and generated a lot of discussion in composition circles for several years, but Hirsch's work in this area is no longer widely discussed. In the late 1970s, Hirsch and some colleagues at the University of Virginia ran a series of experiments on relative readability. Participants in the experiments were assigned either a well written passage or a poorly written (stylistically degraded) version of the same passage. Hirsch and his colleagues recorded reading time to determine whether the well written passages were in fact read more quickly, as they predicted they would be. They discovered that they were. However, they also discovered that there was another factor that was even more important than relative readability: if the students lacked crucial background knowledge, they struggled to read both the poorly written and the well written passage. This became particularly clear while Hirsch was running tests at a Virginia community college. The students at the community college did not know who Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee were and, as a result, they struggled to make sense of a passage on the U.S. Civil War. Hirsch observed that these students lacked "cultural literacy." They had adequate decoding skills for reading, but they began to struggle when they lacked relevant background knowledge.


Cultural Literacy

Hirsch was dismayed that community college students, raised in Virginia, where much of the Civil War was fought, had not heard of Robert E. Lee, who commanded the
Confederate States Army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...
or
Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...
, who led the
Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union of the collective states. It proved essential to th ...
, or the roles these men played in the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
. He began to push for the teaching of cultural literacy in grades K-12, and especially K-8. His main objective, as he has frequently noted, was to help disadvantaged students to cultural literacy and improved reading comprehension. In a 1981 presentation to the Modern Language Association, Hirsch introduced his theory on the connection between literacy in general and cultural literacy. A version of his MLA paper was published in 1983 as an article, "Cultural Literacy," in ''
The American Scholar "The American Scholar" was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College at the First Parish in Cambridge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was invited to speak in recognition of his gro ...
''. In 1983, the Exxon Education Foundation provided support for further research. With this funding, Hirsch set up a team who began to compile lists of terms that "culturally literate" people know but young people and disadvantaged people may need to learn. This would become the appendix of his 1987 book, an unannotated list of approximately "5,000 names, phrases, dates, and concepts," representing the "necessary minimum of American general knowledge". In 1986, Hirsch established the non-profit Cultural Literacy Foundation, with a goal of developing a fact-rich core curriculum and piloting it in selected elementary schools. In 1987, Hirsch's ''Cultural Literacy'' appeared. The book became a national bestseller, rising all the way to #2 on the ''New York Times'' Bestseller lists. Hirsch's book was often reviewed with and discussed in tandem with another education book published at roughly the same time, Allan Bloom's ''
The Closing of the American Mind ''The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students'' is a 1987 book by the philosopher Allan Bloom, in which the author criticizes the openness of relativism, in academia ...
''. These two books convinced many readers that there were problems with American education. Hirsch's book "spurred a growing movement for prescriptive cultural literacy and standards in general." This resulted in a recommendation by the
United States Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Departmen ...
that "cultural literacy should inform the content of the American educational system." Hirsch has distanced himself from Bloom book, saying that "That was just bad luck ... Allan Bloom really was an elitist." In 1988, Hirsch co-authored the ''Dictionary of Cultural Literacy'' with Joseph Kett and James Trefil. In 1989, Hirsch was the editor of ''A First Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. In 1991, Hirsch and his colleagues issued ''What Your First Grader Needs to Know'', the first in the popular Core Knowledge "series." One early supporter of the Core Knowledge movement was
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
's
Diane Ravitch Diane Silvers Ravitch (born July 1, 1938) is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. ...
, an education historian. Against the backdrop of the release of a scathing report on education in the United States—''A Nation at Risk''—Ravitch encouraged Hirsch to publish ''Cultural Literacy'' as a non-fiction book in 1987. The book included an unannotated list of approximately "5,000 names, phrases, dates, and concepts" every American should know in order to be culturally literate.By the time her 2016, reprint of her best-selling book was published, Ravitch had become disillusioned with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's
Common Core The Common Core State Standards Initiative, also known as simply Common Core, is an educational initiative from 2010 that details what K–12 students throughout the United States should know in English language arts and mathematics at the conc ...
initiative that had produced presented a "comprehensive, coherent sequence of thematic curriculum units connecting the skills outlined in the CCSS with suggested student objectives, texts, activities, and much more (Schneider 2019) becoming disillusioned by the Gates’-funded
Common Core The Common Core State Standards Initiative, also known as simply Common Core, is an educational initiative from 2010 that details what K–12 students throughout the United States should know in English language arts and mathematics at the conc ...
. She said the "fundamental error of the Common Core standards is that they were written by a small group of people without the involvement of classroom teachers and scholars in the respective fields. They were written with remarkable speed but without any public review process. There were no means by which to revise them after they were published. States could add up to 15 percent additional content, but could subtract or change nothing. It was a missed opportunity to do it right. The toxicity of the Common Core standards persuaded me that it is fruitless to rely on national curriculum standards as a solution to education problems."
By 1988, Hirsch was featured in the New York Times, as a "self-proclaimed crusade against noneducation" in his role as president of the Cultural Literacy Foundation which was headquartered in Charlottesville. The Foundation monitored the "spread of ignorance and illiteracy in the United States" and made "proposals for remedying it". By 1990, the Core Knowledge had approximately 2,500 members and was largely self-supporting, although they continued to use grant money for large projects. By 2015, Hirsch and his Core Knowledge Foundation, had become an "increasingly popular primary source for the Common Core movement". The emphasis is placed "more on what should be known rather than how to know"—"content knowledge" is central to learning and "knowledge acquisition is treated as a commodity or product to be dispensed".


Criticism of school systems

In his 1996 book ''The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them'', Hirsch was highly critical of the American education system, which he described as a "Thoughtworld" hostile to research-based findings and dissenting ideas. Throughout his career, Hirsch denounced the influence of 19th century romanticism on American culture in general, and on progressive educational ideas in particular. He said that romanticism, and writers and artists who espoused the romantic world-view — such as
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
,
William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...
,
William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication '' Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...
,
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (; 27 January 1775 – 20 August 1854), later (after 1812) von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him ...
, and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...
— "elevated all that is natural and disparaged all that is artificial". Hirsch sees the romanticism-inspired progressivists as being in opposition to the intellectuals — the
classicist Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...
, the modernist, the pragmatist, and the scientist. In ''The Schools We Need'' Hirsch said that, "Higher-level skills critically depend upon the automatic mastery of repeated lower-level activities." In his 1999 book, ''The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and Tougher Standards'', Alfie Kohn said that Hirsch's "starting with the basics" model "reflects a particular model of learning"— behaviorism—"which has lost credibility among experts in the field even as it retains a stranglehold on the popular consciousness". In 2006, Hirsch published ''The Knowledge Deficit'', in which he continued the argument made in ''Cultural Literacy''. Disappointing results on reading tests, Hirsch argued, can be traced back to a knowledge deficit that keeps students from making sense of what they read. In 2009, he published ''The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools'', in which he makes the case that the true mission of the schools is to prepare citizens for participation in our democracy by embracing a common-core, knowledge-rich curriculum as opposed to what Hirsch claims to be the current content-free approach. He laments 60 years without a curriculum in US schools because of the anti-curriculum approach championed by John Dewey and other Progressives. In 2016, he published "Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing our Children from Failed Educational Theories", outlining the three major problems with education in the United States: the emphasis on teaching skills, such as critical thinking skills, rather than knowledge, individualism rather than communal learning, and developmentalism, that is, teaching children what is "appropriate" for their age.


Core Knowledge

Hirsch established the non-profit Core Knowledge Foundation and serves as its director. The Foundation began publishing its Core Knowledge Sequence in the 1990s. This includes eight books as part of the ''Core Knowledge Grader Series'' of books. The series begins ''What Your Preschooler Needs to Know'' and ends with ''What Your Sixth Grader Needs to Know''. The series, which has been revised and updated over the years, have been particularly popular with parents who homeschool, as well as parents whose children attend Core Knowledge schools. In 2011 a British version of ''The Core Knowledge Sequence'' was published online.The UK Core Knowledge Sequence
The books began to be adapted for the UK, beginning with ''What Your Year 1 Child Needs to Know''. By 2015, there were about 1,260 schools in the US (across 46 states and District of Columbia) using all or part of the ''Core Knowledge Sequence''. The Foundation believes that the actual number is much higher, but only counts schools that submit a "profile form" to the Foundation annually. The profile of Core Knowledge Schools in the US is diverse—including public, charter, private and parochial schools in urban, suburban and rural locations. Independent nonprofit GreatSchools.org reports that more than 400 of these schools are preschools. In his 2014 article published by Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Robert Pondiscio, the author of '' How the Other Half Learns'' in which he reviewed Success Academy, Pondiscio said if the
Common Core State Standards Initiative The Common Core State Standards Initiative, also known as simply Common Core, is an educational initiative from 2010 that details what K–12 students throughout the United States should know in English language arts and mathematics at the conc ...
was "properly understood and implemented", it would be a "delivery mechanism" for Hirsch's "ideas and work" and his Core Knowledge curriculum. Hirsch was not directly involved in developing the Common Core State Standards adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia, some education watchers credit E. D. Hirsch as having provided the "intellectual foundation" for the initiative. Pondiscio said that ''Politico'' had paired
David Coleman David Robert Coleman OBE (26 April 1926 – 21 December 2013) was a British sports commentator and television presenter who worked for the BBC for 46 years. He covered eleven Summer Olympic Games from 1960 to 2000 and six FIFA World Cups from ...
—main author of the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts—with Hirsch in eight place on their 2014 list of fifty "thinkers, doers and dreamers who really matter."


Reviews of Hirsch's work

Since Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy" was published in the 1980s, his theories have often been embraced by political conservatives and criticized by liberals and progressives. A 1999 ''Baltimore Sun'' article said Hirsch's system had succeeded in "producing educated children" but ignited an "education controversy" which has been "very good for irsch'sbusiness". Hirsch said that he specifically designed a curriculum that would "place all children on common ground, sharing a common body of knowledge. That's one way to secure civil rights." Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the
Manhattan Institute The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (renamed in 1981 from the International Center for Economic Policy Studies) is a conservative American think tank focused on domestic policy and urban affairs, established in Manhattan in 1978 by Anto ...
who has written extensively on education reform, described Hirsch's "curriculum for democracy" in 2009, as "content-rich pedagogy" that makes better citizens and smarter kids. Sterne said in 2013 that Hirsch was "the most important education reformer of the past half-century." Stern said that
William Bennett William John Bennett (born July 31, 1943) is an American conservative politician and political commentator who served as secretary of education from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. He also held the post of director of the Office of ...
, a prominent conservative who served as Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities and later US Secretary of Education, was an early proponent of Hirsch's views. The Core Knowledge Foundation self-describes itself as non-partisan. Hirsch himself is an avowed Democrat who has described himself as "practically a socialist" In his 2010 article in the
Claremont Review of Books The ''Claremont Review of Books'' (''CRB'') is a quarterly review of politics and statesmanship published by the conservative Claremont Institute. A typical issue consists of several book reviews and a selection of essays on topics of conservati ...
, Terrence O. Moore cited Hirsch, who self-described as a "political liberal" had been "forced to become an educational conservative". Moore said that Hirsch's Left was the "Old Left". In ''The Making of Americans'' (2010), Hirsch said that, he was a "political liberal" who was "forced to become an educational conservative" after he had "recognized the relative inertness and stability of the shared background knowledge students need to master reading and writing." He said that the "democratic goal of high universal literacy would require schools to practice a large measure of educational traditionalism". In his 2009 article, published online by Grove City College's Institute for Faith and Freedom, Jason R. Edwards—who teaches education and history at Grove City College—said that Hirsch has been criticized by the political left for being an "elitist" whose theories could result in a "rejection of toleration, pluralism, and relativism". On the political right, Hirsch has been accused of being "totalitarian, for his idea lends itself to turning over curriculum selection to federal authorities and thereby eliminating the time-honored American tradition of locally controlled schools". Harvard University professor
Howard Gardner Howard Earl Gardner (born July 11, 1943) is an American developmental psychologist and the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. He is curr ...
, who is best known for his
theory of multiple intelligences The theory of multiple intelligences proposes the differentiation of human intelligence into specific modalities of intelligence, rather than defining intelligence as a single, general ability. The theory has been criticized by mainstream psycho ...
, has been a long-time critic of Hirsch. Gardner described one of his own books, ''The Disciplined Mind'' (1999), as part of a "sustained dialectic" with E. D. Hirsch, and criticized Hirsch's curriculum as "at best superficial and at worst anti-intellectual". In 2007, Gardner accused Hirsch of having "swallowed a neoconservative caricature of contemporary American education."


UK Education Secretary (Michael Gove)

Michael Gove, who served as served as
Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families The Shadow Secretary of State for Education, also called the Shadow Education Secretary, is an office in the Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet responsible for Opposition policy on education and for holding the Secretary of State for Education, ...
and then
Secretary of State for Education The secretary of state for education, also referred to as the education secretary, is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for the work of the Department for Education. The incumbent is a member of the C ...
under Prime Minister David Cameron from 2010 to 2014, oversaw major controversial education reforms. Gove admired Hirsch's theories of education, according to a 2012 article in ''The Guardian''. Gove revised the national curriculum, which included "hard facts", allegedly influenced by Hirsch. In 2014, the Core Knowledge books were published in the U.K. by Civitas, which is widely characterised in the national news media as "right-of-centre". Standardized testing conducted by the
Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) is a Non-ministerial government department, non-ministerial department of Government of the United Kingdom, His Majesty's government, reporting to Parliament of the U ...
(Ofsted) had faced criticism since at least 2008, as a threat to social learning. A 2010 article in the U.K.-based TES described Core Knowledge as a "kind of national curriculum" that outlines Hirsch's ideas on what "children should know in English language and literature, history, geography, maths, science, music, and art".


Personal life

Hirsch was married to Gertrud Erna Winkelsen from 1956 and from 1958 to Mary Monteith Pope until her death in 2015. He is currently married to Natasha "Tasha" Tobin. He has four children.


Fellowships, awards and memberships

Hirsch has been awarded several fellowships and honors, including the Fulbright Fellowship (1955), the Morse Fellowship (1960), the Guggenheim Fellowship (1964), the Explicator Prize (1965), the NEA Fellowship (1970), the NEH Senior Fellowship (1971–71), the Wesleyan University Center for the Humanities Fellowship (1973), the Princeton University Fellowship in the Humanities (1977), and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Fellowship at Stanford University (1980–81). At the University of Virginia he was Linden Kent Memorial Professor of English Emeritus, in addition to Professor of Education and Humanities. He has received honorary degrees from Rhodes College and Williams College. He is a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
, and a board member of the Albert Shanker Institute. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.


Works

* ''Wordsworth and Schelling'' (1960) * ''Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake'' (1964) * ''Validity in Interpretation'' (Yale University Press, 1967) * ''The Aims of Interpretation'' (1976) * ''The Philosophy of Composition'' (1977) * ''Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know'' (1987) * ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy'' (1988) * ''The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them'' (1996) * ''"''The Validity of Allegory" in ''Convegno internazionale sul tema ermeneutica e critica'' (1996) * ''The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know'' by E. D. Hirsch, Joseph F. Kett and James Trefil (2002) * ''The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children'' (2006) * ''The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools'' (2010) * ''Why Knowledge Matters'' (2016) * ''How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation'' (2020)


See also

* The Core Knowledge Foundation * Daniel T. Willingham


Notes


References


Publications by Hirsch and the Core Knowledge Foundation


Further reading

Commentary * Aeschliman, M.D., "Culture and Anarchy" Review of E.D. Hirsch, ''Cultural Literacy, The World and I'' (Washington, DC), February 1988 * Ibid., "Core Knowledge in the TASIS Schools: England, Puerto Rico, Switzerland," ''Common Knowledge'', 2005 * Ibid., “What Do They Know?” Review of E.D. Hirsch, "The Knowledge Deficit," ''The Weekly Standard'' (Washington, DC ), 29 January 2007 * Ibid., “Suffer the Little Children” ''The Intercollegiate Review,'' Fall 2010 * * Criticism * ''The Schools Our Children Deserve'' by
Alfie Kohn Alfie Kohn (born October 15, 1957) is an American author and lecturer in the areas of education, parenting, and human behavior. He is a proponent of progressive education and has offered critiques of many traditional aspects of parenting, mana ...
* ''Critical Literacy'' by
Eugene F. Provenzo Eugene Francis Provenzo Jr. (born 1949) is an emeritus professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Miami. He became a full professor in 1985. Career Provenzo. was born in Buffalo, New York in 1949. He took his BA de ...
* ''Literacies of Power'' by Donoldo Macedo *


External links


Core Knowledge FoundationPublic School Insights interview with E.D. Hirsch
Posted September 2, 2008

* Hirsch Discusses his book ''The Making of Americans'' on C-Span
Video
* . * Christopher Hitchens,

" ''New York Times'', May 13, 1990 * Hirsch'
papers on cultural literacy
at the
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia is a research library that specializes in American history and literature, history of Virginia and the southeastern United States, the history of the Universit ...
at the
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
*
A collection of articles and speeches by E. D. Hirsch
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hirsch, E. D. 1928 births Living people Jewish American academics American literary critics Cornell University alumni Wesleyan University faculty People from Memphis, Tennessee University of Virginia Yale University Hermeneutics 21st-century American Jews