Word: hirsch
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Hirsch, 59, a professor of English, aims his blast at academe from a slightly different sniper's perch. He charges that schools have given up teaching the unifying facts, values and writings of Western culture, creating a generation of cultural illiterates. As evidence he cites a 1985 study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Among other lacunae, it found that two-thirds of the high schoolers surveyed did not know when the Civil War was fought, and half could not identify Winston Churchill. "One's literacy depends upon the breadth of one's acquaintance with a national culture," Hirsch...
...Hirsch's villain is Educational Philosopher John Dewey, who, in his landmark 1915 treatise Schools of Tomorrow, espoused the learning of skills rather than information. The long-range result, says Hirsch, is that children can now decode words but lack the understanding to put what they read into broad, insightful context. The Hirsch antidote: heavy doses of Western cultural lore, as represented by a list of nearly 5,000 entries in an appendix labeled "What Literate Americans Know," ranging from A ("act of God") to Z ("Zeitgeist"), and including "1066" and "White Christmas (song)." Knowing at least a commercial idea...
Ultimately, Hirsch would like to see a Western thought-centered curriculum prescribed for the nation's schools. His stated concern is that "all kids should have access to cultural literacy, not just an elite few." He is particularly worried about disadvantaged students, who, he says, are not likely to get such training at home and, without careful teaching in school, may miss the opportunity of being absorbed into society's mainstream...
While praise in academe has hardly been unanimous for Bloom and Hirsch, the two have got raves from some powerful and diverse educators. Secretary of Education William Bennett, a staunch conservative who has beaten the Western drum while beating up on the colleges for the same perceived derelictions as Bloom denounced, calls the Chicago philosopher's work a "brilliant book, a phenomenon" that "points out where higher education has gone wrong and what we need to fix it." Bennett says, "Too many schools ignore the great minds and instead try to teach kids how to make a living...
...Foundation President Ernest Boyer, a liberal. Boyer's 1986 book College: The Undergraduate Experience in America takes higher education to task for disjointed careerist study programs, confusion over goals and lack of a liberal arts core curriculum. Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, declares himself a Hirsch fan. "Education holds our society together only as long as what is taught has value and is important," he says. "You can't teach reading with comic books and rock-star magazines and expect kids to be educated...