In Why Knowledge Matters, influential scholar E. D. Hirsch, Jr., addresses critical issues in contemporary education reform and shows how cherished truisms about education and child development have led to unintended and negative consequences. Hirsch, author of The Knowledge Deficit, draws on recent findings in neuroscience and data from France to provide new evidence for the argument that a carefully planned, knowledge-based elementary curriculum is essential to providing the foundations for children’s life success and ensuring equal opportunity for students of all backgrounds. In the absence of a clear, common curriculum, Hirsch contends that tests are reduced to measuring skills rather than content, and that students from disadvantaged backgrounds cannot develop the knowledge base to support high achievement. Hirsch advocates for updated policies based on a set of ideas that are consistent with current cognitive science, developmental psychology, and social science. The book focuses on six persistent problems of recent US education: the over-testing of students; the scapegoating of teachers; the fadeout of preschool gains; the narrowing of the curriculum; the continued achievement gap between demographic groups; and the reliance on standards that are not linked to a rigorous curriculum. Hirsch examines evidence from the United States and other nations that a coherent, knowledge-based approach to schooling has improved both achievement and equity wherever it has been instituted, supporting the argument that the most significant education reform and force for equality of opportunity and greater social cohesion is the reform of fundamental educational ideas. Why Knowledge Matters introduces a new generation of American educators to Hirsch’s astute and passionate analysis.
Educator E.D. Hirsch, Jr. addresses critical issues in contemporary education reform -- over-testing, teacher blaming, preschool fadeout, and the persistence of achievement gaps over time.
Is theoretical knowledge still important? This book argues that providing students with access to knowledge should be the raison d’être of education.
The fourth edition of this highly praised book includes coverage of evidence-based education and No Child Left Behind.
In this controversial new book, Daisy Christodoulou offers a thought-provoking critique of educational orthodoxy.
An update to the 2017breakout hit, the paperback edition of The Death of Expertise provides a new foreword to cover the alarming exacerbation of these trends in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election.
In this persuasive book, the esteemed education critic, activist, and best-selling author E.D. Hirsch, Jr., shows that although schools are teaching the mechanics of reading, they fail to convey the knowledge needed for the more complex and ...
The key question this book addresses is whose knowledge is considered in framing government literacy policies?
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 ...
From Ancient Greece to the present day, Trivium 21c explores whether a contemporary trivium (Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric) can unite progressive and traditionalist institutions, teachers, politicians and parents in the common pursuit of ...
This edition includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning.