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Title: The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them by E. D. Hirsch, E.D. Hirsch ISBN: 0-385-49524-2 Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday Pub. Date: 17 August, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Emperor Has No Clothes
Comment: I found The Schools We Need by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. to be a much-needed oasis of common sense and academically rigorous prose in a seemingly endless desert of single-perspective educational fluff. From the first few pages, one thing became absolutely clear: I am not alone in questioning some of the major premises that undergird current educational theory. By the end of the first chapter, a second notion became equally clear: This book will never see the light of day as assigned reading in any of UF's teacher training classes. I am sure that some would be surprised to find myself, an uncompromising libertarian, agreeing so passionately with a self-avowed liberal's liberal like Hirsch. While I certainly disagree with Hirsch's final prescription for solving America's educational crisis as well as his leftist understanding of true equality, we both agree that something is amiss in America's colleges of education. I was glad to see Hirsch dedicate the last thirty pages of his book to the educational terms and phrases that promulgate colleges of education (including UF's). These phrases (many of which have been simply renamed and then reissued) have dominated the discourse in every one of my education classes. The reoccurrence of these pieces of shallow rhetoric have caused me to question the very intellectual and moral integrity of the teachers that "teach" them to preservice students. This indoctrination of phraseology (as codified in such required text as Methods that Matter) is ironic in that the very people who stress critical thinking are actually those that seem to be incapable of thinking critically. They can do no more than parrot such unfounded and nonsensical phrases such as "Teach the child, not the subject," "Drill and kill," "Facts are inferior to understanding," and "Learning to learn." I was also extremely glad to see someone counter the ridiculous claims made by a previous teacher of mine that all research ever done claims this or that progressive theory is superior. I have sat in disbelief on many occasions as my former teacher made claims that could very easily be refuted. Hirsch makes ample note of this as well as explains the odd separation between professors of education and professors of various disciplines on college campuses. Though I believe that enrolled in and passed UF's Foundations of Education course (with an A), I entered into reading The Schools We Need not knowing the reason for much of this strange separation. It was comforting to learn of its revealing origins as well as to gain a more accurate history of American education in the 20th century. As is probably expected, I found The Schools We Need to be highly effective in promoting strong, research backed teaching methods as well as a solid critique of the teaching of progressivist schools of education. However, there are areas in which Hirsch could do a better job in securing his arguments. For one, he does not make clear exactly who is involved in the international studies that compare American test scores with those from other countries. While I have no doubt that foreign countries can be equally as diverse as ours, I wonder if the testing is as "across-the-board" as it is in America. Also, Hirsch's critique of a "market place of schools" in which parents choose a school is based not on empirical research (as is most of his book), but on his leftist opinions about the ability of individuals to choose what is best for them (or their children). Because of his political beliefs, Hirsch continually fails to see that there is no one "right" set of knowledge that everyone "should" learn. It is my belief that each family (or individual, depending on age) must be empowered to make that decision.
Rating: 5
Summary: Higher Ed is not immune.
Comment: I, too, speak from long experience in k-12 education, although most of it belongs to my parents and grandparents. After 10 years teaching boring math to 8th graders - Hirsch's indictment of "spiraling," reteaching the same stuff every year, is nowhere more evident than in K-8 math classes - I moved on to teaching undergraduates. Not only is it true that they are increasingly unprepared to do college level coursework, but the educationists are trying to foist the same destructive practices on college faculty that have ruined K-12 education and that Hirsch describes so clearly in this book.
Regional accreditation groups have forced "authentic" assessment (as opposed to grades) into all coursework and programs. We are urged to teach processes rather than facts - students practice the scientific method without learning taxonomy in biology courses, writing without studying history, literature, or science - and traditional courses are replaced by "culturally appropriate studies."
Hirsch and his colleagues at exclusive institutions probably are unaware of the dangers; I doubt that Harvard or Duke deans talk about teaching "critical thinking skills" with their faculties. Since applications at these school exceed acceptances, they will probably resist pressures to change - at least for some time.
However, go into the middle grade public colleges, or especially into community colleges, and it's all there in force - endless agonizing over improving teaching strategies, watering down course content, improving student services,... These schools are desperate to maintain and/or increase enrollments, and to appease parents' and state legislatures' attacks. They will do almost anything to recruit and retain students, even if it means giving out meaningless degrees. I'd like to require all faculty members and administrators at the college where I teach to read this book; sadly, a lot of them probably lack the skills to do so.
Rating: 5
Summary: They've Spent Years Telling Me What My Learning Style Is....
Comment: ... When the hell are they going to teach me something?!
Courtesy of the graduate of an affluent public school district, where every Thursday afternoon for a semester the Junior class had a Unit on Self-Esteem.
They did not, however, learn to write a five-page paper, or to identify theme and point-of-view in fictions, or the historic origins of the democratic ideals of America's founders, or the twelve points Woodrow Wilson promoted at the end of the First World War (there was more than one???), or the difference between compound and simple interest paid on savings.
Hirsch offends so often because what he says is irrefutable: one must have language and ideas to use as comparisons and contrasts to all texts, cultural and written, or one cannot achieve higher level reasoning skills. This notion is so threatening to those without higher reasoning skills that they call names -- elitist, classist, mono-culturalist. But the fact is that ignoring the need for a common core of information about which people within a culture (or say, even at a given location at a specific moment in time) can discourse, we create an artificial elite that "represents them because they cannot represent themselves" -- vanguardist intellectuals who become, themselves, a privileged overclass who make their living protecting others from gaining the privilege and mastery they desire.
You go, E.D.!
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Title: Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know by E.D. Hirsch Jr. ISBN: 0394758439 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 May, 1988 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for for Creating Schools that Work by Linda Darling-Hammond ISBN: 0787959421 Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pub. Date: 03 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform by Diane Ravitch ISBN: 0743203267 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves but Can't Read, Write, or Add by Charles J. Sykes ISBN: 0312148232 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom? by Jeanne S. Chall, Marilyn Jager Adams ISBN: 1572307684 Publisher: Guilford Publications Pub. Date: 26 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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