How To Educate A Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation - Softcover

E. D. Hirsch Jr

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1913622045 ISBN 13: 9781913622046

Publisher: John Catt, 2020

Synopsis

'If you are already familiar with Hirsch's work, the arguments here are clearer, sharper, and, yes, more impassioned. If you are not, and if you are interested in improving education anywhere in the world, then you really need to read this book from cover to cover.'

Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment, UCL

In this powerful manifesto, the bestselling author of WHY KNOWLEDGE MATTERS addresses the failures of America's early education system and its impact on our current national malaise, advocating for a shared knowledge curriculum students everywhere can be taught - an educational foundation that can help improve and strengthen America's unity, identity, and democracy.

In How to Educate a Citizen, E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began thirty years ago with his classic bestseller Cultural Literacy, urging America's public schools, particularly at the elementary level, to educate our children more effectively to help heal and preserve the nation. Since the 1960s, our schools have been relying on 'child-centered learning.' History, geography, science, civics, and other essential knowledge have been dumbed down by vacuous learning 'techniques' and 'values-based' curricula; indoctrinated by graduate schools of education, administrators and educators have believed they are teaching reading and critical thinking skills. Yet these cannot be taught in the absence of strong content, Hirsch argues.

The consequence is a loss of shared knowledge that would enable us to work together, understand one another, and make coherent, informed decisions. A broken approach to school not only leaves our children under-prepared and erodes the American dream but also loosens the spiritual bonds and unity that hold the nation together. Drawing on early schoolmasters and educational reformers such as Noah Webster and Horace Mann, Hirsch charts the rise and fall of the American early education system and provides a blueprint for closing the national gap in knowledge, communications, and allegiance.

Critical and compelling, How to Educate a Citizen galvanizes our schools to equip children with the power of shared knowledge.

About this title

About the Author

E. D. Hirsch, Jr. is the founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of several acclaimed books on education, including the New York Times bestseller Cultural Literacy, The Schools We Need, The Knowledge Deficit, The Making of Americans, and Why Knowledge Matters. A highly regarded literary critic and professor of English earlier in his career, he has persisted as a voice of reason making the case for equality of educational opportunity.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Catt
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1913622045
• ISBN 13: 9781913622046
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 198