The Knowledge Deficit [Hardcover]

E. D. Hirsch Professor of English (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 24, 2006

E. D. Hirsch, Jr., author of the best-selling Cultural Literacy and our most insightful thinker on what schools teach, offers an urgent solution to the shocking national decline in children's reading ability.

How can it be, Hirsch asks, that American students score so low among developed nations in international comparisons -- and that they perform worse the longer they stay in school?

Drawing on arresting classroom scenes, the history of ideas, and current understanding of the patterns of intellectual growth, Hirsch builds the powerful case that, while our schools excel at teaching the mechanics of reading, they fail virtually all American children -- poor and middle class, in public and private schools -- because of their inability to convey the more complex and essential skills of reading comprehension. Hirsch brilliantly reasons that literacy depends less on the formalistic reading "skills" taught in virtually every school across America and more on exposure to content-rich, appealing books.

His argument is compelling, for it - gives parents specific tools for enhancing their child's ability to read with comprehension; - shows how No Child Left Behind and SATs measure reading comprehension -- a knowledge-based skill not successfully taught in our schools; - tackles the weaknesses of specific state-by-state curricula - explains in detail how American schools can serve as the strongest possible antidote to poverty and to our frustrating race-based achievement gap

A road map for all thinking parents, teachers, and citizens, The Knowledge Deficit shows exactly how we can convert all American schools into places where the skill of reading comprehension is effectively imparted -- and why this goal is ever more essential to the democratic ideal.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The notion of learning how to learn is a shibboleth in America's schools, but it distorts reading instruction, contends this provocative manifesto. Education theorist Hirsch decries a dominant "Romantic" pedagogy that disparages factual knowledge and emphasizes reading comprehension "strategies"—summarizing, identifying themes, drawing inferences—that children can deploy on any text. Such formal skills, he argues, are easily acquired; what kids really need is a broad background knowledge of history, science and culture to help them assimilate new vocabulary and understand more advanced readings. "Process-oriented" methods that apply reading comprehension drills to "vapid" texts waste time and slow kids' progress, Hirsch contends, and should be replaced with a more traditional, "knowledge-oriented" academic approach with a rich factual content. Hirsch repeats the call for a standard curriculum based on a canon of general knowledge (he touts his own core knowledge sequence as a model) made in his bestselling Cultural Literacy. That work drew fire from multiculturalists who accused Hirsch of promoting dead-white-male worship, but here he grounds his case in the latest cognitive-science research (with a healthy dose of common sense). Fluently written and accessible to teachers and parents alike, the book presents a challenge to reigning educational orthodoxies. (Apr. 24)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Hirsch, the author of Cultural Literacy (1987), attacks the broad achievement gap between racial and ethnic groups of American children and related problems of poor reading ability. Noting the controversy his earlier book sparked, Hirsch sees the current climate as more open to new ways of thinking about literacy and learning. Schools need to change the focus from process-oriented strategies to promote reading comprehension to knowledge-oriented methods that use school time more effectively, using books that teach facts and subject matter as children learn to read. He begins with a historical examination of teaching methods and why the knowledge deficit has developed. Drawing on classroom observations and current research on educational development, Hirsch maintains that children can be taught to read, but to understand what they read, they need some underlying knowledge. He offers specific advice for parents and educators on helping children to build knowledge cumulatively that will improve reading comprehension regardless of children's socioeconomic backgrounds. Sound advice for parents and educators looking for new approaches to reading comprehension. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition, First Printing edition (April 24, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618657312
• ISBN-13: 978-0618657315
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #258,254 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edward Hirsch is the author of five books of poetry and the acclaimed How to Read a Poem. He writes frequently about poetry for leading magazines and periodicals, among them American Poetry Review, DoubleTake (where he is editorial advisor in poetry), The New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Prix de Rome, the National Book Critics Award, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. In 1998 he was granted a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. He teaches at the University of Houston.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take heed, American educators., April 18, 2006

By 

reading teacher (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Knowledge Deficit (Hardcover)

E. D. Hirsch has written another outstanding, no-nonsense book about what's wrong with American education and how we can fix it. In "The Knowledge Deficit," Hirsch focuses mainly on reading comprehension. "Old people grow blunt; they haven't time for slow niceties. Let me be blunt about the implications of this book. If its recommendations are followed, reading scores will rise for all groups of children, and so will scores in math and science, because, as common sense would predict, reading is strongly correlated with the ability to learn in all subjects." So ends chapter 1. Yes, the old codger sounds presumptuous, but the arguments that follow are compelling and backed by decades of research from the field of cognitive psychology. Hirsch's thesis: Background knowledge plays an indispensable role in text comprehension, yet, rather than endowing students with broad, general knowledge, our schools erroneously favor the teaching of all-purpose comprehension strategies. Basically, we're emphasizing process over content, and the result is our kids can't understand what they read by the time they get to high school.

"The Knowledge Deficit" is an incredibly important book in that it fills a huge gap. Among the countless books on reading comprehension published every year, not one that I'm aware of (with the exceptions of Hirsch's previous books) has focused specifically on the importance of broad knowledge and vocabulary and their role in reading comprehension. Look around here at Amazon. You'll find plenty of books (e.g., "7 Keys to Comprehension") that treat comprehension as a general, transferable skill rather than something dependent upon a strong vocabulary coupled with domain-specific knowledge. Hirsch discounts the effectiveness of these comprehension strategies--but not convincingly enough for me. For example, he overlooks/ignores some impressive research by people like Michael Pressley, Irene Gaskins, and Cathy Collins Block that has shown that, when taught well, these comprehension strategies can go a long way in helping students comprehend. My own opinion is that we need to fuse the best of both worlds. Start with the superb, knowledge-rich curricula that is taught in the Core Knowledge schools, for instance, and supplement with a good comprehension strategy program.

Overall, "The Knowledge Deficit" is excellent. There is a lot in common here with his previous books, but Hirsch blazes plenty of new territory too, and is as thought-provoking and entertaining as ever. Recommended for teachers, administrators, parents, and anyone else concerned with how children learn to read.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To Me, No One Has Made a Valid Rebuttal to Hirsch Yet., January 29, 2007

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R. Hill - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Knowledge Deficit (Hardcover)

I have taught in elementary classrooms for 18 years, and was a substitute for 3 or 4 years prior to that. Having read various books about the problems in our public schools, I can say that, in my opinion, E.D. Hirsch, Jr., has his fingers exactly on the pulse of what is wrong. I have never heard a convincing SCIENTIFIC refutation of his theories instead of refutations based on idealogy and political leanings (in other words, the way that "the powers that be" in education THINK it should be as opposed to the way it really IS!). I can say from experience that my students absolutely detest reading. It is hard work, and they have not been given the background knowledge they need which Hirsch espouses (or the work ethic) to comprehend what they are reading. Instead, I am forced to teach them "strategies" so thay supposedly can "decode" the meaning of the passage, regardless of whether the passage is about the Vietnam War or elephants in India. This will supposedly help my school score high on the state test and assure me a job next year. Now, I firmly believe that these strategies can help, but only if the background knowledge that the literate people within our society who HAVE a good education (and who often are in charge of hiring people in the real world) say our children must have in order to function effectively, is being taught at the same time. Guess what? It's not! (as Hirsch so clearly points out.) This is not an easy read, but any teacher, administrator, school board member, or concerned parent worried about their childrens' education who is worth their salt owes it to themselves to be aware of Hirsch's books, including this one. In my opinion, there's no one better equipped to solve the public education problem in our country, and to do it SCIENTIFICALLY instead of with all sorts of ridiculous POLITICALLY CORRECT solutions that are doomed to failure before they even get off the ground, than Mr. Hirsch.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Core Knowledge Deficit, August 23, 2006

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Terese Blanck "ctc" (Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Knowledge Deficit (Hardcover)

This book was informative and life changing for me. I am the mother of a soon to be 4th grader and made the decision to switch to a Core Knowledge school this year. I see the lack of Core Knowledge education in our country through the work I do with college students. It is amazing what they "don't" know and these are your top of the line college students. It ceases to amaze me how complacent we have become in this country and in my home state when it comes to the education of our children.