The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools [Kindle Edition]

E. D. Hirsch Jr. (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hirsch's 1987 bestseller, Cultural Literacy, generated an intense debate over its proposals for education reform, namely that all schools should teach a standard core curriculum—the information every American should be equipped with in order to participate in the national cultural life (e.g., everyone should understand the term Achilles heel; know who said, To be or not to be or who wrote the Gettysburg Address). Hirsch's new book fine-tunes his philosophy while rebutting the criticism that cultural literacy fostered a conservative white curriculum that didn't take into account the learning styles and knowledge base of minority groups. Although must reading for educators, the book undoubtedly will reignite the earlier controversy. For example, Hirsch questions the wisdom of charter schools and educational vouchers, insisting that a trans-ethnic common educational experience can be had only in public schools attended by rich and poor together. However, in the context of the continuing shortcomings of American education and armed with the support of prominent educators, Hirsch once again challenges the prevailing child-centered philosophy, championing a return to a subject-centered approach to learning. (Sept.)
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Review

“The most cogent and persuasive version of [Hirsch’s] views that I have seen. . . .This is not just a good book. It is an important book.”—Robert Scholes, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Brown University

(Robert Scholes 20090930)

“E. D. Hirsch is one of the very few academics in this country who can write for a wide audience about complex issues without ever condescending, oversimplifying, or falling into a populist rant.”—David Labaree, Professor of Education, Stanford University

(David Labaree 20090927)

“In this important defense of the idea of a common national curriculum, E. D. Hirsch makes a lucid and convincing case that our habit of confusing such a curriculum with retrograde social and educational views has given us ‘sixty years without a curriculum.’”—Gerald Graff, 2008 President, Modern Language Association

(Gerald Graff 20090930)

“Once again, E.D. Hirsch has written a powerful and illuminating book about public education in America. This time he not only highlights ‘the knowledge deficit’ that has long impaired our students'' reading abilities, he also explains how this deficiency is undermining the role of education in developing an informed citizenry. With all the talk in Washington about national standards and what it means for a high school student to be ‘college ready,’ this book is an essential read.”— Joel I. Klein, Chancellor, New York City Department of Education

(Joel I. Klein 20091213)

“E.D. Hirsch''s The Making of Americans is a wonderful book that is must-reading for everyone who cares about our children and our country. It is the one book I would recommend to every legislator and school board member.”—Diane Ravitch, author of Left Back and The Language Police

(Diane Ravitch 20091213)

"In this new book, E.D. Hirsch, a relentless advocate for universal common education, makes clear the very special relationship between education and democracy. Now more than ever we need his lessons to become part of our common wisdom.”—Randi Weingarten, President, The American Federation of Teachers

(Randi Weingarten )

"[In] the context of the continuing shortcomings of American education and armed with the support of prominent educators, Hirsch once again challenges the prevailing ''child-centered'' philosophy, championing a return to a ''subject-centered'' approach to learning."—Publishers Weekly

(Publishers Weekly )

"In The Making of Americans, Hirsch builds on [his] earlier work and widens the lens to connect his ideas on education reform to the fundamental rationales for our system of public schools in the United States. . . . Hirsch identifies two central reasons for the American ''common school'': to create social mobility, allowing bright, hard-working students of all origins to enjoy the American dream; and to create social cohesion, binding children of diverse economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds into citizens of a single nation. . . . Hirsch makes a highly cogent case to support the concept that a common curriculum is necessary in elementary schools to further both goals. . . . American education would be far better off if leaders heeded Hirsch''s sound advice to restore a common-core curriculum."—Richard D. Kahlenberg, The American Scholar.

(Richard D. Kahlenberg American Scholar )

"Based on research in cognitive studies and results from ''core knowledge'' schools, Hirsch''s case is clear and compelling. His book ought to be read by anyone interested in the education and training of the next generation of Americans."—Glenn C. Altschuler, The Boston Globe

 

(Glenn C. Altschuler Boston Globe )

". . . Hirsch builds on [his] earlier work and widens the lens to connect his ideas on education reform to the fundamental rationales for our system of public schools in the United States. . . . American education would be far better off if leaders heeded Hirsch''s sound advice to restore a common-core curriculum."—Richard D. Kahlenberg, The American Scholar.

(Richard D. Kahlenberg American Scholar )

"Pleads for a coherent, content-based, multi-year curriculum to save our democracy from factionalism, inequality and incompetence."—Jay Mathews, Washington Post Book World (Best of 2009 Review)

(Jay Mathews Washington Post Book World )

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2009 in the Society and Culture category, Jay Mathews, Washington Post Book World

(Best Books of 2009 Washington Post Book World )

“E. D. Hirsch is an antidote to our culture wars, our polarization, our taste for demagoguery, our feel-goodism. Reading him always reminds me of this country''s great potential. That is what makes him such a great American.”--Alan Wolfe, Books & Culture

(Alan Wolfe Books & Culture )

“E. D. Hirsch has contributed what is to me the most persuasive idea of the past half century on how to improve the performance of American education.”--Nathan Glazer, Education Next
 
 

(Nathan Glazer Education Next )

Silver Medal Winner for the 2010 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Education/Academic/Teaching category

(Independent Publisher Book Award )

“E. D. Hirsch has arguably done more for public school reform in this nation than any living American. . . . It is altogether fitting, then, that in his latest book Hirsch has become overtly political. Beyond linking acquired knowledge to viability in the work place, as he has done in previous books, he attempts to reclaim public schoolings a fundamental part of the political project embarked upon by the founders and continued by Lincoln.”--Terrence O. Moore, Claremont Review of Books

(Terrence O. Moore Claremont Review of Books )

“Beyond linking acquired knowledge to viability in the work place. . . [Hirsch] attempts to reclaim public schooling as a fundamental part of the political project embarked upon by the founders and continued by Lincoln.”--Terrence O. Moore, Claremont Review of Books
 

(Terrence O. Moore Claremont Review of Books )

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 1957 KB
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 15, 2009)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B002RDEY96
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Year's Wish for our Country, December 6, 2009

By 

Richard B. Schwartz (Columbia, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools (Hardcover)

If you're thinking about New Year's wishes, consider the wish that Hirsch's arguments with regard to core curricula would be widely accepted in American grammar school education. He has been making the arguments for decades. They were true when he first made them and they are no less true now. His new book, The Making of Americans, contextualizes them in an interesting way. Basically, the founding fathers recognized the existence of two spheres: the public and private. In the public sphere we communicate with one another as citizens, build our society's polity and economy and subscribe to a set of common, American values. In the private sphere we express our cultural, ethnic and linguistic individuality. The public sphere is the melting pot; the private sphere is the salad bowl. Now, however, we have eschewed the idea of the melting pot and celebrated the salad bowl. We need both.

Education theory, i.e., the education theory of schools of education, has, for over six decades, been `child-centered' rather than `teacher-centered' and it has resisted the notion of a core curriculum, particularly for the grammar school grades. It has demonized core curricula by associating them with `rote memorization' and `drill and grill' pedagogy. There is only one problem: the touchy-feely practices advocated by schools of education are disastrous failures. American test scores are an embarrassment and the results are particularly harsh for the poor.

The schools of education claim that the test scores are low because American education is diverse and many students come from backgrounds of poverty. This is rubbish, Hirsch argues. Other countries have diverse populations and students from poor families; their test scores are higher because they have core curricula. Test scores have also fallen in less diverse (white, largely middle class) states such as Iowa because of the absence of core curricula there. The methods (or lack of methods) are to blame, not the students. Moreover, when core curricula are installed, the performance gaps between rich and poor students narrow. The bottom line is that `traditional' educational methods yield the results favored by `progressive' and `liberal' educators, while their methods drive everyone down, particularly the poor. Hirsch, himself a traditional liberal, cites distinguished left-leaning thinkers like Rawls and far-left-leaning thinkers like Gramsci to underline his point.

None of this comes as a surprise, of course. The root notion (the same root notion that undergirded his best-selling book from the late 80's, Cultural Literacy) is clear and, I believe, indisputable: reading is fundamental and students are better able to read and comprehend when they have knowledge of the subject. Every piece of writing assumes prior knowledge. (Hence, we cannot have a society in which we all participate as citizens without sharing core, prior knowledge.) He gives several clever examples. For example--a description of a cricket match. All of the words in the paragraph are common, but one, words that each American could put in a sentence. Nevertheless, the paragraph is unintelligible to Americans ignorant of the rules of cricket. He gives a quote from the Nixon tapes--a very straightforward and intelligible quote, but only if you know what a president is, what a budget director is, who George Meany and Hubert Humphrey are, how unions relate to democrat politics, what Watergate was, what audiotape is, and so on. He has the most fun, perhaps, in bloodying the noses of the schools of education types who think that technique is more important than knowledge, individuals who try to train students to tease out key ideas rather than instill in them a knowledge of the material which forms the basis for the ideas. He gives a quote from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and then asks which notion (a, b, c or d) is the key idea. This is impossible unless one has some sense of what Kant means by words such as `manifold' and `category'.

The strength of The Making of Americans is in its anchoring of traditional notions of education in American history and pivotal notions of our values and our society (Lincoln is frequently quoted, e.g.). Its strength is in its hard facts and common sense and its reference to concrete studies and concrete statistical analysis which demonstrate the success of core curricula and the failure of `student-centered' pap. The book is written for a general audience and it is exceptional in its use of commonsensical anecdotes. It confirms what the majority of teachers and parents already believe: core knowledge leads to strong results for all.

If you are a parent, an educator or someone interested in education policy you should read this book. Several decades ago a black colleague of mine, an administrator from another university, said to me, `We all know what works and we all know what doesn't work. The problem is being able to do what works.' That is the point of Hirsch's efforts. Schools that have adopted his advice (e.g. those in Massachusetts) have flourished. The `advice' is, in essence, to follow the practices of the countries which realize that the importance of core curricula and cultural literacy is obvious and that students who share a knowledge of important things are more likely to be successful than students who do not.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous Book, Awful Format by Publisher in Kindle!, January 3, 2010

By 

Martha Rowen (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools (Kindle Edition)

This is a very important book on a vitally important subject. As usual for this author, the book has complex ideas and rich content readable and accessible to a general reader. I have read other books by E.D. Hirsch and recommend them all but found this one especially significant.

As a high school and college teacher, I regularly see the terrible effects that our current educational ideas have had on the most vulnerable and powerless students. This book gives sound ideas on how to reverse this trend.

My complaint is with the formatting by the publisher for the Kindle edition. As I have found so often with Kindle books, the footnote function does not work and, as usual, graphs and charts are often unreadable. I finally called Kindle to complain and they told me that publishers often choose not to activate the links to the footnotes. Shame on Yale University Press and all the other publishers who do this! I have definitely given up buying Kindle editions of books with footnotes. If the publishers think that means I'll be buying print editions, they are mistaken: I'll take them out of a library. These are exactly the kind of books that are perfect for a Kindle if they would just make them work. I would love to be able to carry around a library of this type of bulky book and go easily from one to the other for reference, to check footnotes quickly (and perhaps immediately download a Kindle edition of a book in the footnote) and to be able to go quickly to charts and graphs and be able to actually read them!

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What America Needs, October 2, 2009

By 

Mark Wertheimer "edupreneur" (Fort Collins, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools (Hardcover)

Hirsch has had it right for 25 years, but this time he also wrote it better than ever before. Crossing political and social boundaries, Hirsch has the answer for the inequities around race and class promoted by our current system. He has the answer for how we can stay competetive for the 21st century. Read this book, then go out and create te groundswell needed to take back the romantic, anti-curriculum system that has monopolized our children for over 60 years!