Customer Reviews

The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools

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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.

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!

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!

This book clearly examines the research on how children learn, how they should be educated and how the gaps in achievement based on race, ethnicity and income can be closed. It argues that only a substantive curriculum beginning in the K-4 school years can promote both reading and thought. If one wanted one seminal work about the direction American primary education should take, it is this book.

Hirsch has done it again. This is another solid, clearly written analysis of the correctives that our public education system requires. The emphasis here is on the historical background behind his suggestions. Every prospective teacher should be required to read a shelf full of Hirsch's key works as an antidote to the vacuous persiflage disseminated by our schools of Education.

I read about the appearance of Mr. Hirsch's new book in a review article in the New York Review of Books (in a November '09 issue). I wasted no time in procuring a copy of the book for my use. When I read it, I was thoroughly pleased. I realized I was getting an up-to-date, firsthand report on Hirsch's already very influential views. Hirsch writes eloquently and persuasively. And he sets forth a point of view about education that is really very hard to argue with. It comes to this: Education is beset by two problems: quality and equality. Students are faring poorly in their test scores. That's bad enough. But children of certain backgrounds are faring more poorly than children of other backgrounds. That's really awful, inasmuch as it suggests a systemic disparity in the way we school children of different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. What to do? Hirsch makes what seems a radical proposal. He would have us take steps to improve the reading skills of all our students. (As an aside, he doesn't seem too troubled about deficiencies in math scores. But then, he is a former English professor!) Hirsch does not, however, rest content with just recommending this. He goes on to offer a proposal as to the measures schools might put in place to effect the desired improvements in reading ability. For this he is to be roundly commended. He proposes what to many of us would appear to be a really novel idea. It is that, to enable children to better read, we need first to impart to them knowledge - knowledge of a whole slew of facts. Then reading-skill improvement will follow as if of its own accord. On the face of it, this thesis appears not only very radical but also downright paradoxical. After all, the whole point of being able to read is to be able to acquire knowledge - through reading. Literature and reading are the conduits through which knowledge is obtained. How, then, can someone in his right mind presume to suggest that possessing knowledge is a prerequisite to being able to read? That's like putting the cart before the horse! Where is this antecedently attained knowledge to come from? Yet, in this book, as in others before, Hirsch is found making precisely this contention. Evidently, he would have teachers inculcate the needed morsels of information through non-literary means. He would presumably have them convey it to their charges orally, by word of mouth. After enough of this oral information has been accumulated, the time would be ripe for actual reading instruction to begin. Undoubtedly, this is an oversimplification; and there is much more subtlety to Hirsch's views than the foregoing, taken in isolation, might suggest. If for no other reason, I would urge every responsible educator to get his or her hands on a copy of this book and read it thoroughly and to completion. Many unexpected rewards are held in store.

This book is excellent. Hirsch puts together all of the arguments for what is wrong in our education system and what is required to fix it. My only complaint is that he is too nice. That is, he tries to give "reasons" why the educators went off the rails and drove us to this giant maw that takes in children, grinds them up and spits out brainwashed, credulous, dumbed down followers consistent with the needs of the Progressives who have been too successful in totally controlling education. He does say that educators won't change on their own, they will have to be forced. After nearly a decade of endless interaction with educators in an effort to benefit the kids I can say unequivacably that he is right. Thus, only a confrontational stance will force that change. Falling into the "be nice" trap the educators so carefully set with their political correctness and group think regimes is not going to accomplish anything, at least for the kids in a positive sense.

The A Nation at Risk report of over 25 years ago bemoaned the rising tide of mediocrity and observed that if a foreign power had imposed our education system on us we would consider it an act of war. They couldn't have been more wrong. Where are the legions fighting for better service to our kids? Taking a nap, watching a sporting event, playing a stupid game on Facebook, watching some mindless reality TV program, taking a nice trip, whatever. The pro-kids legions are missing in action, taking the low and easy road of believing the false assertions that the education system is doing as well as can be expected. It is like the Alamo where kids' futures are massacred. But in this case no one remembers this "Alamo" because it might cause them to have to get up off of their behinds and actually demand better for the kids.

It would perhaps be best to briefly discuss what Dr. Hirsch is not supposed to be. Since his name has been tagged on a series of cultural literacy primers for varous age groups, it would be easy to dismiss him as an Ambrose-style cottage industry "Dr. Bendo" who routinely serves up pap, "self-help" in a schoalrly disguise. I think this approach to his work is, fundamentally, wrong. Hirsch is not a "self-help" guru, nor is he some peddler of fantasies akin to the "play Mozart to your unborn child" fadistas of some years back. Further, it is also fundamentally wrong to tag him as a "neo-con" or someone who writes with a political agenda in mind. In his work, I have seen little evidence of this, although perhaps certain commentators may have "spun" it in that way. Further, as a Blake scholar and as a person who has worked for years in arts and letters, I do not find it surprising that he is most at home discussing the great canon of Western classics. But I find it difficult if not outright impossible to parley that into some kind of indictment. Indeed, someone who approvingly quotes the Italian communist Gramschi along with Lincoln on the importance of developing a literate society is difficult to nail as a doctrinaire politico.

What Hirsch has done since the late 1980's is challenge the "child centered" approach to public education which has brought him afoul of what he calls the prevalent "Romantic" (i.e. "emotional") approach to children's education. And, this is a discussion worth having. Hirsch sees the oft-decried "dumbing down" of culture in general as a function of an abandonment of core knowledge principles, a collection of agreed-upon social premiums as expressed through centuries of literary evolution which transcend contemporary foci on worries like socio-economic status, for example. If anything, Hirsch is an aggressive egalitarian, making a solid argument that the way to ultimately bridge divides in society is through teaching a set of basic knowledges (not "beliefs" or "dogmas") which allow for a greater range of mutual appreciation and comprehension over the course of a lifetime as well as raising overall levels of literacy. And nowhere do I see him advance any argument that children should be "little automatons" who parrot without understanding. The canon of literature is wide enough to achieve the end through a variety of means. And best of all, most of the great ideas Hirsch champions can be had for free. But emphasis, Hirsch argues, should be on subject, not person. It is a call to a return to intellectual rigor in both teaching and learning, not a call to embrace joyless cant as pedagogy or an educational method so self-referential it brings little or no possibility of personal growth.

The weaknesses of the book are mainly two. First, Hirsch spends little time on mathematics and "hard sciences" which he does not see as having been watered down by methods and theory over the last several decades, simply because the range of instructional variation is much narrower. I am not sure about that as a general statement, but I think it's a solid general supposition. Further, Hirsch is assuming, I think, a rather undefined "base-line" normal in all children except when it comes to socio-economics. Children with cognitive and psychological deficits, not to mention cruelly adverse home lives, are not really discussed in any depth. Often, such children have challenges that might not fit Hirsch's pedagological schematic. However, since special education and social work are not central to this work, it is a necessary omission. But, I can just as easily see where adaptations of certain of his ideas to fit more individual special needs could bring good long term results if consistently applied.

I enjoyed this book. Hirsch brings a refreshing voice in the discussion of educational methods and the best way to schieve what everyone wants - a generation of well-read and intellectually curious youth.

Recommend, especially for the teacher.

In E.D. Hirsch's "Making of Americans," the main thesis is that education's purpose is the making of good, productive, members of society. To do this, they must be taught a common core set of facts, so that all Americans will be educated in, if you will, a "common language." Everyone can do roughly the same math, everyone can understand certain basic literary concepts and references, everyone understands the basics of physics and physiology, etc. Anything else, says Hirsch, leads to a populace where some (generally rich and white) will know more, and do better, than others (generally poor and minority). The irony, then, is that Hirsch uses the language of civil rights to argue for a somewhat traditional education.

Early in the book, Hirsch attempts to show that his vision is quite in line with the view of America's founders on education. He cites folks like Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, Abe Lincoln, and the like to suggest that these founders advocated a public tax-funded education system because it was the best way to ensure that we had a commonly educated populace, which is something that a democracy needs. As one whose studied the history of early American education, I can say that while Hirsch is somewhat correct in what these founders believed, he is quite wrong in certain regards. First, he cherry picks examples: citing Jefferson, Lincoln, and Rush as if they were the only founders makes it seem that theirs was the consensus view. It was not. Jefferson's plan got shot down every time it passed through Virginia's congress, as Rush's did in Pennsylvania. Lincoln, while he made some passing remarks on education, never was active in getting any education systems erected in any states. Secondly, Hirsch gives the impression that these founders advocated something beyond the very minimal education plans they advocated. Jefferson's plan was for three years of education (which was not compulsory, and continuation beyond three years was contingent either on being deemed bright enough, or being able to pay).

The next section of the book discusses the idea of everyone being educated in standard English - a really controversial position, to put it mildly. Similar to Lisa Delpit in Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, Hirsch argues that teaching people in different dialects is actually anathema to the idea of justice, in that it ill-equips blacks and Latinos (etc) to compete in a world where standard English is, at least for now, the norm. As far as concerns of multi-culturalists who worry that teaching standard English and the "culture of power" is an attempt to homogenize, Hirsch argues that no one is suggesting that we disallow people form practicing their cultural norms, but just not at school, where they are better served by learning those things that will help them compete in the world we live in (the culture of power). This will be more or less persuasive depending largely on what you think schooling is for.

A third portion of the book discusses Hirsch's belief that we do a disservice to students by watering down fact-based instruction in favor of instruction in general things like critical thinking, reading skills, and the like. To Hirsch, the ability to think critically or read a text crucially depends on facts and, therefore, the skills can't effectively be taught without a strong smattering of fact. Take reading: we can teach all the techniques for how to read paragraphs that we want, but if we are reading a paragraph about trees, the best reading strategy is to come into the reading knowing all the relevant terminology (and at least some facts) about trees. And critical thinking: does it make any sense at all to say that we can teach how to critically think about history without knowing a lot of facts about history? (How can one dispute a claim, for instance, if one has no facts to tip one off that the claim may be wrong?)

All in all, I agree with some parts of this book (factual knowledge may well be more important than much educational rhetoric says) and disagree with others (Hirsch's support of an effectively national curriculum scares me to death!). But whatever you think about this book, you WILL THINK about this book. Hirsch is provocative, especially to those who've been schooled in contemporary education schools, where standardized tests (and anything else for that matter) are simply deplored, and focus on social justice is assumed to mean teach everyone to their culture (black, Latino, Asian, White). Certainly a worthy challenge to those ideas.

As a buyer of all of the Core Knowledge books I was expecting a clear and encouraging rational for using the books as part of a curricula. After reading this book I am rethinking how Core Knowledge books should be used.

A better title would be "Educators and the Destruction of America's Foundational Principles".

This is a book about how religious leaders, educators, politicians and corporations, to the exclusion of the foundational skills needed by members of a Republic, focused the education of students on knowledge deemed "culturally appropriate" and skills needed to make corporations profits.

The strategy of dividing families and enforcing child confinement and labor to the benefit of educators, employers, politicians and the government and the many ways taxpayers are convinced to pay for preparing the workers needed by corporations are delineated.

This book details the cause of the crisis our nation is in. If you are seeking a reason to oppose a state or national curricula - then this is the book for you!

If you would like to read an even more passionate discourse on why the push for a national curricula is so popular with the government and teachers and why it will continue to lead us down a road to an educational disaster read "Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization" [Paperback] Yong Zhao (Author) Catching Up or Leading the Way

The book explains why, and how, a secular religion superseding all other religions and a national curricula to "make Americans" that put the "welfare of the state" above citizen's personal freedoms and desires was implemented and created the crisis we are in. He states that "unlike France, a nation, ... we are not a nation but transnational." (p83)

By establishing group mores and loyalties everyone was brought into the same group, rich or poor, moral or amoral. "This pragmatic, community-first approach to the ideals of liberty, equality and justice opens up our politics to new content such as acceptance of homosexuality and racial equality." (p74)

With decades of educational reform producing ever more unthinking, non-voting citizens the argument for a common curricula designed by well paid educators and politicians that "levels the playing field" by making the best and brightest slow down to the speed of the least interested or capable student is a concept whose demise would be a blessing to all freedom loving Americans.

To his credit Hirsch, while extolling the virtues of the cultural curricula he developed, proposes that any sequential cultural curricula reflecting the appropriate values will work. These values, of course, are to be determined by educators, politicians and businessmen and will lead to the subjugation of the many by the few for the "American experiment, whose perpetuation depends on the eternal vigilance of its schools and teachers" must always put the values of those in power above those of the individual.

"The Making of Americans" does not present a paradigm for enabling students to become citizens whose values reflect those upon which this nation was founded but a curricula to prepare students to be subservient to the desires of educators, politicians, corporations, banks, and governments.

This book should make it clear to any individual considering using such a curricula the underlying concepts of the curricula and the outputs desired by such. It should also encourage those considering implementing a curricula to look elsewhere to supplement / replace the material presented in Core Knowledge books.