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80 of 82 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In response to review of 7/26/00, et.al., August 23, 2000
By A Customer
I don't like to see Hirsch's work obscured by simplistic charges that he urges schools to abandon the teaching of critical thinking skills. He simply presents evidence for the Jeffersonian view that critical thinking ability is dependent upon factual knowledge, that a school which prioritizes critical thinking so as to neglect the requisites for acquiring knowledge (reading fluency, a strong vocabulary, communication skills, etc.) will fail all the way around. Having had children in that scenario, I affirm Hirsch's position. Those with a burning desire to hold well-informed opinions on education reform should know Gardner's work. They should also avoid the pitfall of allowing judgments on education to be informed solely by members of the education community; the science community has important contributions to make via research methodologies and the knowledge emerging from the Decade of the Brain. The report of the National Reading Panel - and the grounds upon which some educators have discounted it - is instructive. The Panel felt charged by Congress to apply the standards of scientific evidence - methodological rigor, reliability, validity, replicability, applicability - to its review of the existing research on reading instruction. By that standard, only quantitative research was deemed valid in answering cause-and-effect questions as to the efficacy of various elements of reading instruction. That meant that the qualitative research often used to establish efficacy for `pure Whole Language' methods was found inadequate to that purpose. The Whole Language faithful saw these scientific standards as a mere reflection of `philosophical orientation' and bias on the part of the Panel's majority and attacked the relevancy of the Report. The morass of American education - and the skeptical response of teachers to research claims - is better understood when one reads that less than 1/3 of the 115,000 reading studies conducted over the past 30+ years met standards that rendered them useful to the Panel. Presumably, many were designed by educators with inadequate training in scientific standards for research. (Such a disconnect between the education and science communities - further illustrated in the current math wars - is not helping the teaching profession with its respect issue.) Speaking only as a parent who felt charged to learn as much as possible so as make better decisions for my children, it seems to me that the research emerging from cognitive psych and neurology spells trouble for the holistic ideologies that undergird `progressive' education. Empirical support for explicit and systematic instruction of a pre-set hierarchy of skills (the Hirsch camp) appears to be on the grow. At the same time, neuroscience is helping us understand that the processes of learning to read, write and compute are not `natural' to the brain - that the Romantic ideals of naturalism and developmentalism, which undergird the `progressive' tradition with which Gardner is generally aligned, have turned out to be a poor fit with the neurological requisites for certain learning. I find Mr.Gardner to be a good read; teachers in my acquaintance who have attended his programs feel they've been to Sinai. But, my experience of three children has validated for my purposes the positions of Mr. Hirsch: that reading / writing fluency, automaticity of basic math operations and a framework of core knowledge which is rich in content needs to be education's first order of business. If the most efficient instructional methods for achieving those goals are used, curriculum time should remain for honing thinking skills through deeper exploration of specific topics. But when schools don't make core knowledge and basic skills a priority - and most have not - academic success is reserved to those children with parents who do. In my experience of several public and private schools, that fact explains why the gap between America's `advantaged' and `disadvantaged' widens with each year of schooling. I am mystified when Hirsch is charged with elitism; what is elitist about urging methods which empirical evidence suggests is most likely to close that gap? I think the work of both men and the schools of thought they ably represent will ultimately merge into a unified model in which the consumers of American education can have justified confidence. The success of that merger will depend upon the degree to which critical decisions of sequence and relative weight are informed by well-designed research. Unfortunately, the longer education remains a subject of bitter political partisanship, the longer it will take for the unbiased review of empirical evidence upon which such a merger depends.
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52 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Emperor Has No Clothes, April 26, 2001
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.
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36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Higher Ed is not immune., March 16, 1998
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.
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by Diane Ravitch
by E. D. Hirsch Professor of English
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