Edu 13. I am also reading E. D. Hirsch, "the Knowledge Deficit", 2006

His major concern is that reading is at the base of every other human understanding.

And that reading is not just the mechanical learning of sounding out words, and then you can be unleashed on any subject.  He says that a (very) broad base of knowledge is at the foundation of reading or communication into any other expertise. Building up this broad base, (of facts) is the function of education in the formative years.  He quotes Thomas Jefferson:

In pre-romantic days books were seen as the key to education.  In a 1785 letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, age fifteen, Jefferson recommended that he read books (in the original languages and in this order), by the following authors: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Anabasis, Arian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, and Justin.  On morality Jefferson recommended books by Epictetus, Plato, Cicero, Antoninus,, Seneca, and Xenophon’s Memorabilia, and in poetry, Virgil, Terence, Horace, Anacreon, Theocritus, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Milton, Shakespear, Ossian, Pope, and Swift.  Jefferson’s plan of book learning was modest compared to the proper Puritan education of the seventeenth century as advocated by John Milton.

He says some polarization and lack of solidarity has to do with the lacking shared common basis of knowledge.  The practical focus of this book is on improving reading comprehension.  Fairness implies a degree of commonality.  (Jefferson and Horace Mann promoted a common curriculum.)

A major point is Hirsch’s research into student mobility in the US.  He goes into the statistics of students moving mid-term, and says they are penalized in the new school district because the course work has changed, and they don’t have the basics.

Local school districts have very vague guidelines, amounting to no-guidance at all. the unproductive use of school time and the changing content and fragmentation that results, are most damaging to the already disadvantaged.

He is asking for a Core of Common Content in the early grades, say maybe between 40% - 60%.  We have to come to agreement on what core material to cover and at what grade level to introduce it. While we may be discussing when to introduce American history, like the Mayflower, (Mayflower is the ocean voyage of who we call the Pilgrims), some university intellectuals are not sure we should teach the Mayflower at all, along with a lot of other traditional matter.  Their aim is to improve and diversify American culture, not to perpetuate it.  They are into the social engineering aspect.

Yet without some basic mythology, how can a nation bind together?

These are not real long reads, and Hirsch is an important figure in the educational debate.

Hirsch, Chapter 1, Why do we have a Knowledge Deficit

The Knowledge Deficit, Chapter 7, Achieving Commonality and Fairness

Also this one is short and good.  It is a history of American education from Jefferson and Horace Mann.  It includes a lot of old pictures and illustrations of early schools, teachers, and classrooms.  Also about the struggle to get black children into school.

Sarah Mondale, editor, School: The Story of American Public Education

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