Research Catalog

The schools we need and why we don't have them

Title: The schools we need and why we don't have them / E.D. Hirsch, Jr.
Author: Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (Eric Donald), 1928-
Publication: New York : Doubleday, 1996.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	LA210 .H57 1996	Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 317 pages; 25 cm

Summary

From kindergarten through high school, our public educational system is among the worst in the developed world. For over fifty years, the assumption that challenging children academically is unnatural for them, that teachers do not need to know the subjects they teach, that the learning "process" should by emphasized over the facts taught has prevailed. all this is tragically wrong. As renowned educator and author E.D. Hirsch, Jr., argues in The Schools We Need, in disdaining content-based curricula for abstract - and discredited - theories of how a child learns, the ideas uniformly taught by our schools have done terrible harm to America's students. Instead of preparing our children for the highly competitive, information-based economy in which we now live, our school practices have severely curtailed their ability, and desire, to learn. There is a solution. Mainstream research has shown that if children - all children, not just the privileged - are taught in ways that emphasize hard work, the learning of facts, and rigorous testing, their enthusiasm for school will grow, their test scores will rise, and they will become successful citizens in the information-age civilization.

Alternative Title

Schools we need

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: failed theories, famished minds : Continued education failure -- Growing social injustice -- Premature polarization -- From cultural literacy to core knowledge -- The nature of the enemy: ideas, not persons -- Intellectual capital : Shared knowledge in democracies -- Dependency of learning upon shared knowledge -- The myth of the existing curriculum -- Our migrant children -- International research on shared knowledge -- The new civil rights frontier -- An impregnable fortress : Orthodoxy masquerading as reform -- The pervasiveness of antiknowledge views -- Why America's universities are better than its schools -- Chatter and choice: yes, but what choice? -- An intellectual monopoly -- Critique of a Thoughtworld : Introduction -- Romanticism -- Developmentalism and other naturalistic fallacies -- American exceptionalism and localism -- What is higher-order thinking? -- Consensus research on pedagogy -- Reality's revenge: education and mainstream research : The virtues of mainstream research -- Selective use of research I: constructivism -- Selective use of research II: thinking skills -- The structure of real-world competency -- What is higher-order thinking? -- Consensus research on pedagogy -- Test evasion : Shooting the messenger -- Authenticity vs. fairness -- Overcoming the abuses -- Answering the charges -- The question of fairness -- Practical effectiveness, not ideology -- Two historic errors: formalism and naturalism -- Key findings of research -- Policy implications -- The common school and the common good.

ISBN

0385484577
9780385484572
0385495242
9780385495240

LCCN

96002192
64075777

OCLC

ocm34117353
34117353
SCSB-8892053

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library