The Schools We Need and Why - Hardcover

Hirsch Jr., E.D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385484577 ISBN 13: 9780385484572

Publisher: Doubleday, 1996

Synopsis

The author of Cultural Literacy offers a powerful, compelling, and unassailable argument for reforming America's schooling methods and ideas.
From kindergarten through high school, the American education is the worst in the developed world, and the causes of its failure and any possible solutions to it are hotly disputed. For over fifty years, American schools have operated on the assumption that challenging children is bad for them, teachers do not need to know the subjects they teach, that the learning "process" should be emphasised over the facts taught within it. Yet, as renowned educator and author E. D. Hirsch shows in The Schools We Need, this establishment ideology is a tragedy of good intentions gone awry. Hirsch argues that in eschewing content-based curricula for abstract--and disproved--theories of congnitive development, the educational establishment has done irreparable harm to America's students, and instead of preparing them for the country's highly competitive, information-based economy, the process-oriented curricula the establishment practices has severely curtailed their ability, and desire, to learn.
Suggesting a curriculum based on hard work, knowledge aquisition, and rigorous testing that has been proven successful time after time, The Schools We Need offers a proficient and workable solution. By providing evidence of numerous studies proving that fact-based education works, and a glossary of brief, authoritative explanations of educational phrases often used to dazzle teachers and the general public, Hirsch proves that if children are taught substantial knowledge and skills, and learn to work hard to acquire them, their test scores will rise, their love of learning will grow, and they will become enthusiastic participants in the information-age civilization.
The Schools We Need is a passionate and thoughtful book that will appeal to the millions of people who can't understand why American schools just don't work.

About this title

Review:

Everyone wonders why American schools have gone bad. E.D. Hirsch, author of Cultural Literacy, offers a compelling explanation. Schools do a lousy job of transmitting "core knowledge" to their students, he says. To improve, they must abandon all of their feel-good theories about "critical thinking" and work harder to endow kids with intellectual capital at an early age. It may sound like common sense, but this important book shows why so many educators appear to have lost theirs.

From the Back Cover:

"Offers a penetrating and compelling analysis of how, despite the good intentions of educators, bad ideas and failed theories now characterize American education."
--The Indianapolis Star

"A brilliant, combative, and intensely practical discussion of how our education system got into its current mess and what we must do to pull it out."
--Donna Fowler, American Federation of Teachers

"A damning, highly provocative, full-scale assault on today's educational establishment."
--Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0385484577
• ISBN 13: 9780385484572
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336