The Schools We Need and Why
by E.D. Jr Hirsch
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List Price: $25.95
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Manufacturer: Doubleday
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 370.973
EAN: 9780385484572
ISBN: 0385484577
Label: Doubleday
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 1996-08-15
Publisher: Doubleday
Release Date: 1996-08-15
Studio: Doubleday
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Some Things Need To Be Said More Than Once!
Comment: A long time ago, a well known theorist of education - John Dewey - decried certain "dualisms" in education. Schools, in other words, should not put all of their educational eggs in one basket by focusing either SOLELY on teaching factual recall or SOLELY on teaching students how to think. Schools should do both and avoid the idea that the two can be seperated. Thinking, in Dewey's mind, was dependent on factual knowledge and factual knowledge was useless without a mind trained to think about it.
Hirsch's book is written amongst a steady tide of educational thought that has forgotten this most basic insight. Most educators today believe the primary goal of education to be promotion of critical thinking and creative expression at the expense of fact-b ased instruction, which is often decried as 'mindless repitition of facts.' (In my education classes, I often hear it referred to as the 'three R's' - read, remember, regurgitate.')
In this sense, the thesis of Hirsch's book - that critical thinking and creative expression MUST be accompanied by firm, factual understanding - is a very Deweyan idea. And Hirsch makes a good case, both philosophically and scientifically.
The first half of the book is the more philosophical half. First, Hirsch traces the ideological roots of the 'learning as a social, constructivist enterprise' theory. Owing to the work of a handful of theorists in and around the 1930's, the 'learn from the bottom up' approach (facts first, then higher-order reflection) became replaced by a "bottom down" approach that sees learning as more holistic and constructivistic.
Next, Hirsch shows that by most any measure, these ideas have failed - ever since their inception in the '30's - to produce any improvement in the United State's educational situation. More than that, while these 'reforms' flounder in the public schools, those schools that still hold to a fact-based rigorous educational model - private schools and universities - continue to thrive. So, is it any wonder that we might find reason to question whether these reforms have done more harm than good?
But, as Hirsch points out next, not only are these ideas not questioned within the education establishment, they are simply treated as common sense - even in the light of their repeated failure to deliver on their promises.
AS a masters student in Special Education and a first year teacher, this was a pertinent section for me. I can see the dominance of the constructivist model not only in the school where I teach, but permeating every inch of the Graduate School which I attend. We are taught EXCLUSIVELY in the constructivist approach and the more fact-based approach only comes up when we talk about how things used to be (ah...those draconians!).
Finally, we get to the meat of Hirsch's case. The last third of the book presents the data. While most of the alleged data supporting the constructivist approach boils down to philosophy dressed in the language of science, the data supporting the other, more fact-based approach, consists of numerous studies that independently come to the same conclusion - that fact-based, large-group, disciplined instruction, rather than the more free-form, constructivist, small group approach, wins the day more often than not.
Of course, as I have not done any exhaustive reasearch on this subject, I cannot say that there is NO research to support a constructivist approach. But I can attest that many articles in support of constructivism are thinly veiled philosophizing under the guise of sceintific research, the quality of which would be laughed at in any journal with scholarly standards. (Unfortunately, education journals don't seem to have very high publishing standards.)
My only complaint about this book - and it is a big one - is that Hirsch really should have focused more on the scientific case against a wholly constructivist approach.It may be true that the science supports a more fact-based approach, but, if so, he should rebut it more with science than his own philosophy. Otherwise, he is only doing what he alleges others of doing - being a partisan to philosophy rather than data. If the data is as staggering as he suggests, he shold show it rather than relegate it to the last third of his book.
Be that as it may, this book is sorely needed in an educational world that has been trying the same thing over and over (under new names every few years) only to find that it doesn't work. Perhaps we should take a cue from the schools that are working - private schools, universities, and the pulbic schools of other countries. Of course, if we did that, we might have to admit that Hirsch, and Dewey, are right; education is not worth much without factual rigor.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Refreshing change from the "warm-fuzzy" approach to schooling. Watch for printing errors in paperback edition.
Comment: There are printing errors on pages 121, 124, and 132 of the paperback edition - including repeated and truncated sentences, misplaced quotes, and truncated paragraphs. I have contacted the publisher, and advise others to check before they purchase. I found the same errors on three paperback copies, from three retailers, in two states.
I love the premise of this book, and have found a clean, hardcover copy without errors.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Schools that we do not have and never will
Comment: Millionaire in 365 Days: The Daily Plan to Get There
A revealing expose....and so simple an idiot can fix it...but wait the unions do not want that....so we have a mediocre system that is beat out by many other countries...a good education on the educational SYSTEM.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Facts, not Feelings
Comment: The only thing more inflated than grades in today's public schools is self-esteem. How a student feels about what he thinks he or she is learning is considered far more important than whether that child is learning anything at all. Considering the millions of public school graduates who can only be described as functionally illiterate, it's apparent that almost half of public school students aren't learning much of anything. As Hirsch explains, this is because the government's education system is no longer concerned with teaching facts (historical, scientific, grammar, reading & writing skills, etc.). They're more concerned with kids having fun, which ensures no one's feelings get hurt by getting a low grade on a test or writing assignment. His book makes a strong argument for classical education where content knowledge from core courses like English, math, science and history is emphasized, rather than modern educators' bloated rhetoric of "learning about learning" or teaching "critical thinking skills" when students don't have enough facts to think clearly about anything. It is a fact that public school students who are taught using classical rather than modernist teaching strategies perform better on standardized tests, but the elitists progressives who support these modern strategies will argue that standardized tests only reflect one aspect of what a child is learning. I say these tests also point out what a child is NOT learning, which is all the more reason to support a return to classical education. And since public schools are controlled by the above modernists, that's not likely to happen, which is why I strongly encourage parents to remove their kids from public schools right now. Put them in a privite or Christian school, most all of which follow classical teaching methods, or you can home school your kids yourself using a classical curriculum. It's not as difficult or expensive as you might think, but it's far cheaper than what it'll cost you to leave your child in the government's care.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best thing about this book is the glossary
Comment: While Hirsch does a good job of listing most of the trends in public school education, he does a truly dismal job of explaining why they don't work. In fact, even though I lean towards more traditional learning, I thought he was so off base with his reasons as to *why* this or that educational technique doesn't work, that actually I found I agreed in several cases with his opponents, which I don't think was the aim of his book, lol.
For example, he doesn't like project-based learning, or cooperative (small group) education. He feels they're inefficient. Well, they're not inefficient if done correctly, where each student is assigned an equally difficult and important task, and the teacher keeps on top of things, individually grading each student independently of the project, and the students in the group are similar in terms of intelligence, skill, and work ethic.
However, what *really* happens, and why they don't work (which he does not mention) is that most teachers use these techniques during class as babysitting devices so they can grade papers or do other paperwork or go on break. The smarter and/or harder working students, because they don't want their grades to suffer, end up doing all of the work and the slackers skate by with a good grade because the teacher only grades the total project. The smarter students also wind up actually teaching the other students for a good deal of the school day, which gee, I thought that was what TEACHERS are paid to do.
He even fails to list that the best reason to continue with the "traditional" classroom where teacher talks and students listen is that it is often the most efficient way to get information across to large groups of people. How could he miss that?
He mentions that in Asian classrooms students are typically given an overview of exactly what they will learn in a class session. Well, go to any seminar and probably 95% of them are taught that way, because you have really large groups of people and only one instructor. Most lower-division college classes (especially those held in large auditoriums) are taught this way.
However, these classes only work if students are well-behaved (often not the case in K-12) and everyone in the class is assumed to have the ability to learn the new information with little or no follow-up (which again is often not the case in K-12). In these types of classes, the teacher (or indeed, anyone who can read the lesson plan) simply presents the information, which is hardly "teaching", by any stretch of the imagination.
The chief value in this book lies primarily in the glossary, which provides a wealth of buzzwords for the homeschooling parent to jazz up any district-required homeschool record-keeping.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Some Things Need To Be Said More Than Once!
Comment: A long time ago, a well known theorist of education - John Dewey - decried certain "dualisms" in education. Schools, in other words, should not put all of their educational eggs in one basket by focusing either SOLELY on teaching factual recall or SOLELY on teaching students how to think. Schools should do both and avoid the idea that the two can be seperated. Thinking, in Dewey's mind, was dependent on factual knowledge and factual knowledge was useless without a mind trained to think about it.
Hirsch's book is written amongst a steady tide of educational thought that has forgotten this most basic insight. Most educators today believe the primary goal of education to be promotion of critical thinking and creative expression at the expense of fact-b ased instruction, which is often decried as 'mindless repitition of facts.' (In my education classes, I often hear it referred to as the 'three R's' - read, remember, regurgitate.')
In this sense, the thesis of Hirsch's book - that critical thinking and creative expression MUST be accompanied by firm, factual understanding - is a very Deweyan idea. And Hirsch makes a good case, both philosophically and scientifically.
The first half of the book is the more philosophical half. First, Hirsch traces the ideological roots of the 'learning as a social, constructivist enterprise' theory. Owing to the work of a handful of theorists in and around the 1930's, the 'learn from the bottom up' approach (facts first, then higher-order reflection) became replaced by a "bottom down" approach that sees learning as more holistic and constructivistic.
Next, Hirsch shows that by most any measure, these ideas have failed - ever since their inception in the '30's - to produce any improvement in the United State's educational situation. More than that, while these 'reforms' flounder in the public schools, those schools that still hold to a fact-based rigorous educational model - private schools and universities - continue to thrive. So, is it any wonder that we might find reason to question whether these reforms have done more harm than good?
But, as Hirsch points out next, not only are these ideas not questioned within the education establishment, they are simply treated as common sense - even in the light of their repeated failure to deliver on their promises.
AS a masters student in Special Education and a first year teacher, this was a pertinent section for me. I can see the dominance of the constructivist model not only in the school where I teach, but permeating every inch of the Graduate School which I attend. We are taught EXCLUSIVELY in the constructivist approach and the more fact-based approach only comes up when we talk about how things used to be (ah...those draconians!).
Finally, we get to the meat of Hirsch's case. The last third of the book presents the data. While most of the alleged data supporting the constructivist approach boils down to philosophy dressed in the language of science, the data supporting the other, more fact-based approach, consists of numerous studies that independently come to the same conclusion - that fact-based, large-group, disciplined instruction, rather than the more free-form, constructivist, small group approach, wins the day more often than not.
Of course, as I have not done any exhaustive reasearch on this subject, I cannot say that there is NO research to support a constructivist approach. But I can attest that many articles in support of constructivism are thinly veiled philosophizing under the guise of sceintific research, the quality of which would be laughed at in any journal with scholarly standards. (Unfortunately, education journals don't seem to have very high publishing standards.)
My only complaint about this book - and it is a big one - is that Hirsch really should have focused more on the scientific case against a wholly constructivist approach.It may be true that the science supports a more fact-based approach, but, if so, he should rebut it more with science than his own philosophy. Otherwise, he is only doing what he alleges others of doing - being a partisan to philosophy rather than data. If the data is as staggering as he suggests, he shold show it rather than relegate it to the last third of his book.
Be that as it may, this book is sorely needed in an educational world that has been trying the same thing over and over (under new names every few years) only to find that it doesn't work. Perhaps we should take a cue from the schools that are working - private schools, universities, and the pulbic schools of other countries. Of course, if we did that, we might have to admit that Hirsch, and Dewey, are right; education is not worth much without factual rigor.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Refreshing change from the "warm-fuzzy" approach to schooling. Watch for printing errors in paperback edition.
Comment: There are printing errors on pages 121, 124, and 132 of the paperback edition - including repeated and truncated sentences, misplaced quotes, and truncated paragraphs. I have contacted the publisher, and advise others to check before they purchase. I found the same errors on three paperback copies, from three retailers, in two states.
I love the premise of this book, and have found a clean, hardcover copy without errors.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Schools that we do not have and never will
Comment: Millionaire in 365 Days: The Daily Plan to Get There
A revealing expose....and so simple an idiot can fix it...but wait the unions do not want that....so we have a mediocre system that is beat out by many other countries...a good education on the educational SYSTEM.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Facts, not Feelings
Comment: The only thing more inflated than grades in today's public schools is self-esteem. How a student feels about what he thinks he or she is learning is considered far more important than whether that child is learning anything at all. Considering the millions of public school graduates who can only be described as functionally illiterate, it's apparent that almost half of public school students aren't learning much of anything. As Hirsch explains, this is because the government's education system is no longer concerned with teaching facts (historical, scientific, grammar, reading & writing skills, etc.). They're more concerned with kids having fun, which ensures no one's feelings get hurt by getting a low grade on a test or writing assignment. His book makes a strong argument for classical education where content knowledge from core courses like English, math, science and history is emphasized, rather than modern educators' bloated rhetoric of "learning about learning" or teaching "critical thinking skills" when students don't have enough facts to think clearly about anything. It is a fact that public school students who are taught using classical rather than modernist teaching strategies perform better on standardized tests, but the elitists progressives who support these modern strategies will argue that standardized tests only reflect one aspect of what a child is learning. I say these tests also point out what a child is NOT learning, which is all the more reason to support a return to classical education. And since public schools are controlled by the above modernists, that's not likely to happen, which is why I strongly encourage parents to remove their kids from public schools right now. Put them in a privite or Christian school, most all of which follow classical teaching methods, or you can home school your kids yourself using a classical curriculum. It's not as difficult or expensive as you might think, but it's far cheaper than what it'll cost you to leave your child in the government's care.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best thing about this book is the glossary
Comment: While Hirsch does a good job of listing most of the trends in public school education, he does a truly dismal job of explaining why they don't work. In fact, even though I lean towards more traditional learning, I thought he was so off base with his reasons as to *why* this or that educational technique doesn't work, that actually I found I agreed in several cases with his opponents, which I don't think was the aim of his book, lol.
For example, he doesn't like project-based learning, or cooperative (small group) education. He feels they're inefficient. Well, they're not inefficient if done correctly, where each student is assigned an equally difficult and important task, and the teacher keeps on top of things, individually grading each student independently of the project, and the students in the group are similar in terms of intelligence, skill, and work ethic.
However, what *really* happens, and why they don't work (which he does not mention) is that most teachers use these techniques during class as babysitting devices so they can grade papers or do other paperwork or go on break. The smarter and/or harder working students, because they don't want their grades to suffer, end up doing all of the work and the slackers skate by with a good grade because the teacher only grades the total project. The smarter students also wind up actually teaching the other students for a good deal of the school day, which gee, I thought that was what TEACHERS are paid to do.
He even fails to list that the best reason to continue with the "traditional" classroom where teacher talks and students listen is that it is often the most efficient way to get information across to large groups of people. How could he miss that?
He mentions that in Asian classrooms students are typically given an overview of exactly what they will learn in a class session. Well, go to any seminar and probably 95% of them are taught that way, because you have really large groups of people and only one instructor. Most lower-division college classes (especially those held in large auditoriums) are taught this way.
However, these classes only work if students are well-behaved (often not the case in K-12) and everyone in the class is assumed to have the ability to learn the new information with little or no follow-up (which again is often not the case in K-12). In these types of classes, the teacher (or indeed, anyone who can read the lesson plan) simply presents the information, which is hardly "teaching", by any stretch of the imagination.
The chief value in this book lies primarily in the glossary, which provides a wealth of buzzwords for the homeschooling parent to jazz up any district-required homeschool record-keeping.
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.
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