Content area
Full Text
THE KNOWLEDGE DEFICIT: CLOSING THE SHOCKING EDUCATION GAP FOR AMERICAN CHILDREN by E. D. HirschJr. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 169 pp. $13.95.
In 1987, E. D. HirschJr. created a stir with the publication of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, in which he argued that effective reading comprehension depends on mastering a core body of academic knowledge. Although his recommendation that schools should explicitly impart that body of knowledge led some educators to write him off as a conservative champion of Western civilization and the "Dead White Males," Hirsch went on to create the Core Knowledge Foundation and to develop a carefully sequenced curriculum that has since been taken up by several hundred schools throughout the country. His most recent book, The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children, extends his previous argument by identifying the problem with U.S. education and exploring the three kinds of knowledge students need to read effectively - knowledge of language conventions, vocabulary knowledge, and domain-specific background knowledge. It also offers recommendations about the efficient allocation of instructional time, the kinds of tests needed to ensure content mastery, and the content standards we need as a nation.
Striking a diplomatic tone, The Knowledge Deficit asserts that the problem with U.S. education is not inadequate teachers; rather, it is a set of misguided ideas in which teachers have been taught to believe. The first of these ideas is naturalism, or the notion that learning should...