Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know

by E.D. Hirsch Jr.

Overview

A must-read for parents and teachers, this major bestseller reveals how cultural literacy is the hidden key to effective education and presents 5000 facts that every literate American should know. 

In this forceful manifesto Professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that children in the United States are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. They lack cultural literacy: a grasp of background information that writers and speakers assume their audience already has. Even if a student has a basic competence in the English language, he or she has little chance of entering the American mainstream without knowing what a silicon chip is, or when the Civil War was fought. An important work that has engendered a nationwide debate on our educational standards, Cultural Literacy is a required reading for anyone concerned with our future as a literate nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780394758435
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/12/1988
Edition description:	1st Vintage Books ed
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	427,563
Product dimensions:	5.28(w) x 7.92(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

E. D. Hirsch, Jr. is the author of several acclaimed books on education issues, including the bestseller Cultural Literacy. With his subsequent books The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them, The Knowledge Deficit, The Making of Americans, and Why Knowledge Matters, Dr. Hirsch solidified his reputation as one of the most influential education reformers of our time. Dr. Hirsch is the founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Editorial Reviews

It makes fascinating reading, particularly when we bear in mind that, apart from a number of scientific items (included, somewhat inconsistently, in an effort to improve things), it is an attempt to establish what all culturally literate Americans actually know, not what they ought to know. . . . Mr. Hirsch's proposal merits serious consideration. -- New York Times

John Gross