For many years, I have been a fan of E.D. Hirsch, an English professor who became well known with the publication of Cultural Literacy. Several books later, he is still taking on the so-called education establishment.
Hirsch’s basic argument is that a watered-down curriculum that has little real content is cheating all American kids, especially poor and minority kids, of a realistic opportunity to succeed. I think he is right.
Hirsch argues that many children learn ‘stuff’ in their homes. Their families have newspapers and magazines and computers. They watch news on television and even discuss it with the children present. These kids also learn adult vocabulary in their homes.
The families of these children are more likely than those of poor kids to take vacations. This doesn’t just mean going to the beach but also stopping at a museum or taking time to read a historical marker.
Generally, such kids have a much broader range of experiences outside school than their poorer peers.
So, when these kids come to school, they are not just better fed and clothed, but they simply know more.
They are more likely to know about New York City because they are more likely to have been there. They are more likely to know who Hillary Clinton is because their parents are voters or at least have the television news on now and then.
They are more likely to know the meaning of words such as “intuition” or “cerebral” because their parents use such words or they have deduced from context what they mean from a newspaper or magazine.
Note that such ‘privileged’ kids are not necessarily smarter or more motivated than other kids; they just come to school knowing more.
Now, what happens to the kids who arrive in school without the same set of experiences? They do not comprehend what they read as well or understand the videos they are shown. Books and magazines are more foreign to them and so too probably is the Internet.
So what should schools do in order to foster equal opportunity to learn? Hirsch argues that young children in school need to learn information including some things by rote memorization. He argues that in fact kids like to memorize things.
But, he claims that schools have consciously moved away from content and specific curriculum, especially outside mathematics.
Hirsch further claims that there is a conscious movement to dumb down the curriculum so that these kids who come in behind do not feel inferior or become discouraged.
I think this is a terrible sort of elitism. We are willing to sacrifice so many of these kids learning what they will need to advance their educations and to live lives as active citizens because of a misguided worry about kids feeling bad.
The schools choose to emphasize the acquisition of skills. Now, no one is against students acquiring quantitative or writing or reading skills.
For more than a quarter century, we have talked about teaching critical thinking. The rub here is that we do not think critically in the abstract, but rather we think critically about bodies of knowledge.
I like to believe that I think critically about American politics, but I need more than critical thinking skills to do this. I actually need to know something about American politics.
Let’s get serious. To think critically about last week’s Supreme Court decision concerning campaign finance laws, I need to know how the Supreme Court works, what the first amendment says, and what the laws were that the Court struck down.
I probably should know a few things about how campaigns are currently financed. Then I can think critically about Mr. Justice Kennedy’s opinion that he delivered for the court.
In several classes, I have posed this question to students. “The First Amendment to the Constitution consists of one sentence.
The first word of the First Amendment is the subject of that sentence. What is that first word?”
Rarely does a student know the answer to that question. Of course, the answer is “Congress.”
The First Amendment states several things that Congress may not make laws about. In order to answer my simple question, a person needs to know some information — the first word of the First Amendment — and what a subject of a sentence is.
Hirsch would, I believe, argues that if we do not teach and help students to master information like this, we are not educating our children for real equality of opportunity.
Of course, some kids from the most severely disadvantaged circumstances will “make it,” and they do it heroically. Madame Justice Sotomayor comes to mind. (Incidentally, she voted with the four-person minority in the case cited above).
And there are good programs and scholarship programs that address such children. But most of the kids who come to school behind will remain behind and fall further behind, and a significant number will drop out.
Given the power of our federal and state governments to regulate the curriculum, no local school district on its own can have a serious, integrated, rigorous curriculum by a board’s fiat.
Still, I urge all school board members and parents in Livingston County to ask what our kids do and do not learn at school. We ought to start thinking about beefing up the curriculum and holding kids accountable for mastery of important facts.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that when governments fail to guide citizens properly, families ought to do so for their children, even if that means fighting against dominant cultural values.
I think parents ought to think about arming their kids for their futures. Maybe we ought to do a bit of vocabulary and civics at home.
It sure as hell is more useful than fantasy football, and small children will find such educational activities entertaining and fascinating.
