Hey! Knowledge Works
Oct 23, 2009
[
Stuart Schwartz
]
The headline on the article tells it all:
E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy
A content-rich pedagogy makes better citizens and smarter kids.
This City Paper article profiles the educational reforms of Dr. E. D. Hirsch Jr., whose ideas have helped to transform education in Massachusetts. As the writer points out:
The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch’s legacy.
Writer Sol Stern offers an account of a remarkable and solitary man who has defied the educational establishment by emphasizing knowledge, facts, and educating for responsibility within a democracy. And his suggested reforms and approach works!
Worth a look…and then a second. Can we do the same thing in higher education, take a back to basics approach? What do you think? Thoughts?
