Why knowledge matters
In this provocative book, influential scholar E.D. Hirsch, Jr., addresses critical issues in contemporary education reform - over-testing, teacher blaming, preschool fadeout, and the persistence of achievement gaps over time. In each case, he shows how cherished truisms about education and child development have led to unintended and negative consequences. Drawing on recent findings in neuroscience and new data from France, he provides new evidence for the argument that a coherent, knowledge-based elementary curriculum is essential to providing the foundations for children's life success and ensuring equal opportunity for students of all backgrounds.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
7mentions
2people
2019–2025years
29% recommend71% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Check out E.D. Hirsch Jr.'s work, e.g.'Why Knowledge Matters'.
- Education is getting its own spin on “You can see the computer revolution everywhere except the productivity numbers”.
There was so much research saying all the millions we were about to spend on tech in classrooms wasn’t going to work. Reduce childhood poverty and you’ll improve results. Focus on a knowledge based curriculum and you’ll improve results[1].
1. Why Knowledge Matters - ED Hirsch Jr
- This is the central claim of E.D Hirsch's Why Knowledge Matters[1] book on educational reform. Hirsch is perhaps best known for coining the term "cultural literacy" in his book of the same name.
A little while back I wrote about cultural literacy in the software industry, following the lead of Hirsch's book.[2]
1. https://hep.gse.harvard.edu/9781612509525/why-knowledge-matt...
2. https://thundergolfer.com/software/culture/2024/01/14/comput...
- I'm becoming a broken record on HN about this, but the evidence is in and you can't divorce critical thinking from domain-specific knowledge.
> The ability to question narratives put forth by the industry, the government, media, political parties
You just can't do this properly without a shitload of core domain knowledge in philosophy, politics, media, history and also whatever specific domain knowledge pertinent.
You can't "question narratives" you see in the newspaper if you don't have a good theory of media like what's provided in Manufacturing Consent and even with that you can't "question [the] narrative" of some specific economics thought-piece in the Financial Times if you don't have the relevant domain knowledge in economics.
If you think of the people you'd regard as excellent critical thinkers, wouldn't these all be people with deep knowledge of their domain(s)? Chomsky was never formally schooled in "critical thinking". He just went through normal, rigorous education, reading stacks of books and newspapers along the way.
source: Why Knowledge Matters, by E.D Hirsch
- Education has been a big public endeavour in France for over a century and until 1980ish they had excellent results.
According to E. D Hirsch in Why Knowledge Matters, the decline in French academic results is attributable to them adopting the individualistic USA model.
Where are you getting the information that the supposedly poor results are because schooling is publicly funded?
- Rebuttal: There's good evidence that "thinking critically" is not a skill that can be divorced from domain-specific expertise. In order words, the capability to be a critical thinker is in direct relationship with one's competency in _specific domains_ and cannot be generalised.
Source: Why Knowledge Matters - E.D Hirsch
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