Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Thursday, October 29. 2009

In praise of E.D. Hirsch

At City Journal, Sol Stern on E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy: A content-rich pedagogy makes better citizens and smarter kids. One quote:



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. If the Obama administration truly wants to have a positive impact on American education, it should embrace Hirsch’s ideas and urge other states to do the same.

Posted by The Barrister in Best Essays of the Year, Education at 12:38 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I bought Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know" when it was first published, and it has brought me countless hours of enjoyment. School choice could provide a laboratory for the Hirsch approach- I would imagine that some of the independent, private and parochial schools are already using it. Interesting that Taxachusetts, America's educational leader in the 19th C., had the late 20th C vision to give it a go. Note the results where it has been introduced in MA and NYC. What are we waiting for, NEA?
#1 greenmtnpunter on 2009-10-30 08:14 (Reply)
I'm a native of MA. I fought long and hard, hired tutors, taught my son myself, to get him through the government factory schools of this state. I saw every trick in the book pulled to process my child, and others, through the public schools in this state. I did not know of one family (low to middle income)who did not hire a tutor or remove their child to private school to have them educated. Was not impressed with this system.
In the fifties there was an emphasis placed on reading, writing and arithmetic that is no present today.
#2 J on 2009-10-30 08:45 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.