Why Knowledge Matters

Educational failures in the U.S. and France are not due to a lack of resources but are the result of 'faulty ideas' prioritizing child-centered individualism over communal knowledge. Hirsch argues ...

Chapter 1 argues that current reading tests are invalid because they attempt to measure general skills when reading comprehension is actually a function of specific background knowledge and vocabul...

Chapter 2 argues that the recent national obsession with 'teacher quality' is a misguided attempt to blame instructors for the failures of structural reforms and flawed educational theories. Hirsch...

The author argues that the 'fadeout' of preschool gains in the United States is not an inherent failure of early education but a consequence of incoherent, knowledge-poor elementary curricula. By c...

Chapter 4 argues that the American elementary curriculum has been profoundly diluted not just by high-stakes testing, but by the triumph of three flawed ideas: developmentalism, individualism, and ...

Chapter 5 argues that the stalling of the American achievement gap after 1988 is primarily due to the lack of a knowledge-rich, cumulative school curriculum. By demonstrating that reading comprehen...

Chapter 6 argues that while the Common Core State Standards contain 'golden words' about the necessity of a content-rich curriculum, they are being undermined by a continued operational focus on co...

Chapter 7 presents France's 1989 educational reforms as a tragic 'natural experiment' that replicated the American educational decline by replacing a communal national curriculum with individualize...

Chapter 8 proposes a communal, knowledge-based curriculum as the necessary solution for American education, arguing that such a curriculum is the historical foundation of successful modern democrac...

The Epilogue argues that the decline of American education since the 1960s is the result of 'romantic' and 'individualistic' ideas replacing the communal, knowledge-rich curriculum of the nineteent...

The shift in American educational philosophy from a classical, civic-minded 'training' model to a Romantic, 'natural development' model is physically visible in the evolution of school architecture...

Appendix II provides a methodological overview of the 2008 French study (Note d’Information 08-38) which tracked a twenty-year decline in student performance between 1987 and 2007. Hirsch uses this...

In this appendix, Hirsch uses the Japanese early science curriculum as a model of a coherent, knowledge-rich curriculum that successfully balances humane pedagogy with rigorous content. He contrast...