Argument dossiers
The reader-facing atom is an argument dossier organised around a real question, not a claim occurrence. Each one states the question and what would settle it, reconstructs Hirsch at his strongest, reduces the argument to a compact proposition-and-inference backbone, audits each join, appraises the evidence source by source, sets out the strongest published objections and whether he answers them, and records an editorial assessment on five separate axes — textual fidelity, inferential validity, empirical support, robustness and independence, normative dependence.
D1 · What does background knowledge explain about reading comprehension?
Does relevant prior knowledge drive reading comprehension, and does it follow that there is no general, teachable reading-comprehension skill? The full research audit remains available.
provisional 7 separately judged conclusions · 8 argument steps · 8 source appraisals · 5 revision cruxes
D2 · Do knowledge-rich curricula close gaps?
For early-primary pupils, do sustained, coherent content-rich curricula cause gains beyond the material taught—and do initially disadvantaged pupils gain more, so that measured socioeconomic, racial or language gaps actually narrow?
provisional 8 separately judged conclusions · 8 argument steps · 10 source appraisals · 6 revision cruxes
D4 · What is education for—and who decides?
If background knowledge and curricular coherence matter, what follows about the purpose of education, which content is worth making common, and who may legitimately choose it?
provisional 9 separately judged conclusions · 10 argument steps · 11 source appraisals · 7 revision cruxes
D3 · Did the 1989 Loi Jospin cause France’s decline?
The stress test for causal reasoning. Timeline, primary French data, definition of the treatment, implementation, massification, demographic and policy alternatives — and exactly what a before/after pattern can and cannot identify.
planned
Beneath the dossiers sit the shared layers a dossier draws on and writes back to: the thesis layer (9 orientation theses, 25 canonical propositions, every occurrence mapped) and the evidence registry (1,515 normalised sources with independence flags).