Thinkers (521)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Dewey agrees builds on disagrees historicizes partially agrees

The author identifies Rousseau as one of the two primary sources of the content-neutral ideology dominating and harming American schools.

George A. Miller agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Miller's psychological data to support the idea that reducing syntactic uncertainty (normalization) directly increases efficiency.

Noah Webster and Horace Mann agrees builds on disagrees historicizes

Hirsch characterizes Webster as a militant 'culture maker' who understood the link between shared symbols (spellers/dictionaries) and national identity.

William Wordsworth disagrees historicizes

Hirsch uses the Wordsworth quote to characterize the 'optimistic naturalism' of progressivists as a romantic myth that fails in the context of academic learning.

Dr. Samuel Johnson agrees builds on historicizes

Hirsch uses Dr. Johnson as a representative figure for the 'correctness' of the standard literary dialect against which oral dialects are compared.

Thomas Jefferson agrees builds on

Hirsch aligns his argument for cultural literacy with Jefferson's foundational vision of a literate democracy.

Geraldine Clifford, James Guthrie, and Diane Ravitch agrees builds on

Hirsch quotes Ravitch to describe the negative historical impact of misinterpreting the first Coleman report.

Jean Piaget builds on disagrees partially agrees

Hirsch applies Piaget's psychological concept of the schema to the practical art of teaching composition.

James Samuel Coleman agrees builds on partially agrees

Hirsch acknowledges the report's thoroughness and the reality of the correlation, but critiques the 'fatalistic' conclusion that schools cannot bridge the gap.

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle agrees builds on partially agrees

Hirsch adopts the Aristotelian mode of intrinsic evaluation as the standard for valid composition research assessment.

Harold Stevenson and James Stigler agrees builds on

Hirsch cites their work to support the empirical claim that American education provides less academic instruction and fewer opportunities for practice.

Ernest Gellner agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Gellner's work as a 'brilliant' development of the thesis that modern nations require standardized languages and education to support industrial specialization.

John Locke agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Locke's principle of toleration to justify the 'wall of separation' in the cultural commons.

Professor David Grissmer agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Grissmer's statistical findings to argue that the 'missing' 2/3 of causation must be found in school-based factors like curriculum.

Alexander Pope agrees disagrees historicizes

Uses Spencer's citation of Pope to illustrate the limitation of the principle of least effort.

Basil Bernstein agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Bernstein's codes to explain why public speaking and writing share a requirement for explicit, context-independent language.

Adriaan de Groot agrees

Hirsch uses de Groot's experiments as the primary empirical foundation for his argument that skill is actually a form of specialized knowledge.

George Washington agrees

Hirsch uses Washington's Farewell Address to demonstrate that the founders viewed a broad religious-moral framework as essential for democratic stability.

Pierre Bourdieu agrees disagrees historicizes

Cites Bourdieu to validate the sociological claim that knowledge distribution determines social class.

Daniel T. Willingham & Gail Lovette agrees builds on

Hirsch uses their review article as the primary scientific evidence to debunk the practice of long-term strategy drills in schools.

Antonio Gramsci agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Gramsci to prove that the political Left should support traditional educational methods as a means of social liberation.

William Heard Kilpatrick disagrees historicizes

Cited via Tennenbaum to illustrate the 'Progressivist Thoughtworld's' bias against structured knowledge.

Abraham Lincoln agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Lincoln's 1838 speech as a foundational text for the transethnic aims of American education.

Otto Jespersen agrees builds on

The author cites Jespersen as a primary illustrator of the theory that languages evolve towards greater efficiency.

Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Ericsson's work on expertise to provide the scientific foundation for his attack on 'skill-centrism.' He adopts Ericsson's framing of expertise as the proper goal of education.

Henry Bradley agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Bradley's early 20th-century observations to directly reverse the Bloomfieldian priority of speech over writing.

Jeanne S. Chall agrees builds on

Hirsch adopts her concept of 'world knowledge' but rebrands it as 'cultural literacy' and uses her observation of the literacy crisis as a starting point for his argument.

Anne Cunningham and Keith Stanovich agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Stanovich's empirical findings to validate the core thesis of Cultural Literacy regarding the necessity of knowledge for intellectual development.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. agrees builds on

Hirsch aligns his view of multiculturalism with Schlesinger's critique of ethnic balkanization.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel disagrees historicizes

Hirsch links Hegel's post-Bastille enthusiasm and his 'heretical' pantheistic feelings to the intellectual foundation of John Dewey's later work.

Herbert Walberg and Timothy Shanahan agrees builds on

The author uses Walberg's findings to argue that the literacy crisis is a failure of school policy rather than an inevitable result of technology.

Ralph Waldo Emerson disagrees historicizes

Hirsch traces the modern anti-academic 'thoughtworld' directly to Emerson's Romantic disdain for formal scholarship.

Alexis de Tocqueville agrees builds on partially agrees

Hirsch calls his sketches 'brilliant' but uses them to argue that even such a perceptive observer could not fully define a monolithic American character.

Jeffrey Litt agrees

Hirsch highlights Litt's role in establishing successful Core Knowledge schools in NYC as evidence of the curriculum's power when led effectively.

Albert Shanker agrees builds on

Hirsch dedicates the book to Shanker and views Shanker's life and beliefs as the ideal model for what American schooling should achieve.

Al Shanker agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Shanker's legacy through the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) as a model for challenging the 'anti-curriculum' tradition from within the teaching profession.

Philip Cohen agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Cohen's data (the Cohen curve) as the foundational empirical evidence for the economic importance of early schooling.

Thomas G. Sticht agrees builds on

Cites Sticht's 1995 San Diego study as a 'breathtaking' confirmation of the link between knowledge and income.

William C. Bagley agrees builds on

Hirsch dedicates the book to Bagley and identifies his work as part of the same tradition.

James Madison agrees builds on

Hirsch quotes Madison's Federalist No. 55 to argue that structural checks and balances are insufficient without a specific type of citizenry.

John Bishop agrees

Hirsch cites Bishop's research to justify why early breadth is a prerequisite for the specialized world students will enter later.

Friedrich Froebel disagrees historicizes

Hirsch identifies Froebel as a key figure who imported Romantic 'naturalism' into American early education, leading to a rejection of proactive teaching.

G.W.F. Hegel disagrees

Hirsch identifies Hegel as the source of the 'Hegelian deposit' in John Dewey's mind, which fueled American developmentalism.

Hugh Blair agrees builds on

Hirsch identifies Blair as the first 'definer of cultural literacy,' crediting him with making explicit the shared knowledge required to read and write well in English.

Jerome Bruner agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Bruner's 'famous remark' approvingly, noting that while education schools dismiss it, psychologists and neurobiologists find it consistent with evidence.

Albert Einstein agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Einstein's work as the gold-standard example of scientific convergence (triangulation).

Benjamin Rush agrees

Hirsch cites Rush as a primary early advocate for the common core curriculum and the civic mission of education.

Betty Hart and Todd Risley agrees builds on

Hirsch cites their 'pathbreaking work' as the primary evidence for why school time must be used effectively to compensate for linguistic differences at home.

David Hume agrees builds on partially agrees

Hirsch uses Hume as the 'best British theorist' to show that even the most rigorous attempts to define a holistic standard of judgment end in logical failure.

E. D. Hirsch, Jr. builds on

The author cites his own previous work to provide deeper theoretical grounding for the example of implied persons and contexts in writing.

European Romantics disagrees

Hirsch traces the historical origins of modern formalist ideas back to Romanticism.

George Counts agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Counts to show that even within the progressive movement, some recognized the danger of losing the school's social and civic purpose.

Henry Sweet disagrees

Hirsch uses Sweet as a foil, arguing that his 'single-minded attention to oral speech' caused him to miss the stabilizing power of the written word.

Herbert A. Simon agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Simon's authority as a Nobel laureate and AI pioneer to debunk the 'general skills' approach to education.

Immanuel Kant agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Kant to show that the goal of a cosmopolitan public culture was an open discussion of the late Enlightenment.

John Maynard Keynes agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Keynes to establish that the failure of education is a failure of 'defunct' theories held by experts, comparing educational experts to Marxist thinkers caught in wrong theories.

Lionel Jospin disagrees

Hirsch presents Jospin as the political leader who implemented Bourdieu's theories, criticizing Jospin's dismissal of 'encyclopedism' and his promotion of 'all-purpose skills.'

M. M. Guxman agrees

Hirsch quotes Guxman extensively to provide scientific and historical authority for the claim that written languages are not just dialects.

Matthew Arnold agrees builds on

Hirsch quotes Arnold to explain why his ideas were rejected in 1987 but accepted in 1996.

Max Planck agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Planck's observation to explain why education professors continue to hold onto scientifically inadequate romantic ideas despite evidence.

Oscar Wilde agrees

Hirsch uses Wilde to show that one can be culturally literate (knowing the Washington myth) while simultaneously being critical, ironic, or even hostile toward the values the myth purports to teach.

Roger Shattuck agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Shattuck's work to validate his claim that US educational standards are 'empty' and do not constitute a real curriculum.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge historicizes

Hirsch traces the modern educational focus on 'imagination' and the 'whole child' to Coleridge's Romantic definitions.

St. Augustine agrees builds on historicizes

Hirsch uses Augustine's description to provide a psychological and philosophical foundation for the idea that reading involves transforming temporal sequences into nontemporal structures of meaning.

T. E. Hulme agrees

Hirsch adopts Hulme's definition of 'spilt religion' as the best way to understand why educators place irrational trust in natural child development.

T. G. Bever agrees

Hirsch uses Bever's research on the 'paradox' of clause perception to build his scanning-plus-review model.

Teun van Dijk and Walter Kintsch agrees

Hirsch uses Kintsch's experimental data to provide empirical confirmation for his theoretical deductions about thematic tags and working memory constraints.

William Shakespeare agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Shakespeare's 'whining schoolboy' imagery to support his point that schooling is inherently unnatural for the human organism.

Kim (and team) agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Kim as a leader of the 'revolution' toward a more accurate theory of literacy and uses Kim's empirical data to ground his own theoretical claims about shared knowledge.

Karl W. Deutsch agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Deutsch's empirical research as the definitive scholarly evidence for the 'speech community' theory and the necessity of shared knowledge for national unity.

Chinua Achebe agrees

Hirsch uses Achebe's essay 'English and the African Writer' to justify the necessity of a standardized national language for political and cultural unity.

David Geary agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Geary's distinction to explain why some learning (language) is natural while other learning (reading/math) is not.

Linda Perlstein agrees builds on

Hirsch uses her reporting to prove that schools are not failing due to a lack of effort or 'laziness,' but due to a lack of effective knowledge-based theory.

Orlando Patterson agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Patterson to argue that cultural literacy is not an elitist or ethnocentric concern but a matter of social justice and structural necessity for modern life.

Alan Bailin and Ann Grafstein agrees builds on

Hirsch reprints a lengthy excerpt from Bailin and Grafstein's work to provide a scientific foundation for his own critique of readability formulas.

Cathy Kinter and Michele Hudak agrees

Hirsch interviews Cathy to provide practical, 'on-the-ground' validation of his theoretical arguments about cumulative knowledge and school coherence.

Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield agrees disagrees

Hirsch identifies Bloomfield as the primary figure responsible for the low status of written speech in linguistics, arguing that his 1933 work caused a shift away from philological study of the wri...

Elizabeth Peabody disagrees historicizes

Hirsch uses her as a historical link between German Romantic philosophy and American educational practice.

Hilary Putnam agrees

Hirsch uses Putnam's philosophical insights to provide a theoretical foundation for the necessity of 'vague' and 'superficial' cultural knowledge in communication.

Isabel L. Beck agrees partially agrees

Hirsch cites Beck's research to support the necessity of direct vocabulary instruction in heterogeneous classrooms.

Joseph Kett and James Trefil builds on

Hirsch cites their joint work in the 1980s as the basis for defining what students actually need to know.

Lawrence A. Cremin agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Cremin to provide historical context for the 'natural development' theories he is critiquing.

Marilyn Jager Adams agrees

Hirsch cites Adams as a victim of the 'citadel's' politicization, noting that her research was undermined by ideologically motivated afterwords from Teachers College professors.

Martin Luther King, Jr. agrees builds on

Hirsch argues that King's dream of equality depends on 'mature literacy' to be realized in a modern society.

Rudolf Flesch disagrees partially agrees

Hirsch acknowledges Flesch's work as 'useful' and 'better informed' than textbooks but argues it does not reach the core of stylistic craftsmanship.

Sir Philip Sidney agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Sidney's 16th-century argument to support the use of dramatized instruction and storytelling.

Steven Pinker agrees builds on

Hirsch extends Pinker's concept of a language instinct to a broader 'learning instinct' that drives children to become members of the adult community.

A. M. Collins and M. R. Quillian agrees builds on

Hirsch uses their 1969 study to provide a cognitive psychological basis for why specific background knowledge must be 'at the surface' for fluent reading.

Adrian de Groot agrees

Hirsch uses De Groot's 1946 experiments as the primary empirical foundation for explaining how prior knowledge/schemata bypass memory limitations.

Alexander Hamilton agrees historicizes

Contrast to Jeffersonian localism.

Bruce Catton builds on

Uses Catton's work as representative of the kind of historical prose that assumes reader background knowledge.

Christopher Jencks agrees

Hirsch uses Jencks to provide a historical and logical rebuttal to the NEA's attacks on testing, specifically regarding cultural bias and the measurement of higher-order skills.

Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller agrees

Hirsch cites these 'distinguished cognitive scientists' to provide a scientific, 'gold standard' rebuttal to the pedagogical theories taught in ed schools.

Colonel Francis Parker disagrees partially agrees

Hirsch identifies Parker as a 'great progenitor' of the problematic progressive movement in the U.S.

Condorcet agrees

Cited as the origin of the French communal curriculum tradition.

Dr. Patricia Zissios agrees

Hirsch uses Zissios as a primary expert witness and practitioner who successfully defied progressive educational orthodoxy to achieve equity.

Dr. Robert Glaser agrees

Hirsch cites Glaser to establish the scientific credibility and recent vintage of the research he is about to describe.

Edward Lee Thorndike agrees

Hirsch notes that Thorndike's empirical findings were correct (skills don't automatically transfer), but argues these findings were used by reformers to throw out the entire traditional curriculum.

Einar Haugen builds on

Hirsch uses Haugen's observation to argue that normalization is now a democratic and egalitarian force rather than an elitist one.

Eleanor Rosch agrees builds on

Hirsch adopts Rosch's terminology and research to explain the structural psychological mechanisms of background knowledge.

Emmanuel Macron agrees

Hirsch uses Macron's political stance to validate his own academic critique of American educational ideas.

F. C. Bartlett agrees

Hirsch cites Bartlett's classic book 'Remembering' to prove that schemata aren't just for reading, but are the fundamental building blocks of how we construct our reality and recall our experiences.

Franz Kafka builds on

Hirsch uses Kafka's 'The Castle' as a metaphor for the educational establishment's ability to resist and confuse outside reformers.

François-Xavier Bellamy agrees

Hirsch cites Bellamy approvingly as a 'brilliant high school teacher' who has correctly deconstructed the underlying failed ideas of French education.

G. A. Miller builds on

Hirsch uses Miller's own writing and research to illustrate principles of predictability and processing.

Gunnar Myrdal agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Myrdal's book as the specific text that radicalized him against his conservative upbringing, using it to show that literacy leads to critical thinking.

H. P. Grice agrees builds on

Hirsch claims Grice's work has fundamental importance for composition despite its technical complexity and lack of recognition outside philosophy.

Herman Melville agrees

Hirsch uses Melville's Romantic and pluralist vision to argue for an antiparticularist American identity that is grounded in shared inheritance rather than tribal blood.

J. R. Barclay, J. D. Bransford, and J. J. Franks agrees builds on

Hirsch relies on Bransford and his colleagues' 1972 paper as a pivotal 'next phase' of research that proves the necessity of background knowledge in comprehension.

Jacqueline Sachs agrees

Hirsch cites Sachs's 1967 study to provide empirical proof for the theoretical claim that 'surface form' is transient.

Jeff Litt agrees

Hirsch characterizes Litt as a 'hero of American education' and uses his schools as a primary proof-of-concept for the South Bronx.

Johann Friedrich Herbart builds on disagrees

Hirsch identifies Herbart as a key figure whose theories led American education away from content-based instruction.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte disagrees

Hirsch identifies Fichte as a source of the 'mystical concept' that cultural identity is an essence rather than an accident.

Joseph Buttigieg agrees builds on

Hirsch quotes Buttigieg's correspondence as expert validation of his interpretation of Gramsci.

Karin Chenoweth builds on

Hirsch uses Chenoweth's research to provide concrete empirical evidence that refutes the 'poverty explanation' for educational failure.

Laurent Lafforgue agrees

Hirsch adopts Lafforgue's historical analogy and uses his edited volume as a primary source for the 'Educational Fall of France' thesis.

Leif Lewin agrees builds on

Hirsch relies heavily on Lewin's 2014 report to provide the empirical backbone for the Swedish case study.

Lisa Delpit agrees

Hirsch cites Delpit as a 'powerful' source of insight regarding the school's duty to empower minority students with the standard language.

M. H. Abrams builds on

Hirsch uses Abrams' literary historical framework to categorize and explain the philosophical shift in American education.

Manfred Prenzel agrees

Hirsch cites Prenzel to provide a causal mechanism for why Germany improved while France and Sweden declined.

Marc Le Bris agrees

Hirsch cites Le Bris to show that the methods that failed in France were dominant in education schools decades before they were codified by the Jospin law.

Mina Shaughnessy builds on

Hirsch mentions Shaughnessy to frame his argument within the context of helping the disadvantaged, though he suggests her focus on basic literacy may need to be expanded to cultural literacy.

P. D. Pearson agrees

Hirsch uses Pearson's spider experiment to demonstrate that text-relevant knowledge outweighs general reading/IQ scores.

P. N. Johnson-Laird agrees

Hirsch cites Johnson-Laird to prove that the 'linguistic object' theory of memory is empirically false.

Paola Mattei builds on

Hirsch credits Mattei's publication of the data as the specific catalyst for his deciding to write this book.

Paul Diederich builds on

Hirsch uses Diederich's empirical findings to establish the 'snag' of subjective assessment that his theory of relative readability seeks to solve.

Paulo Freire disagrees

Hirsch contrasts Freire with Gramsci, arguing Freire mistakenly associated political progressivism with educational progressivism.

Pestalozzi and Froebel disagrees historicizes

The author quotes them as the Romantic founders of the 'natural pedagogy' doctrine he seeks to dismantle.

Professor Gudmund Hernes agrees

Uses Hernes' Norwegian Education Act as a democratic precedent for requiring shared specific content.

Professor Tomas Englund agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Englund's terminology to describe the pre-1994 Swedish system as a model for excellence and equity.

R. C. Anderson agrees builds on

Hirsch adopts Anderson's specific terminology ('schema') for the general phenomena of mental models.

R. J. Spiro agrees builds on

Uses Spiro's expert testimony to establish the scientific consensus surrounding the constructive hypothesis.

R. M. Krauss and S. Glucksberg agrees builds on

Hirsch introduces their work to prove the necessity of shared cultural knowledge for effective communication.

Rachel Boutonnet agrees

Hirsch uses her book to illustrate the ideological conformity and 'language police' in French education schools that rejected phonics and lectures.

Reinhold Niebuhr agrees

Hirsch applies Niebuhr's sociological insight to explain why individual educators can be good people while the education 'group' acts in an anti-intellectual manner.

Richard C. Anderson agrees

Hirsch cites Anderson's empirical research at the University of Illinois to provide scientific proof that literacy is tied to national cultural knowledge.

Richard Hofstadter agrees partially agrees

Hirsch adopts the term 'anti-intellectualism' but argues Hofstadter's definition is too broad, missing the specific cultural bias against book-learning.

Robert Pondiscio agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Pondiscio's book to provide a more nuanced explanation for the success of charter schools beyond just the curriculum sequence.

Robert S. Siegler agrees

Hirsch uses Siegler's findings to argue against the isolated teaching of metacognitive strategies and to support the term 'associative knowledge' over 'higher-order skills.'

Samuel Messick builds on

Hirsch cites Messick alongside Cronbach to establish the higher standards of modern psychometrics.

T. Trabasso agrees

Cites Trabasso to show that the importance of background knowledge is not limited to college students but is evident in children as young as five.

The American Founders (Jefferson/Franklin) agrees

Hirsch credits the Founders with creating a 'civic theory' that allows for multi-ethnic harmony, which he argues is currently being neglected in schools.

Thomas K. Landauer agrees

Hirsch cites Landauer's computer modeling as impressive evidence for the plausibility of an innate word-learning mechanism based on probability.

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing agrees

Hirsch quotes the former president to establish the traditional, successful consensus of French education that was abandoned in 1989.

William James agrees builds on

Hirsch adopts James's distinction as the foundation for the short-term/long-term memory divide that governs readability.

William Labov agrees partially agrees

Hirsch uses Labov's validation of restricted codes to show that they are stylistically appropriate for oral intimacy, reinforcing that 'elaborated' does not mean 'superior' in all contexts.

Herbert Spencer agrees builds on partially agrees

The author claims Spencer's 1852 essay remains foundational and has been confirmed by modern psychology.

John Rawls agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Rawls's terminology to describe the successful goal of the American experiment.

Michael Tomasello agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Tomasello's evolutionary psychological research to provide a scientific foundation for his argument that schooling must involve the high-fidelity transmission of shared knowledge.

Émile Durkheim agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Durkheim to counter the idea that globalism can replace the nation-state as the primary source of social unity.

J. R. Bormuth agrees builds on partially agrees

Hirsch cites Bormuth's research on 'curvature' in readability relationships, though he uses Bormuth's own writing as an example of prose that formulas fail to properly evaluate.

Professor Hayes agrees builds on

Hirsch uses Hayes' work to support the claim that student-centered 'leveling' of texts reduced academic rigor.

Robert Putnam agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Putnam's data from 'The Upswing' to support his claim that individualistic educational philosophy mirrors and contributes to a broader social decline in cohesion.

André Martinet agrees

Hirsch cites Martinet as a recent proponent of the progressive view to show its continued relevance in 20th-century linguistics.

Benjamin Franklin builds on

Hirsch uses Franklin's famous 'A Republic, if you can keep it' anecdote to set the tone for the educational stakes.

Carleton Washburne agrees builds on

Hirsch aligns himself with Washburne's curricular approach and notes that Washburne was unfairly criticized by progressives for it.

D. E. Broadbent agrees

Cited in a footnote to justify Spencer's occasional conflation of variety and economy.

E. B. White agrees disagrees

Hirsch uses White's analogy to distinguish between the practical skill of writing and the philosophical/scientific study of the principles that make it work.

Ferdinand de Saussure builds on

Hirsch uses Saussure's linguistic categories to distinguish between the abstract system of writing and the actual communicative act of writing ('written speech').

George Kingsley Zipf builds on

Zipf is used as empirical support for the historical tendency of language to become more efficient.

Harold Rugg disagrees

Hirsch uses Rugg's work to show that 'modern' progressive descriptions of the 'new school' are actually nearly 70 years old.

Howard Gardner disagrees

Hirsch acknowledges Gardner as a distinguished professor but argues his support for multiple learning styles has been 'less sound and beneficial' and lacks scientific consensus.

James Koerner agrees

Hirsch contrasts Koerner's former independence as a foundation officer with the current co-opted state of the foundation world.

Jill Lepore agrees

Hirsch uses Lepore to ground his argument in the practical reality of current geopolitical structures.

John Guthrie agrees

Hirsch uses Guthrie's research to provide empirical validation for the 'domain immersion' strategy he observes in French preschools.

Leigh S. Wilton agrees builds on

Hirsch uses this social science research to support his critique of 'diversity' curricula as being rooted in cultural essentialism.

Paul A. Kirschner agrees

Hirsch highlights Kirschner's 2006 article as a 'decisive' piece of evidence that constructivism lacks a scientific basis.

Richard Rorty builds on

Hirsch uses Rorty's metaphor to visualize the distinction between diverse private lives and a shared public space.

Ronald Ferguson agrees

Hirsch cites Ferguson's 1995 analysis as the definitive explanation for the 'puzzling halt' in wage equality progress.

Sir Ernest Gowers agrees

Hirsch quotes Gowers approvingly to demonstrate that 'efficiency' in prose is relative to the writer's goal (certainty vs. ease).

Theodore Roosevelt agrees

Hirsch cites Roosevelt to argue that patriotism is not at odds with global cooperation.

W. James Popham agrees

Hirsch uses Popham's research to support the claim that the failure of US teaching is a failure of teacher-training schools rather than individual teachers.

Yehoshua Bar-Hillel agrees builds on

Hirsch cites Bar-Hillel to argue that computers have inherent limitations in understanding language, supporting his skepticism of technology-based primary education.

A. H. Thorndike and F. T. Baker agrees

Hirsch quotes them extensively to prove that the goal of teaching shared content was once an explicit and respected aim of American education before the rise of formalism.

A. S. Neill disagrees

Hirsch uses Neill's Summerhill as an example of the 'anti-subject-matter' progressivism that dominated both US and UK educational thought.

A. Weinberg builds on

Hirsch adopts Weinberg's concept to explain why composition research has stalled and how it might be reorganized through multidisciplinary teams.

Abraham Flexner agrees

Hirsch uses Flexner's 1916 critique to show that the 'absurdities' and anti-knowledge bias of ed schools are long-standing issues.

Abraham Pais agrees

Hirsch quotes Pais to explain the importance of scientific agreement across diverse methods.

Adam Smith disagrees

Linked with Rousseau as the source of the idea that unguided natural or market forces result in optimal educational outcomes.

Al Fiellin agrees

Hirsch uses Fiellin's experience at City’s General Education and Guidance Division to demonstrate the failure of isolated remediation.

Alan Moorehead agrees

Hirsch uses Moorehead's prose as a 'golden mean' example of readability between the extremes of terseness and over-explicitness.

Albert C. Baugh disagrees

Hirsch critiques Baugh (and by extension Sapir and Bloomfield) for failing to recognize that literacy creates a new, non-natural stability in language.

Alessandra Stanley agrees

Hirsch uses Stanley's reporting to argue that 'child-centered' success in Reggio Emilia is demographic-dependent.

Alfie Kohn disagrees

Hirsch cites Kohn as a representative of critics who dismiss content-rich curricula, then counters with a teacher's testimony that the curriculum is 'dynamic' and 'sequential.'

Alfred Lord Tennyson builds on

Hirsch quotes Tennyson to characterize the slow but real evolution of cultural knowledge.

Alfred North Whitehead agrees

Hirsch quotes Whitehead to refute the 'truism' that students should always be consciously thinking about what they are doing.

Allan Bloom disagrees

Hirsch distances his work from Bloom's, asserting they are fundamentally different and even opposed, despite being initially linked by the media.

Alvin Weinberg builds on

Hirsch applies Weinberg's sociological analysis of science to the field of composition, arguing that composition's 'hybrid' nature is typical of mission-oriented research.

American Early-Childhood Specialists disagrees

Hirsch cites this group as an example of ideological overreach that lacks scientific credibility and ignores international educational standards.

American Psychological Association (APA) agrees

Hirsch uses the APA's definition of technical bias to argue that standardized tests are generally fair and that the problem lies in the knowledge gap rather than the test design.

Angus Macintosh builds on

Hirsch uses Macintosh's expertise to prove how fragmented and localized language was before mass literacy and standardization.

Ann J. Grafstein builds on

Hirsch uses her joint work with Bailin to argue that the 'child-centered' approach is scientifically incorrect.

Annemarie Palincsar and Ann Brown partially agrees

Hirsch praises their work as 'excellent' and concedes that their methods work, but uses their reports of time spent on strategy as evidence of potential opportunity costs.

Anonymous PhD Student agrees

Hirsch uses the student's email to corroborate his claim that education schools enforce intellectual conformity and suppress dissent.

Arne Duncan and Barack Obama agrees

Hirsch uses their October 2015 'Testing Action Plan' as evidence that even the political establishment has begun to recognize the negative consequences of over-testing.

Arthur Levine agrees

Hirsch cites Levine, a former president of Teachers College, to provide 'insider' validation of his critique of education schools.