Eric Donald Hirsch

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ED Hirsch (2015)

Eric Donald Hirsch Jr. , commonly cited as ED Hirsch, (born March 22, 1928 in Memphis , Tennessee ) is an American literary critic and educator . He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation .

Life

Hirsch was born on March 22, 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee. He studied at Cornell University , where he graduated in 1950 with a bachelor's degree and received his doctorate in 1957 from Yale University . He then taught at Yale for ten years. In 1966 he became a professor of education and humanities at the University of Virginia and gave courses on literary theory and romance in the English department at the College of Arts and Sciences .

During his teaching activities, Hirsch found that many American students lacked the basic knowledge of cultural terms and concepts necessary for academic advancement. This caused him to change his profession. From then on he wanted to devote himself to the task of correcting the injustice which, in his opinion, had been done to these students.

In 1986 he founded the Core Knowledge Foundation, an educational institute that aims to promote more factual content in primary education. A year later, he published Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know , which topped the New York Times bestseller list for more than six months.

He lives in Charlottesville , Virginia .

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In his early writings, which dealt with the interpretation of literature, Hirsch pointed out that the influence of the author and his cultural milieu should not be disregarded in a text interpretation. In the 1960s his book Validity in Interpretation was an important contribution to contemporary literary criticism and made him the "founder of intentionalism". The intentionalism defended the notion of objectivity in the humanistic studies and distinguishes between the "meaning" of a text that refers to understanding and not changed, and its "meaning", referring to the statement and the changes over time relates. Early critical writings include the books on romantic literature as well as on the validity of interpretation ( Validity in Interpretation , 1967), the goals of interpretation ( The Aims of Interpretation , 1976) and the philosophy of composition ( The Philosophy of Composition , 1977 ).

In comparative studies with students at the University of Virginia and those at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, a predominantly African-American institution in Richmond, Hirsch found that students from both institutions could understand written texts just as well when it came to roommates or car traffic went. However, the African American students lacked the basic knowledge of cultural terms and concepts necessary for academic advancement. Hirsch concluded from this that they were not taught the things they needed to know in order to understand texts that were aimed at a general audience. In his opinion, the reason most students ended up at Community College rather than the University of Virginia wasn't because of innate ability or family background, but because of lack of knowledge.

Based on his research, Hirsch developed the concept of cultural literacy, which was based on the idea that reading comprehension requires not only formal decoding skills, but also extensive background knowledge. He produced a number of books on the subject and with the information necessary to make up for the missing knowledge. These include Fairness und Grundwissen (1991), The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them (1996) and The Knowledge Deficit (2006), The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools (2009).

In the book The schools that we need and why we do not have ( The Schools We Need: And Why We Do not Have Them ) argued deer that romanticized, anti-science education theories are not only the cause of America's lackluster educational performance, but also a The cause of widening gender and race inequalities. Hirsch presents American educational theory as a theory that attempts to provide students with intellectual tools such as "critical thinking skills" but denigrates the teaching of any actual content and describes it as "mere memorization". Hirsch notes that this is exactly what has been neglected to make knowledgeable and educated students.

Beginning in the 1990s, Hirsch published books in the Core Knowledge Grader Series , which the Foundation describes as "an illustrated guide to the basic knowledge outlined in the Core Knowledge Sequence," providing information and activities for teachers, parents and children, as well as suggestions for appropriate readings and Contains resources. The books cover topics from What Your Preschooler Must Know to What Your Sixth Grader Must Know .

Awards

Fonts

  • Wordsworth and Schelling: a typological study of romanticism . Yale University Press, New Haven (Connecticut) 1960, Archon Books, Hamden (Connecticut) 1971.
  • Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake . Yale University Press, New Haven (Connecticut) 1964.
  • Validity in interpretation . Yale University Press, New Haven (Connecticut) 1967.
  • The Aims of Interpretation . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1976.
  • The Philosophy of Composition . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1977.
  • Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know . Vintage Books 1987, ISBN 978-0394758435
  • The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy . Houghton Mifflin Co, Boston, Massachusetts 1988.
  • Klaus M Lange; Peter Neulen; Ulrike Emrich; ED Hirsch: Duden Lexicon of General Education: what everyone should know . Dudenverlag, Mannheim 1993.
  • The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them . Anchor Books 1996, 1999, ISBN 978-0385495240
  • The Validity of Allegory in Convegno internazionale sul tema ermeneutica e critica: Roma 7-8 ottobre 1996. Roma: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1998.
  • ED Hirsch, Joseph F. Kett and James Trefil: The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Revised 2002, ISBN 978-0618226474
  • The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children Mariner Books; Reprint edition 2007 (2006), ISBN 978-0618872251 .
  • The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools. Yale University Press, New Haven 2009, ISBN 978-0300168310
  • Why Knowledge Matters . Harvard Education Press 2016, ISBN 978-1612509525 .
  • A collection of articles and speeches by ED Hirsch

See also

Web links

Commons : ED Hirsch  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Coreknowledge: ED Hirsch, Jr. Retrieved February 3, 2020
  2. ↑ Edcentral UK: A beginner's guide to: Professor Eric Donald Hirsch , accessed February 5, 2020
  3. ↑ American Educator, Winter 2009-2010: Creating a Curriculum for the American People. Our Democracy Depends on Shared Knowledge , accessed February 3, 2020
  4. ↑ The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them: Chapter 4. Critique of a Thoughtworld , accessed February 3, 2020
  5. ↑ List of Guggenheim Fellowships in 1964 , accessed on February 3, 2020
  6. ↑ Edcentral UK: Cultural literacy: what every American needs to know , accessed on February 5, 2020
  7. ↑ Edcentral UK: The impact of ED Hirsch on the UK education curriculum , accessed on February 5, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Hirsch, Eric Donald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hirsch, Eric Donald Jr .; Hirsch, ED
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American literary critic and educator
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Memphis