HIRSCH, ERIC DONALD, JR.

HIRSCH, ERIC DONALD, JR. (1928– ), U.S. literary scholar and educator. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Hirsch was educated at Cornell University (B.A., 1950) and Yale (M.A., 1953; Ph.D., 1957) and served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War (1950–52). He taught at Yale (1956–66) and the University of Virginia (1966–2002), where he became university professor of education and humanities, emeritus; he was a visiting professor at Northwestern and Oxford universities and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was the founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation. A respected academic literary critic whose work was concerned with problems of interpretation and the history of the Romantic movement, Hirsch in 1987 published Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, a book that told an increasingly conservative country that its schools were failing to teach its children the basic information they needed to succeed, and worse, failing to establish a common, shared culture which Hirsch believes is essential to maintaining democracy. It became a bestseller and launched Hirsch on a new career as an educational reformer. He followed this with The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (1988; revised edition 1993; with Joseph Kett and James Trefil), which collected much of the vital information whose absorption would make for a common culture and economic success. Hirsch also founded the Core Knowledge Foundation (originally the Cultural Literacy Foundation) which has developed a detailed, comprehensive curriculum for elementary schools, intended to "(foster) autonomous and knowledgeable citizens, (give) every person an equal chance, and (foster) community." The curriculum calls for uniform content and instruction by age group and abandonment of "progressive" ideas that he believes rule American public schools and destroy the chances of poverty-stricken students. Critics, while agreeing that content is important, have challenged Hirsch's assumptions and have particularly singled out his refusal to take seriously such issues as racial inequality and underfunding as factors in poor outcomes. Hirsch's critical works include Wordsworth and Schelling: A Typological Study of Romanticism (1960), Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake (1964), Validity in Interpretation (1967), The Aims of Interpretation (1976), and The Philosophy of Composition (1977). His educational-reform oeuvre includes, beside Cultural Literacy and The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, A First Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Our Children Need to Know (1991), The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them (1996), and an edited volume, Books to Build On: A Grade-by-Grade Resource Guide for Parents and Teachers (1996, edited with John Holdren). (Drew Silver (2nd ed.)