Why else would ednews.org interview this guy?
Archive for the 'Interview' Category
America desperately needs to become a “water cooler nation” again, with a common set of cultural references, says historian Richard Norton Smith. “It shouldn’t be Britney Spears or the latest celebrity divorce or even last week’s box office grosses,” he notes in an interview on the Public School Insights blog, but rather ”Gettysburg and Rosa Parks–and an endless source of possibilities. And I think the common culture, the popular culture, has both a lot to answer for and, correspondingly, a lot to give.”
Claus von Zastrow, Executive Director of the Learning First Alliance, asks Smith if American students are getting enough civic and history education. Smith, a reknowned presidential historian and biographer, offers a weary laugh then replies, “No. They are not.”
And the moment I say that, I qualify it with an expression of sympathy for any teacher, at any level, who is competing with a mass culture that encourages historical and civic illiteracy, if indeed not illiteracy generally. It’s important to get that right up front. No, they’re not. And the evidence of that is to be found in every survey that’s been taken for as long as I can remember….The evidence is overwhelming that we are not imparting to young people a sense of not only where we came from, but, as a result, who we are. And who we might become.
Smith makes a passionate case for teaching history as a means of enhancing civic engagement. “I have always been bewildered by people who say, ‘Oh god, history, it’s so dull.’ Now, maybe it seemed dull because, to be honest, maybe it was taught badly. Maybe it was reduced to mind-numbing treaties and irrelevant battles and dates. But that’s not history. That’s a calendar. History is the most colorful, dramatic, emotional, inspiring, outraging subject I can think of. It is life. And if we walk away from it or if we minimize it or over-simplify it, it seems to me we’re doing a great disservice to ourselves.”
Great stuff. The full interview is available here. A edited transcript is on the LFA blog here.
E.D. Hirsch, Jr., a slightly awkward man with a quick smile, seems an unlikely combatant in the culture wars. Once best known in academic circles as a literary critic, author, English professor, and scholar of hermeneutics, the theory and methodology of interpretation of texts, Hirsch was catapulted to the center of the culture debate with the publication of his 1987 book Cultural Literacy (Houghton Mifflin).
Since then, Hirsch has become a lightning rod for criticism from multiculturalists in the academy. Said Harvard professor Howard Gardner in 1997: “[Hirsch] has swallowed a neoconservative caricature of contemporary American education. If this kind of angry, stereotypical thinking is what results from a ‘core knowledge’ orientation, then I want no part of it.” But Hirsch’s supporters, including national organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers, argue that his work espousing a coherent and content-rich curriculum for American students has been an indispensable part of school improvement.
Hirsch is professor emeritus of education and humanities at the
… In May, 2006, Education Sector Co-director Andrew J. Rotherham sat down with Hirsch in
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