Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know

A must-read for parents and teachers, this major bestseller reveals how cultural literacy is the hidden key to effective education and presents 5000 facts that every literate American should know. 

In this forceful manifesto Professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that children in the United States are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. They lack cultural literacy: a grasp of background information that writers and speakers assume their audience already has. Even if a student has a basic competence in the English language, he or she has little chance of entering the American mainstream without knowing what a silicon chip is, or when the Civil War was fought. An important work that has engendered a nationwide debate on our educational standards, Cultural Literacy is a required reading for anyone concerned with our future as a literate nation.

• The New First Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Your Child Needs to Know
• The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know
• The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them
• Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children from Failed Educational Theories
• The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children
• Experience And Education
• Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood
• The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto
• Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong: And What We Can Do About It
• What Your Preschooler Needs to Know: Get Ready for Kindergarten (The Core Knowledge Series)