Letter to E.D. Hirsch

Dear E.D. Hirsch

I am a teacher of history and psychology at the secondary level and have read with interest your philosophy on education reform. I have these comments:

The main focus of your philosophy seems to be that all schools should have a uniform core curriculum across the board. The contradiction I find with your philosphy is your comment, "different schools might even have different cores" , how is that uniform?

My belief is that every school should have a core curriculum to follow. The variation has to be that depending on where the school is located and what the general graduating population's goals are after high school should influence the district administration on what the core curriculum should include. For example, a small town in the midwest that has a population of farm owners who for generations have passed the business onto family may be better suited with a curriculum geared toward educating young people on how to run a farm business. Another city in the United States whose population plans to attend college and enter the World of Corporate America may have a different core curriculum stressing workplace readiness standards along with the educational subject matter.

As I read your belief that you defend the use of memory and repeated practice, it reminded me of my high school years during the late 70s and early 80s. That was pretty much how we learned: teacher provided information, students studied and memorized the information and students were assessed by a written test. I believe students learned and I felt I retained alot of the information I learned in high school.

The philosophy of "project oriented" learning in our schools today is becoming more popular for one reason: to accommodate special education needs. You may feel that the progressive education techniques dominate schools. I think that to a degree, schools have to utilize alternative assessment methods to accommodate students who have special needs and need to explore a variety of learning methods in order for the students to succeed. I do believe that some schools are too project oriented and should find a balance in their curriculum between traditional and alternative assessment.

Your interpretation that every district allows teachers to interpret and teach subject matter at will is true to an extent. Many schools give their teachers a lot of freedom to decide on how and what to teach but there are also the districts that monitor staff, especially non-tenured, very closely. I do not believe it is such a bad thing to allow teachers to be creative if the students leave with knowledge they can use later in life.

I enjoyed reading your philosophy of cultural literacy as I agree strongly that is is important for a student to be "worldly" in order to succeed in life.

Alice Burnett