E.D. Hirsch, Jr. is the founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of several acclaimed books on education in which he has persisted as a voice of reason making the case for equality of educational opportunity.
A highly regarded literary critic and professor of English earlier in his career, Dr. Hirsch recalls being “shocked into education reform” while doing research on written composition at a pair of colleges in Virginia. During these studies he observed that a student’s ability to comprehend a passage was determined in part by the relative readability of the text, but even more by the student’s background knowledge.
This research led Dr. Hirsch to develop his concept of cultural literacy—the idea that reading comprehension requires not just formal decoding skills but also wide-ranging background knowledge. In 1986 he founded the Core Knowledge Foundation. A year later he published Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, which remained at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for more than six months. His subsequent books include The Schools We Need, The Knowledge Deficit, The Making of Americans, How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation, American Ethnicity and Shared Knowledge
In How to Educate a Citizen (September, 2020), E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began thirty years ago with his classic bestseller Cultural Literacy, urging America’s public schools, particularly in Preschool – Grade 8, to educate our children using common, coherent and sequenced curricula to help heal and preserve the nation.
Royalty earnings from all Core Knowledge books edited by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. go to support the nonprofit Core Knowledge Foundation. Dr. Hirsch receives no remuneration from the Foundation.
ARTICLES BY E. D. HIRSCH, JR.
The following links take you to a selection from among the many articles, essays, and speeches of Core Knowledge founder E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (Each link opens a new web page or PDF document.)
Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Spring 2017
American Educator, Winter 2016-2017
The Atlantic, September 21, 2016
Remarks on Receiving the James Bryant Conant Award, July 10, 2012
American Educator, Spring 2008
Presentation to the 18th Education Trust National Conference, Washington, D.C., November 9, 2007
American Educator, Spring 2006
An essay that first appeared in Education Week, February 2, 2000
Convocation address, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, October 6, 1999