Essay Review - Questioning Core Assumptions: A Critical Reading of and Response to E. D. Hirsch’s The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them

TThe Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them
By E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
New York: Doubleday, 1996. 317 pp. $24.95.

It is naive to think of the school curriculum as neutral knowledge. Rather, what counts as legitimate knowledge is the result of complex power relations and struggles among identifiable class, race, gender, and religious groups. (Apple, 1993, p. 46)

In The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them, E. D. Hirsch presents his analysis of education in the United States and his vision of how schools need to change. This review deconstructs Hirsch’s ideological position and interrogates its relationship to broader rightist mobilizations. The Schools We Need is not a solitary work produced in a vacuum; it is symbolic of a body of literature situated within a conservative political landscape and growing educational movement. In providing a critical reading of and response to Hirsch’s text, my primary intention is therefore to discern its fundamental premises as they relate to ongoing cultural struggles and rightist mobilizations. It is my hope, however, that this review will not only reveal Hirsch’s core assumptions, but also call them into question. To accomplish this, Buras begins by locating Hirsch’s work within New Right politics. Next, Buras provides an overview of the book and lay out and respond to its fundamental assumptions. Lastly, Buras discusses the role these assumptions play in building political alliances and situate the book within the conservative restoration, particularly the Core Knowledge Movement, the educational initiative connected to Hirsch’s work.