Knowledge matters! Anyone who has struggled to read an article stuffed with technical or legal jargon, or with arcane references to obscure places and events, has had a taste of what it’s like to be a child who has been deprived of the cultural touchstones that literate adults take for granted. Hirsch is performing a brave and invaluable service by reminding us that proficient reading depends not just on skilled eyes and ears but on an educated mind.
— Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, author of The Language Instinct and The Sense of Style

Hirsch has done it again. He has produced the most clear and well-grounded argument for why a knowledge-centric education is critical for enhancing educational equity. He pulls no punches. Why Knowledge Matters provides thoughtful solutions to important education issues.
— Susan B. Neuman, professor and chair, Teaching and Learning Department, Steinhardt School, New York University

If you are frustrated and angry about the over-testing of students, the narrowing of the curriculum, the scapegoating of teachers, and the persistence of the achievement gap, you must read this brilliant book. Hirsch persuasively explains how all these phenomena are related, and points the way forward to a better education for all.
— Daniel T. Willingham, professor, University of Virginia

Hirsch’s call for 'a better-educated citizenry' should be heeded by educators and administrators alike. — Publishers Weekly

Hirsch’s call for a renewal of rich content in the early grades based on social justice concerns as well as research on student achievement and learning theory is extraordinarily timely and makes Why Knowledge Matters one of the most important education books of 2016. Parents, educators, and policymakers should read it closely. — Gary W. Houchens, Bowling Green Daily News

Hirsch’s call for curricular coherency through deep content knowledge is a welcome proposal in an era of narrowed curriculum and skills-based high-stakes testing. — Pamela Bolotin Joseph, Educational Review

Living in an era when news is faked, alternative facts guide national policy, assertions are accepted on the basis of volume or repetition rather than evidence, reasoned debate is ridiculed, and scientific findings are routinely dismissed, it is difficult not to be drawn to a title such as Why Knowledge Matters. — Bertram C. Bruce, Educational Theory