The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them

Now in paperback with a new introduction, The Schools We Need offers a powerful, compelling, and unassailable argument for reforming America's schooling methods and ideas--by one of America's most important educators, and author of the bestselling Cultural Literacy.

For over fifty years, Ame [...]
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Now in paperback with a new introduction, The Schools We Need offers a powerful, compelling, and unassailable argument for reforming America's schooling methods and ideas--by one of America's most important educators, and author of the bestselling Cultural Literacy.

For over fifty years, American schools have operated under the assumption that challenging children academically is unnatural for them, that teachers do not need to know the subjects they teach, that the learning "process" should be emphasized over the facts taught. All of this is tragically wrong.

Renowned educator and author E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that, by disdaining content-based curricula while favoring abstract--and discredited--theories of how a child learns, the ideas uniformly taught by our schools have done terrible harm to America's students. Instead of preparing our children for the highly competitive, information-based economy in which we now live, our schools' practices have severely curtailed their ability, and desire, to learn.

With an introduction that surveys developments in education since the hardcover edition was published, The Schools We Need is a passionate and thoughtful book that will appeal to the millions of people who can't understand why America's schools aren't educating our children.

"Offers a penetrating and compelling analysis of how, despite the good intentions of educators, bad ideas and failed theories now characterize American education."
--The Indianapolis Star

"A brilliant, combative, and intensely practical discussion of how our education system got into its current mess and what we must do to pull it out."
--Donna Fowler, American Federation of Teachers

"A damning, highly provocative, full-scale assault on today's educational establishment."
--Publishers Weekly