Voting Station

E.D. Hirsch

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Educator

The Resume

    (March 22, 1928- )
    Born in Memphis, Tennessee
    Birth name was Eric Donald Hirsch, Jr.
    Educator, literary critic, and author
    Chaired the English department at the University of Virginia
    Wrote ‘Validity in Interpretation’ (1967), ‘Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know’ (1987), ‘The Schools We Need: And Why We Don’t Have Them’ (1996), and ‘The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools’ (2010)
    Founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation (1986)

Why he might be annoying:

    He considers himself a political liberal, but his views on education were embraced mainly by conservatives like William Bennett.
    He is a critic of education who never taught in a public school.
    He said about comparisons of ‘Cultural Literacy’ and Allan Bloom’s ‘Closing of the American Mind,’ which was published the same year, ‘That was just bad luck ... Allan Bloom really was an elitist.’
    Harvard professor Howard Gardner accused him of having ‘swallowed a neoconservative caricature of contemporary American education.’

Why he might not be annoying:

    Over 1,300 school in the US adopted the Core Knowledge Foundation’s curriculum.
    He does not draw a salary from the Core Knowledge Foundation or earn royalties from the educational guides that he has written for it.
    In response to criticism that his books perpetuate a ‘dead white European men’ status quo, he said, ‘The point wasn’t to perpetuate the culture of power. It was to open the door to kids who don’t have the keys to power.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 14 Votes: 92.86% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying