HW 45

E.D. Hirsch Jr's opinion on schooling reminds me nothing of SOF's idea of schooling-he believes we should focus on learning and grasping the concepts of subjects rather than just learning every subject in its fullest way. Like the Wikipedia article on him says: "Hirsch proposed that Romanticized, anti-knowledge theories of education prevalent in America are not only the cause of America's lackluster educational performance, but also a cause of widening inequalities in class and race. Hirsch portrays the focus of American educational theory as one which attempts to give students intellectual tools such as "critical thinking skills", but which denigrates teaching any actual content" This goes against SOF's beliefs that we should have fewer subjects but still learn more in the few subjects we have. He believes that there are things that every student should learn depending on what grade they are in and should just keep learning more of the "appropriate" things in the grade they are in. It is more of a "quantity over quality" approach to schooling children. He even wrote a book called The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, which is a dictionary that contains all important facts a person needs to know to be considered smart and literate in his eyes and to me, they seem like basic facts such as who MLK is. I don't believe that much in his opinions at all because even though i do believe that one should know who MLK is or what Roe vs. Wade is just because it was so significant in changing the way a majority of America thought, I don't believe that only facts should be taught in school because that can't get a person very far in life because a person also needs to have basic life skills in addition to knowing facts.


Theodore R. Sizer's arguments on schooling agree more with SOF's type of teaching than with Hirsch's. He believes that it is "quality over quantity" schooling-less subjects are taught but the students should be able to grasp the core classes very well rather than just having many different subjects. This following quote as said in Sizer's obituary in the New York Times really reminds me of SOF: "the student is a valued worker in that community, with the teacher in the role of mentor or coach. Depth of knowledge is emphasized over breadth, with the mastery of a few core subjects preferred over the scattershot spate of electives the modern high school seems to favor." We clearly don't have many electives or subjects but we do have the standard classes: english, math, science, and history that will actually help us in life. We also have to develop "critical thinking skills" and i definitley believe that in SOF, 1 of the mottos is that we should "teach" ourselves and our teachers are just there to egg us along and help us when needed. I believe this idea seems a bit more left wing that Hirsch's because Hirsch's ideas seem much more rigid and follow the authority member type of schooling whereas Sizer's is more free-thinking. I agree more with Sizer's sort of teaching because it is important to learn a few things very well than have various ideas just shoved into a student's head and not have them explained to him/her.