Three Views of Education: Nostalgia, History, and Voodoo

Bloom and His Detractors

“…Chapter 2 of Cultural Literacy addresses these issues within a very useful broader survey of research in the dialectic between acquisition of factual knowledge and cognitive, reading, and writing development. Hirsch's use of research findings is sometimes questionable, as Scholes (1988) and others have disclosed, but that does not diminish the value for rhetcomp studies of the agenda of topics and sources he tackled here.…”

“…In contrast to Bloom's flamboyant personality, Hirsch is personally low-keyed and temperate. That is why I have long been disconcerted by the gratuitous nastiness and personal derision heaped on Hirsch by critics such as Barbara HerrnsteinSmith (1990),Robert Scholes (1988), Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux (1991), and Eugene Provenzo Jr.…”

The Rhetoricity ofCultural Literacy

“…8. T. L. Papillon, in his review of The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates, also underscores Too's claim that Hirsch shares "with Isocrates an interest in training the citizenry Smith (1990), Robert Scholes (1988), Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux (1991), and Eugene Provenzo Jr. (2005). (Other critics dismiss Hirsch with a knowing smirk but show no sign of actually having read him.)…”

Who framed english? A case study of the media's role in curriculum change

“…This approach to cultural literacy has been described as 'voodoo literacy' 45 . There is a certain appeal in its simplicity, and indeed the conservatively-oriented Institute of Public Affairs was prompted by the debate to commission a survey to discover how 'culturally literate' Australian 15 year olds were when tested on a modified Hirsch-style inventory.…”