Hirsch’s basic premise, laid out most clearly in his most recent book The Knowledge Deficit, is so straightforward that observers outside of education are often surprised at the uproar he sparks. Most school curricula are, according to Hirsch, vacuous and disjointed. Hirsch believes that knowledge acquisition is a deliberate process, requiring curriculum that emphasizes content rather than process and it must be organized around systemic rather than random acquisition of knowledge. Obvious? Well, this is a fundamental dispute in education circles because, as Hirsch discusses in Knowledge Deficit, much of American educational theory is predicated on 19th-century romantic ideas that celebrate learning and the acquisition of knowledge as a natural process. Where reading is concerned, Hirsch is especially vehement that lack of attention to curriculum is hamstringing efforts to improve literacy.
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