Dear Core Knowledge Community,
I’ve just received from the printers my latest book. It’s dedicated to you. It’s entitled American Ethnicity, and the dedication runs as follows:
This book is dedicated to the Core Knowledge pioneers – the hundreds of independent-minded teachers, parents, and writers, and the staff of the Core Knowledge Foundation – who together have made real headway in overcoming social disadvantage.
At my age (94) I’ve got to assume it’s my last book, and I hope it’s one that will have a good effect. In a way, it’s the sequel to the book that got me started in educational reform 35 years ago – Cultural Literacy (1987). It’s a sequel since it has in its last chapter a big excerpt from the soon to be released 2022 Core Knowledge Sequence.
I’ve learned a lot since then, and cognitive science has forged ahead in a gratifying way that has confirmed the tack that you and I have been taking to improve the education of our children. The distinguished cognitive scientist Steven Pinker has kindly written a plug for the book.
With the encouragement of another distinguished cognitive scientist, my dear friend Professor Daniel Willingham, I have focused the first part of the book on the well-meant but incorrect doctrine being taught to our prospective teachers – developmentalism.
I’m publishing the book through the Core Knowledge Foundation, so it can be downloaded gratis by educators as a pdf. It is also available as a kindle book on Amazon, and as a paperback from bookstores and the Core Knowledge Foundation at $9.99. There’s also a True False quiz within the book, which can form the basis for book discussion groups in schools, school boards, teachers, and parents.
As soon as I get my voice back from an endoscopic trip to the hospital, it will be available as an audible book.
I hope you will read it and help spread awareness of the science that it describes and the results that it documents from schools that have followed the science. Those schools have dramatically fostered greater fairness, unity, and achievement in pupils from all ethnic and racial origins, and from all income levels: by effectively teaching them American ethnicity, and thereby imparting to them a high level of literacy.
With thanks for your good work and support of the cause!
E.D. Hirsch