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The Making of Americans

Democracy and Our Schools

The Making of Americans( )
Author: Hirsch, E. D.
ISBN:978-0-300-16831-0
Publication Date:Aug 2010
Publisher:Yale University Press
Book Format:Paperback
List Price:USD $17.00USD $17.00
Book Description:

From the bestselling author of Cultural Literacy, a passionate and cogent argument for reforming the way we teach our children

"Ought to be read by anyone interested in the education and training of the next generation of Americans."--Glenn C. Altschuler, Boston Globe Why, after decades of commissions, reforms, and efforts at innovation, do our schools continue to disappoint us?  In this comprehensive...
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Book Details
Pages:288
Detailed Subjects: Education / Schools / Types / Public
Education / Aims & Objectives
Education / Philosophy, Theory & Social Aspects
Physical Dimensions (W X L X H):5.46 x 8.19 x 0.585 Inches
Book Weight:0.64 Pounds
Author Biography
Hirsch, E. D. (Author)
Hirsch is a conservative critic best known for his repudiation of critical approaches to literature (chiefly poststructuralism and New Criticism) that assume that the author's intentions do not determine readings. He argues that any such methodology is guilty of "the organic fallacy," the belief that the text leads a life of its own. For Hirsch, the author's authority is the key to literary interpretation: The critic's job is to reproduce textual meaning by recovering the author's consciousness, which guarantees the validity of an interpretation.

In his two most important books, Validity in Interpretation (1967) and its sequel, The Aims of Interpretation (1976), Hirsch warns against the "critical anarchy" that follows from the "cognitive atheism" of both relativism and subjectivism. For him, these result from a corollary of the organic fallacy, the thesis that meaning is ultimately indeterminate because it changes over time or with the differing interests and values of different readers. According to Hirsch, meaning does not change; only value or significance does, as readers relate a text's fixed meaning to their cultures. If there is more than one valid interpretation of a text, it is because literature may be reduced to more than one "intrinsic genre" or meaning type---the particular set of conventions governing ways of seeing and of making meaning at the time the author was writing.

Many critics suggest that the intentions Hirsch recovers in intrinsic genres are really his own, rather than those of the author, because no one, including Hirsch, can escape his or her historically conditioned frame of reference when developing interpretations of literature. Hirsch's recent books, including Cultural Literacy (1987), are seen as proof of those flaws by those who are troubled by the history and values of the dominant culture that Hirsch insists is the only culture. Hirsch argues that "common knowledge" is being denied minority students and others by femini



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