Letter to Mr. Hirsch

Dear Mr. Hirsch,

As a whole I do not agree with your philosophy of education. It seems to go against most of the educational research being presented in most of today's educational research journals.

In your book The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, you present the concept that all curriculum must be uniform and this was the cases of academic ills. I would like to point out that schools stopped using the uniform curriculum of the past because children were failing and dropping out. A uniform curriculum does not meet the needs of all the different kinds of students. Different students learn in different ways and at different paces. You cannot put students into an intellectual straight jacket by demanding they all memorize certain facts at a certain age.

The scorn you throw at the concept of "age readiness" also flies in the face of research. The reason age 5 was chosen as the best age to start kindergarten was because research found that most children developed their visual acuity by that age sufficiently enough to view letters and numbers. Mr. Hirsh, do you want children to be forced at letters and numbers when their eyes cannot focus on them?

I particularly do not like your over emphasis on memorization and repeated proactive. I am a teacher of special needs students. They are emotionally disturbed and some also have ADHD. Your prescription for education would make my students so agitated that they would be unable to learn. They have difficulty memorizing and repetition cause them to become unfocused.

Your assumption that your prescription would be helping the economically deprived students does not prove to be true. A study by Smith, Lee and New Mann in 2001 showed that low - achieving, economically disadvantaged students learned best and scored higher on standardized test when they received interactive teaching and authentic intellectual work involving original application of knowledge. (Project teaching.)

Mr. Hirsch you promote whole class instruction because it is the most "efficient." It is not efficient when you loose half the class because they are lost and they feel you are not teaching to them.

Finally, your argument that facts and skills that should be taught in school must be measured by objective tests does not work. First what good are facts and skills if you can't apply them? Without application the way you do in project teaching, you loose those skills and forget the facts. Texas is a prime example why continually testing does not work. The students were only taught what was needed to pass the test and in the end lowered learning.

Mr. Hirach your plains for giving remedial work to failures and repeating grades seems like a return to the past. This past was abandoned by the school system because it didn't work.


Sincerely,





Phyllis Lewis