E.D. Hirsch, Jr., now retired, was until recently Professor of English and of Education and Humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of several widely read books on the subjects of cultural literacy and education reform, including Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Houghton Mifflin, 1987), The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking [...]
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E.D. Hirsch on Education Reform
September 20, 2011
Steve Jobs’s Greatest Speech
September 18, 2011
Many of you will already know about the eloquent and deeply moving commencement address that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005. For those of you who may not have encountered this great speech before, we wanted to draw it to your attention. Steve Jobs, we need scarcely say, is the college drop-out who, [...]
Great Teachers: Jaime Escalante
August 27, 2011
Most of the great teachers out there are unknown beyond the circle of their students, colleagues, and families. That is certainly not the case with Jaime Escalante. Escalante is the celebrated high-school math teacher who led a group of students from Garfield High, in a tough neighborhood of East Los Angeles, to excel at such [...]
Gustavo Dudamel and El Sistema
August 24, 2011
Classical music lovers will probably know that Gustavo Dudamel is the recently appointed music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. But all those interested in education should take an interest in this remarkable young man. Mr. Dudamel, who is thirty years old, is certainly an excellent conductor. To see for yourself, watch this YouTube video [...]
Prager University—Some Notes
August 22, 2011
Well-known radio talk-show host and conservative pundit, Dennis Prager, has inaugurated an interesting, if somewhat offbeat, Internet educational experiment. He has assembled a group of like-minded television and radio personalities in order to put together a package of short video lectures on a variety of topics from a conservative political perspective. The videos incorporate high [...]
The Mental Illness “Epidemic”: A Debate
August 20, 2011
According to certain measures (such as the number of people who qualify for Federal Goverment disability payments), the number of adults in this country who are mentally ill has risen 2.5 times over the past twenty years. For children, the comparable figures are simply stunning. The number of children diagnosed as mentally ill today is [...]
Geoffrey Canada Interview
August 19, 2011
As many of you will know, Geoffrey Canada is the founder, President, and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, a multifaceted educational effort based on the idea that transforming a school requires transforming the community surrounding the school. Mr. Canada is a graduate of Bowdoin College (BA) and Harvard Graduate School of Education (MA). He holds [...]
Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture
August 16, 2011
Randy Pausch (1940-2008) was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon Institute. He specialized in the development of human-computer interfaces. In August of 2007, Pausch learned that he had metastatic pancreatic cancer, and was given only a few months to live. The following month, he delivered what has come to be known as his “Last [...]
Political Bias in the University Classroom
August 16, 2011
The Contrarian Forum has provided us with a record (here) of a spirited and interesting debate that took place on the campus of the University of Oregon in 2008 on the topic of “Political Bias in the University Classroom.” The debate is between Cary Nelson, Professor of English at the University of Illinois (Urbana/Champaign), and [...]
Boys and Elementary Education
August 16, 2011
Many statistics indicate that boys as a group are not flourishing in today’s elementary school environment. For example: Suspension rate for boys = 2.5 × the rate for girls Expulsion rate for boys = 3.3 × the rate for girls Number of boys in special education classes ≥ 2 × the number of girls Number of pupils [...]
Ancient Wisdom and Modern Love
August 12, 2011
“You are the most important event in your parents’ love life.” This is one of the many insights that Professor David O’Connor conveys to his students in his highly popular University of Notre Dame course, “Ancient Wisdom and Modern Love.” This outstanding course is an exploration of the subject of erotic love from a variety of viewpoints, [...]
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