Biography of e d hirsch core knowledge

American literary critic

This article is about the professor and educator. For the American football player, see Ed Hirsch.

Eric "E. D." Donald Hirsch Jr. (born March 22 1928) is an American educator, literary critic, and theorist of education.^[1] He is professor emeritus of humanities at the University of Virginia.^{[HirschPublications 1]}

Hirsch is best known for his 1987 book Cultural Literacy, which was a national best-seller and a catalyst for the standards movement in American education.^[2]Cultural Literacy included a list of approximately 5,000 "names, phrases, dates, and concepts every American should know" in order to be "culturally literate."^[3][4] Hirsch's arguments for cultural literacy and the contents of the list were controversial and widely debated in the late 1980s and early '90s.^[5]

Hirsch is the founder and chairman of the non-profit Core Knowledge Foundation, which publishes a