How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation

In this powerful manifesto, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., urges America’s schools, particularly at the elementary level, to educate our children more effectively to help heal and preserve the nation.

“Profound, vital, and correct. Hirsch highlights the essence of our American being and the radical changes in education necessary to sustain that essence. Concerned citizens, teachers, and parents take note! We ignore this book at our peril.”―Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York City Public Schools

Since the 1960s, schools have been relying on “child-centered learning.” History, geography, science, civics, and other essential knowledge have been dumbed down by vacuous learning “techniques” and “values-based” curricula. Indoctrinated by graduate schools of education, our administrators and educators believe they are teaching reading and critical-thinking skills. Yet these cannot be taught in the absence of an educational foundation common to all.

The consequence is a loss of civic competence that enables us to work together, understand one another, and make coherent, informed decisions. A broken approach to schooling not only leaves our children underprepared and erodes the American Dream but also loosens the spiritual bonds that hold the nation together. Drawing on early schoolmasters and educational reformers such as Noah Webster and Horace Mann and their successors, as well as the latest cognitive science, Hirsch charts the rise and fall of the American early education system and provides a blueprint for closing the national gap in communication and allegiance. Urgently needed and compelling, How to Educate a Citizen can galvanize our schools to equip children with the power of shared knowledge our democracy needs to survive.