[NLA] (please use this version) More on: ED Hirsch

[George E. Demetrion]

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mathman/edh2cal.htm

(long, but in two parts--but in one message :)

Colleagues:

That web site gets you to E.D. Hirsch's 1997 Address to the California
State Board of Education where he discusses his views of legitimate
research in more polemical tones than he does in the articles cited by
Mev and reviewed by Catherine.  

Though even in the article cited by Mev, which is sophisticated, one
hears overtones of certain caustic remarks against scholarship that is
not of Hirsch's liking.   In the first paragraph cited, note of his use
of the "guru-principle" in trashing what he views as unscientific theory.
 Such trashing shares close analogues in the USDoE Strategic Plan against
"faddism" and "ideology."  There is more than mere coincidence at work
here.  Here's that paragraph:

"Fifty years ago, psychology was dominated by the guru principle. One
declared an allegiance to B.F. Skinner and behaviorism, or to Piaget and
stage theory, or to Vygotsky and social theory. Today, by contrast, a new
generation of cognitive scientists, while duly respectful of these
important figures, have leavened their insights with further evidence
(not least, thanks to new technology), and have been able to take a less
speculative and guru-dominated approach. This is not to suggest that
psychology has now reached the maturity and consensus level of
solid-state physics. But it is now more reliable than it was, say, in the
Thorndike era with its endless debates over transfer of training."

Drawing on Hirsch's assumptions, one would also place critical pedagogy,
feminist theory, and constructivism in a similar light.  Thus, while
Hirsch argues for theory, it is only for theory that can be derived from
the somewhat narrow research/methodological basis that he views as
legitimate.  What is missing in this is the potential role of theory that
is drawn upon as an initial basis in taking on a research program for the
purpose of opening up new realms of thinking and looking at the data than
would otherwise be undertaken.  

One thinks of Freire's field transforming book, Pedagogy of the
Oppressed.  Whatever it's various flaws (and I have written critically,
though not without empathy on this text), in opening up the field of
critical pedagogy, it provided new lenses through which to look at many
facets of education, culture and politics.  The point is not that such
perspectives should go unchecked--uncritically accepted or rejected, but
that the perspectives opened up provide new (many would argue, important)
angles to consider in coming to terms with educational policy and
practice in the US.

Thus, one can look at adult literacy education from the critical lenses
of feminist theory, critical pedagogy, constructvism,  pragmatic
epistemology, and behaviorism and each of these perspectives will shed a
certain different light.  In terms of scholarship based on these
traditions, it is not the "guru-principle" that is at work, except among
uncritical followers, but ways of exploring the data that may have quite
a bit of significance to add.   Scholarship written from any of these
perspectives still needs to stand the test of making sense of the data. 
Beyond that, such work is not designed to get at the truth in any
absolute sense, but represents a means to explore more profoundly, the
depth, the range, and variability of human experience in its many
manifestations, from the psychological, to the socio-political, and the
cultural.  These matters are ignored in the discipline of adult literacy
studies only to its great peril.

To reject this is to assume that the mind is a blank slate and that the
data are simply an objective manifestation of objective reality that
science discovers through refined processes of inquiry that have no
bearing on world views.  Clearly, those refined processes of inquiry are
desirably, but so is an acute analysis of the dynamics in political
culture that may be operative in legitimizing and de-legitimizing certain
other perspectives.

In the following paragraph, which ends the cited essay, note Hirsch's
desire to link educational research to the hard sciences.  This also has
strong parallels in the USDoE Strategic Plan.

"In commenting on a draft of this essay, a federal administrator of
research who has pursued both classroom and laboratory research observes
that, ideally, the relationship between classroom research and cognitive
science ought to parallel the collegial and fruitful relationship between
medical research and biochemistry. This hopeful analogy, he concedes,
could not be validly drawn in describing the educational research of the
past, but he is determined to make the analogy more applicable in the
future. Godspeed!"

In short, whatever science (and his science is incomplete) there is in
Hirsch's work, the issue of political ideology is lurking in the
background.  This is brought out more fully in his address to th CA Board
of Ed.  Note that in its http address, the phrase "mathematically
correct," appears.  This is a caustic slap at the constructivist-based
new math standards promoted by the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics (which played a role in early EFF thinking) that came out  in
the 1990s. 

 In passing some folks think that the K-12 debate on standards is not
germane to the discussion on ABE standards.  I draw on this work because
much more than ABE standards, they highlight the ideological divergence
between conservative and progressive standard bearers.  Now that the
conservative standard bearers are in power and will soon be dominating
NIFL, this K-12 debate, pervasive in the  1990s is more relevant than
ever. 

This discussion of Hirsch is part of a text I'm writing that includes a
chapter on the culture wars pervasive in the K-12 debate on standards. 
This section is preceded by a discussion on the US history standards
established by history professors and public school teachers influenced
by the progressive-leaning new social history.  These standards were
lambasted by Lynne Cheney who led a successful public relations campaign
against them.  The highlight of that campaign was a 99-1 vote in the US
Senate repudiating the standards.  After that debate, the vote stood

Neo-Conservatives 1  Progressives 0

I wonder what it is now?

Many readers may want to stop here.  I add the following commentary on
Hirsch's California Board of Education Address for those who may have an
interest.

George Demetrion
sophocles5 at juno.com
___________________________________________________________

Note among other things in the review of Hirsch's talk to the Board of
Ed. his  discussion of  "consensus" or mainstream research and what gets
legitimized and delegitimized in the process.  Note also, Hirsch's strong
aversion against constructivism and his use of cold war imagery in
painting it in the worst possible light   In short, there's very little
science and a good deal of politics in his polemic.

___________________________________________________________________

Excerpt

Though not specifically in response to the U.S History Standards, E.D.
Hirsh, Jr.'s, (1997) address to the California State Board of Education
points out the sharp divergences in how legitimate knowledge is defined
between the more progressive and the more conservative proponents of the
K-12 standards movement. The fact that it was Hirsch, the author of the
controversial Cultural Literacy (1988), disdained and largely dismissed
by the educational left, that was invited to address the Board of
Education is significant in itself in pointing to the political nature of
the standards movement.

The invitation stemmed from a law in California that "requires education
to be research-based" (p. 1). Hirsh's first response was to point to the
ubiquity of research that can support virtually any educational practice
and policy. The challenge, according to Hirsch is the "need to
discriminate between reliable and unreliable research" (p. 1). 

Dismissing any notion of research providing absolute reliability, Hirsh
instead referred to "a continuous spectrum of reliability in most of the
natural and social sciences." Specifically, he argued, "at the core of
each discipline, there develops a consensus of the learned," a consensus
sufficiently reliable "that you can bet your life and your children's
lives on that core" (p. 1). Beyond the consensus, "on the frontier of the
discipline, there is a lot of disagreement, and we can't tell for sure
what rival theory is right" (p. 2). Instead of basing policy and practice
on the unfathomable universe of research, "the spirit of the [California]
law implies reliable, consensus research" (p. 2). This consensus
research, Hirsch argued, should become the foundation or core knowledge
of the public school curriculum, the basis for instruction, assessment,
and accountability.

In addition to making this basic argument, his address included a strong
polemical tone at the "ideological, anti-empirical sermons" sometimes
expressed at the "education division" at the National Science Foundations
meetings in psychology. He pointed to the pressures of "ideological
conformity" that leads to "unreliable science" which then gets
"disseminated to the education world." This, in turn, results in "an
information gap regarding the findings of mainstream psychology [the only
psychology, according to Hirsch, which should count] as applied to
education" (p. 2).

Drawing on Cold War imagery which reinforced this conservative vision of
research and education, Hirsch linked the alleged progressive educational
movement's "[i]nsistence upon ideological conformity" with biology under
the Soviet Union "under Lysenkoism, which is a theory that bears
similarities to constructivism" (p. 2). Encouraging the California Board
of Education to repudiate any adherence to the "received ideology" of the
state, Hirsch nailed home his message with the epitaph that "[o]ver the
door of every board of education should be posted the watchword:
'Remember Lysenko'" (p. 2). 
In making these assertions, Hirsch would have denied that he was enacting
ideology himself. Instead, he was claiming the realm of the "objective,"
or at the least, advocating adherence to the standards of the widely
recognized mainstream  consensus" view of science. "[S]hould doubts arise
as to who those persons are" that
represent the mainstream consensus of research, Hirsch informed the Board
members they could obtain "guidance from the National Academy of
Sciences." As he expressed it, there was no need "to depend any longer on
the guru-principle" (p. 3). [Note--as if that is the choice--a favorite
ploy of neo-conservatives in their varied attack on the "far left."]

The educational establishment was the brunt of Hirsch's disdain. For
example, far more educational "experts [so called, based on Hirsch's
polemic] have gotten on.the performance-test bandwagon...who would
outnumber by far the toilers in the psychometric vineyards who publish
meticulous articles in the best journals." Nonetheless, "[t]op scientists
in the field would advise you against using end-of-year performance tests
[which] are the least reliable and the most expensive tests that exist"
(p. 3). The issue is not how many educational "experts" promote
performance-based assessment or even that their work is published in
blind peer review journals. After all, "[t]he number of people who
believe in flying saucers is greater than the total number of
astrophysicists in the world" (p. 3). The cold hard fact is "that science
is an elitist subject, and ought to be so" (p. 4). It is not the
consensus in the field per se, that is important, but "the consensus that
counts is the consensus of the learned" (p. 4):

"That kind of consensus is determined by disinterested, high-quality peer
review in high quality journals...In the end, of course, only evidence
and argument count in science. But there is evidence and there is
evidence, argument and argument."

 It is an uncomfortable thing to say, but the average quality and
reliability of science in the best educational journals is below the
quality and reliability of science in the best mainstream journals. We
lay persons can't judge the quality of the research. Figures don't lie,
but how do we know which figures are accurate, complete, and rightly
interpreted? Our only recourse is to depend on the reputations of the
most highly regarded journals and scientists..Such highly regarded
sources are not always right, but they are far more likely to be right.
The consensus of the learned in first rate scientific work is one of the
closest connections we have with the reality principle" (p. 4).

Though he does not mention it, one can only assume that Hirsch would be
dismissive of the "validity" and "reliability" of the vast majority of
articles in such a prominent journal as Educational Theory. Articles in
this journal, arguably, one of the most sophisticated in the field of
education, deal with the highly speculative and contentious realm of
values and politics at the "frontiers" of the academic disciplines.  They
are hopelessly beyond the purview of science to objectively discern
through consensus mainstream methodologies. Whatever value such
speculative insights may offer in the development of new knowledge and
new insights, they do not belong [on Hirsch's view] as the basis for
policy and practice related to the core knowledge students need in K-12
education.

Pointing to the victory of a skilled-based approach to reading theory
through the action of the state legislature in California ("I won't
revisit reading research, since the Board and its advisors have already
had the benefit of first-class scientific advice" (p. 3), Hirsch turned
his attack on the "fuzzy math" promoted by the National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). He was particularly critical of their
emphasis on constructivist theory. That this shift in thinking by the
NCTM from a fact-based, figure-based approach to higher order thinking
was labeled as "reform," while the critique against it was labeled as
"anti-reform" represented a "kind of ideological bias in 
reporting.characteristic of the educational world." This example
represents "the need for constant vigilance" (p. 4) against the
Lysenkoism, which has infected the progressive educational establishment
since its inception.

There was little in Hirsch's address that pointed to the substance of
educational research,.  However, there was much argumentation in defining
the realm of legitimate scholarship among the "best" (particularly in the
field of the hard sciences and harder social sciences), with a decidedly
quantitative focus. Moreover, Hirsch's case was not made, as Levine (a
historian) had referred to, in a substantive point-by-point evidential
basis of argumentation.  Rather, Hirsch defined scholarly  legitimacy, as
simply  based on an assumed mainstream consensus that allegedly exists
within all or the vast majority of academic disciplines.  This standard,
particularly for "laymen," is the closest we can have to objectivity. 
Views outside the mainstream pale were characterized by Hirsch s as
ideologically slanted, unworthy of serious consideration.

Whatever consensus may have existed in certain fields in the physical and
"harder" social sciences,  there was no such consensus for the
contentious field of U.S. history based on historical scholarship from
the early 1970s through the mid-1990s. Hirsch did not address that
discipline in his address, though he has elsewhere in his call for
mastery of facts, with less attention focused on critical inquiry and
"interpretation."  

Still,  it would have been interesting to learn of what the mainstream
consensus consisted among the "best" academic scholars in the field of
U.S. history, since the experts were saying different things. Hirsch's
quest for objectivity may have required him to look outside the realm of
professional history for more reliable sources of expertise, perhaps to
the neo-conservative think tanks that fueled the rhetorical war against
the original U.S. history standards. 

As the discussion both in the field of history and in the areas of
reading and writing (below) illuminate, the quest for standards raised
highly conflict-driven political, cultural and pedagogical issues. These
were seldom resolved because they had less to do with methodology per se
and "rigorous" scholarship, than of values of the profoundest and most
symbolic sort stemming both from the academy and the broader political
culture between the progressive left and their neo-conservative critics.

George Demetrion


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