Our Democracy Depends on Shared Knowledge
By E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
(This article is available in PDF format only.)

America, "the last best hope of earth," is held together not by a national religion or shared ethnicity, but by our diverse citizens' devotion to freedom and democracy. From our founding to today, education scholars have been concerned with creating schools that would graduate civic-minded citizens dedicated to the common good. As the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln knew, the only way to create such schools would be to establish a common, core curriculum. Such a curriculum would not only strengthen our democracy, it would increase our commitment to equality by opening to all children the educational opportunities that today, sadly, are available mainly to our most privileged.
 

To read the article, please go to http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/.