Need to change course: June 2019 Editorial

Since 2011, the ideology that informs much of the current party of government's approach to education comes from one E. D. Hirsch, a controversial American educator. His pedagogy prioritises rote learning and an endless memorisation of facts in the pursuit of what he terms ‘Core Knowledge’. Someone lacking ‘Core Knowledge’ is not ‘culturally literate’, a phrase he uses to refer to an individual's ability to participate in the culture they find themselves in. His ideas were brought over to the UK by Core Knowledge UK, a group set up by Civitas in 2010.

While presented as a benign and objective approach to education, in practice it reinforces rigid social structures, presided over by those who get to decide what knowledge is important. It results in cultural hegemony and an education hierarchy which lacks nuance and is ill-equipped to deal with variations that arise as a result of individual's background, such as their gender, disability, race, culture, or class. The organisation claims that it is ‘not prescriptive in its implementation’ yet publishes a book series titled What Your Child Needs to Know.¹