|
|
These are great books if you need an outline of what your child should be learning when. E. D. Hirsch has done a good job with these books. Mr. Hirsch is the author of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know. It was a national best-seller. Here's some comments from the General Introduction of What Your First Grader Needs to Know, "In 1987 I published a book, Cultural Literacy, that described the decline of American education over the past four decades, and offered suggestions for reversing that decline. Though sprinkled with scholarly footnotes and descriptions of research, the book, to everyone's surprise, became a best-seller. Hundreds of supporting letters from parents and teachers inspired me to set up a foundation devoted to the educational improvements that Cultural Literacy advocated. For the past four years, that organization, the Core Knowledge Foundation, has sought and gained the help of some two thousand teachers and scholars in focusing on a single education reform: imparting a core of shared knowledge to all elementary school students from first through sixth grade. The present series is the first fruit of that cooperative, nationwide effort."
I found Cultural Literacy to be a very thought-provoking book. I was surprised that I liked it. I found it years ago at a used bookstore about the time that we started homeschooling. And then when Hirsch's What Your Nth Grader Needs to Know books started coming out, I scarfed them quickly up knowing that they were based on Cultural Literacy. At about the same time, I ran across The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy so I picked that up too. (Wow, it sounds like I was on a little book-buying spree, doesn't it?) If you knew everything in this book (and chances are that most adults know a fair bit of what is in here), you'd almost for sure win on Jeopardy! :-) Here's the names of all the chapter titles:
The Bible
Mythology and Folklore
Proverbs
Idioms
World Literature, Philosophy, and Religion
Literature in English
Conventions of Written English
Fine Arts
World History to 1550
World History since 1550
American History to 1865
American History since 1865
World Politics
American Politics
World Geography
American Geography
Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology
Business and Economics
Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Earth Sciences
Life Sciences
Medicine and Health
Technology
Whew! That's it. That's a lot!
Here's the entries from one page in the Fine Arts section: Impressionism, Ionic, "I've Been Working on the Railroad," jazz, "Jesus Loves Me," "John Brown's Body," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "John Henry," Jolly Roger, Scott Joplin, "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho," Justice, kettledrum, Francis Scott Key, and King Kong. There's usually a paragraph written on each of the entries, sometimes just a sentence or two.
Here's some more examples of entries--one page full's from the World History Since 1550 section: Iron Curtain, Ivan the Terrible, Jack the Ripper, Jacobins, Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II, Kaiser, kamikaze, Khmer Rouge, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Nikita Khrushchev, Captain William Kidd, Klondike gold rush, Korean War, Kuomintang. With 600+ pages, this books makes a handy reference book to have lying around.
Anyway, back to What Your Nth Grader Needs to Know. We've (my 9 yo and I) been going through the third grade book--spending 20-30 minutes a day. Some of the topics included are sayings--like "cold shoulder," "beat around the bush," and "actions speak louder than words." There are a few others and all of the sayings have explanations that go with them. Rome is also one of the topics as is the colonies here in America in the 1600s. Stories, grammar, math (multiplication, division, time, addition, subtraction, geometry), health, physical sciences, music, and visual arts are all also included. In fact, most of the 7 books follow a pattern of covering different aspects of these topics. These books really contain a lot of pertinent information.
It's a ... I'm not sure I'd say "comforting" feeling ... but it's something akin to "comforting" to know that if our children can learn what's in these books (and can retain it), that they'll have a very good, broad foundation and framework upon which to place the additional knowledge that they'll be learning for the rest of their lives. No, I'm not saying that these books are the end-all and be-all, but they're the best books of their kind on the market today (as far as I know). They're definitely worth checking out of the library if you can't swing the price right now.
Kindergarten softcover |
First Grade hardcover softcover |
Second Grade hardcover softcover |
Third Grade softcover |
Fourth Grade hardcover softcover |
Fifth Grade softcover |
Sixth Grade hardcover softcover |
softcover |
softcover |
hardcover |
softcover |
hardcover |