`CULTURAL LITERACY' AUTHOR ZEROES IN ON CHILDREN

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 5, 1992                   TAG: 9201010237
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 9   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: ELIZABETH WILKERSON
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium
`CULTURAL LITERACY' AUTHOR ZEROES IN ON CHILDREN
Two new books edited by Dr. E.D. Hirsch Jr. can help parents practice what he preaches.
Since 1987, when his best-selling book "Cultural Literacy" was published for adults, the University of Virginia English professor has been promoting the idea that children also should share a basic body of knowledge. Schools have gone too far in emphasizing how - not what - children learn, he argues.
If schools taught the same things in each grade, he said, cultural differences would not translate into educational disadvantage. Children could learn together with a shared base of information, and teachers could count on their pupils' knowing certain things from the year before, Hirsch said.
He has published adult and children's versions of dictionaries of what educated Americans should know.
In his 1987 best seller, "Cultural Literacy," Hirsch argued that there is a common body of knowledge that educated Americans must share to be "culturally literate" and communicate with one another or understand what they read or hear.
The book's list of what constitutes that body of knowledge prompted accusations that Hirsch did not fully recognize the contributions of all the groups that make up America's culture. He has since expanded his list to include a wider range of cultures.
Now, with "What Your 1st Grader Needs To Know" and "What Your 2nd Grader Needs to Know," Hirsch offers a way for parents or teachers to pass on to children the core body of knowledge he and more than 100 experts have agreed on.
Critics have argued that Hirsch and his supporters are trying to impose a monolithic culture on others. The critics say America's diversity argues against the common body of knowledge he promotes.
Hirsch's two new books carefully mix in African-American, Hispanic and American Indian stories with Aesop and Beatrix Potter in a section on familiar stories, for example.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB