colleges of education. since the 1960's there was a seven democratic increase in the number of low-income students taking the s.a.t.. thus decreasing the proportion of white middle class test takers. in other words the decline represents our virtuous attempt to send everyone to college. that is a totally incorrect explanation. some decades ago i analyzed the underlying data just after the college board issued full statistics of 1984. i found that there was a constant pool of about 1 million test takers in this period command nonetheless the absolute number in this pool of students who score above 600 declined by

56%, and the absolute number of students who score above 650 declined by 73%. a sudden influx of black and hispanic test takers cannot explain why a large numbers of college bound middle class white students should suddenly have become less proficient. that is what happened. the harvard sociologists christopher jinx noted that the state of iowa, which was 90% white and 98% middle class commercial with the same decline in trouble, tense, and he analyzed various explanations and concluded the only plausible one was over the decades since the end of the second world war american schools had become less

oriented to content to coherent academic subject matter. schoolbooks following suit had become watered-down in substance and vocabulary. this chart represents a calamity for the country. as tragic as a war or hurricane and in some ways worse because the effects are more widespread and they have been more in during. i guess my seemed his behalf to dig ourselves out of this educational hole and get back on track. this next chart shows that we are showing no signs of doing so. it's the longitudinal pattern of verbal competence from the

nation's report card. the top line represents 12th graders, the middle line is great eight and the bottom-line greed for and there's been an uptick and fourth grade representing improvement and the teaching of decoding skills but no improvement in mature literacy or language ability. for reasons that i discuss in this new book. i'm leaving a lot of stress on verbal competence. of language proficiency is this goal of skills because it increases a whole range of activities required for citizenship, for learning and for earning. we judge our schools today on their ability to teach reading. but i prefer the term language proficiency because what is at issue is the ability to communicate no matter what the medium is and communicate with

others largest in ability to understand what is written. economists have found if you factor in language proficiency the notorious earnings gap between blacks and whites or hispanics and whites virtually disappears. that is a little appreciated fact. this is still the land of opportunity for those read, write, speak, and listen and the national language. in the very best urban public schools we have had success in improving math scores that cannot be said for verbal achievement. even the most intense effort and urban schools as and the kip schools cannot break through the verbal cielo.

kip raises math scores of disadvantaged students to the 83rd percentile, but reza is reading scores only to the 58th percentile, just above the midpoint in an already low performing population. meanwhile, the verbal gap between demographic groups continues to be on acceptably big -- unacceptably big. to focus on verbal achievement may sound narrow. i think that's quite clear. i don't need to describe. it may sound narrow but what verbal achievement in braces is very broad because it is relative to knowledge and to intellectual skill generally. that is a firm conclusion from

cognitive science, critical conclusion. i will give you one example. there are studies that show poor readers actually score better than good readers when the poor readers have more knowledge about the subject. in other words, reading comprehension is not a formal transferable skill. if you are a good reader and bring relevant prior knowledge, you will understand what you're reading and if you are a good reader or even a poor reader and you don't bring relevant prior knowledge you will not understand what you're reading. so that's why the current multi hour per day lessons and teaching reading strategies in raleigh with teaching code unit

content has continued to fail. the key difference between advantage and disadvantaged students on entering preschools is a difference of knowledge and vocabulary. and the key to the of the school is about to in part knowledge. and in so doing narrowing the gap between the demographic groups. and the gap between where we are now on average and where we were in the 1960's. how did we manage to do well in the 1960's? by world standards the united states has had a good system of the education since the 19th century. in 1835 when alexis de

tocqueville published democracy in america he said american educational stripped education both in its abrupt and excellence and also in its reach. he said europe educated the few and chiefly from the private sphere. american common school educated the many to be knowledgeable and literate and hold a strong civic commitments. my first chapter in this new book goes back to how our school tradition got started. it deals with the educational aim of the founders, people like franklin, rush, madison of course, jefferson. above all the great and may be too little praise of webster who was our most important early maker of school books and

dictionaries. all of these people vigorously supported the purpose of unifying the nation through, and school in. it's true the constitution and left education to the states. it's also true that the founders were strongly in favor of knowledge, common knowledge and, in which lt is bounded to get through what was taught for the schools. the main purpose of schooling, the founder scott, was to dampen loyalty to the individual states and elevate loyalty to the union. it was all the more needed, they believed, because a republic was a dicey political arrangement. madison worried about fractions, so did his lawyer and contemporaries, and you heard

sauls anecdote about when franklin was leaving the constitutional convention and the worry then will we have a monarchy or at republic and alas republic and it is a very scary proposition. the received wisdom was all prior republics had collapsed because of their internal conflicts so how could we avoid the same fate? only by creating a new type of community minded citizen. madison was very big on this in the federalist papers. through schooling that would teach both rich and poor the enlightenment ideals of toleration and liberty and inculcate liberty to the common good. one of my goals in this new book is to bring the founding sentiments up to date.

are they still felt? and can they still form the authentic foundation for american schooling and by the way with the res s.a.t. scores, and the answer is yes to all. the idea of the community center school has always been the dominant and right conception for american education. and then that would mean that the currently dominant conception, that is the child centered school has been historic aberration. it's failed badly in the three main goals of democratic education to give everyone a chance, to raise achievement and create the civic minded citizens who would rise above faction and support the common good.

intellectually the third chapter which deals with these things is the most ambitious chapter of the book. it attempts to give a philosophical underpinning to the balancing act that american education must always engage in between the need to protect the local and the individual and the public need for commonality in of language and knowledge. right now strong arguments in favor of common national standards of making headway, as you probably know, because of the argument that we need these national standards to make technical improvements in the students' scores, and that's true. but the most important argument for the common school, the traditional idea of the common school derived from founding

principles of the enlightenment. but the founders, with one or two exceptions, did not believe in monolithic, and schooling. the whole point of the american union was to secure the blessings of liberty, not in impose some intellectual tyranny. and so schooling has had to be a balancing act between the local and the private and the national and the public. the new book is the balance between those elements is not only possible but essential if we are going to improve school when. we've been getting the balance wrong over the past more than half century and paid a high price and academic achievement, social justice and civic

wellbeing. for decades but child centered principle has elevated the private over the public, the individual for the community, the local for the national which has caused the schools to be emphasized for larger responsibilities of the national commitment of the schools. and also because it is based on technically wrong ideas about learning which i will spend just a couple of moments talking about. it has also depressed educational achievement. it is the worst of all worlds, really, what has resulted. 45 years ago richard hofstadter, the great columbia historian, wrote in his book, quote kofi antiintellectualism in american life," warning that our education schools believe in a

preestablished harmony between the good of the child and the good of society. this, she said, was a tender mind myth. the primary on a legal responsibility of the schools in a democracy is to prepare students for participation in the public's sphere. that means arming them with what they need to stand equal with fellow citizens and prosper economically. to explain the failure of the child centered tradition, a lot of sociological explanations have been offered. but if we insist on externals explanations but stressed that teachers, the influx of minorities, the overuse of tv and the ipod, lousy parenting, heartless social policies, and

yet not explain the intellectual because it is a fragmented courses watered-down schoolbooks, that is if we don't examine the guiding idea is tha have dominated and despoil our schooling and rejecting those ideas root and branch, we will never improve. ..

the new ideas took over the schools and they took over the textbooks. by the 1970's, when students had experienced fully 12 years of miseducation under the new principles, the results started showing up on the sat. it was always misleading to call this movement a child centered movements. a far more descriptive term is anti-curriculum movements. as isaac kandel pointed out back in the 1930's. the dominant theme was a fierce disparagement of any fact academic curriculum. which was scornfully characterized as one-size-fits-all. grow up learning, reactionary,

even fascist. that last word was a label julie used in a press review in the 1930's. that moralistic writer eric was then and continues to be enormously affect this area. but if a fact academic curriculum precept is fascist and bad than what is good? the answer has been hands-on projects in the class and the practicing of formal skills. if it's bad to impose a lot of inter- world learned fact then students will chiefly need to learn how to think. hence the goal became critical thinking skills. but you can see that critical thinking skill as a formal

educational goal is a scientific mistake. vertical thinking skills is informal and character. it's powerfully knowledge dependent in every case. just as language skill is powerfully knowledge dependent. such fundamental scientific errors allowed justify a full scale abandonment of the anti-curriculum movements. the most memorable observation about failed education -- arrangements of american schooling was offered in a fine book the learning gap by harold stevenson and james pickler. they said that the chief problem of the american classroom is not racial or ethnic diversity or economic diversity, but diversity of academic preparation. in a system with no contact of

parents or cumulative net, teachers are to vsat. children are left behind. whatever worries they conceived in having a grade by grade core of commonality it would be hard to perceive a greater social and moral evil than this. zero i'll conclude, under a program which allowed what could happen when a kindergartner learned certain things in common with other kindergartners, the job of next year's teacher becomes less onerous, more democratic and result. the class can move toward as a whole without leaving children behind. so the practical benefits of that kind of educational arrangements far outweigh ideological objections.

some means has to be found to overcome the lack of commonality on substance. in our early schooling. we can never expect this change to arise from within the intellectual monopoly of the ad world. we on the outside will have to try to enforce it. so far, our times have been futile. the draft of the new language standards by the governors achieve is politically craven and content free. as though the anti-curriculum world had invaded the minds of the governors. many people have an understanding -- understandable allergy to a state imposed curriculum and this sentiment is not restricted to the united states. although liberal democracies harbor similar suspicions of government control of content.

yet those same countries outshine us in education achievement and ability to narrow the achievement gap between rich and poor. an interesting solution to this dilemma has been followed i finland, which is the top scoring nation. it requires each locality to publish in detail what its common core would be. each locality must show how much classroom time is going to be devoted to each subject, what's going to be in the corsairs, wet assessments will be tied to those contents. so finland has found success by insisting on full disclosure of content at the local level. in the end, somebody is always deciding on content, even when

it's fragmented and repetitive as in the united states. for decisions are generally made by risk reverse of commercial publishers who currently find some advantages in the house to conception of education. but the how to conception has always failed and always must fail and unless we solve the problem of commonality and coherence, we'll simply not get off the dime and improving education generally. so we outside of that world has to be willing to use our own critical thinking skills to challenge this anti-curriculum monopoly and revive the sound conception of jefferson and webster and lincoln and horace

mann. thank you. [applause] >> i've been assigned the job of trafficking out. so here are the rules. if you're called on to ask a question, please state your name and please, please, please ask a question. [inaudible] no testaments about your vision [inaudible] questions, okay? so i'm going to call on this one.

>> professor, i wonder if you could comment on what i perceive as an increasing tendency in public education to teach to test. that seems to me as potentially distract their and any real education. >> i've had a lot of unfortunate experience. the question why was i assume everybody heard it. what about the current tendency in the schools to teach to the test? and there's a double answer to that appeared what's currently going on the schools and the way of teaching for testing highly afghanistan very deleterious. in the schools to followed after the no child left behind a lot of them said we haven't got time to teach knowledge. we have to teach reading and

math which is what's going to be tested. at the other side to it is as if you had a proper regiment of testing essay i mentioned finland. were the tests are actually curriculum-based test, then i would encourage the teaching of the curriculum. my -- for the last few years i've been arguing in favor of curriculum-based test, but dear me that means you have to have a curriculum. so it all comes back to the problem, how can you educate without a curriculum. you can't, nor can you test probably because what we now have as reading test are supposedly content free. but that's a mirage because you cannot have a content free reading test and so implicitly air testing the background knowledge of the kids which is why disadvantaged kids do so badly in advantage gives do so

well because of their knowledgebase. so there's a double answer to the question. yes, the current regiment is bad but we do need a proper testing regiment and a proper curriculum. [inaudible] >> michael myers civil rights coalition to follow the rules. why did you leave out on one of your charts where black, latino, and white. why did you leave out the category asian with respect to americans? and with respect to the need, i should say for commonality of instruction, what do you think would be the impact of bilingual education and new schools for new americans, which seek to reinforce the culture of the original culture of the students from another land. whatever impact would that be in terms of fluency in relation to

fluency and americanization. a >> the only reason any ethnic or racial group is locked out of my account is because i didn't find a mate any charts for those groups. and to the extent that the gap was there. but you have to understand that the principle to my mind and the founding principle was precisely because this is a cosmopolitan racial country and always was from the start. that's exactly why we need common school. and the idea of the common school was not to say well we've got to be sure there is representation for all the constituent cultures that make up the school. no, we have to make sure there's a public dimension, common language, the standard english language. a common general body of knowledge, a common adherence to the political principles of toleration and the laws.

and that's -- that's the core and it should be. as a matter of fact, the third chapter of this book that i called about is called trans- ethnic america and the civic core is the title of that chapter. and it speaks to those things and tries to get away from the idea that gu haven't had that kind of representation. no, it's everybody has adherence to the common core in the common school. and so you need a public sphere of civic core. >> thank you. first of all, i agree with every single thing you said, but the most interesting thing is the whole idea of the monopoly in schools and influence. now presumably to charter schools have to some extent escaped that. do the charter schools do better than the other schools or are

they also captured by the education establishment? >> that's a great question. thank you. the answer is yes and no. i'm a great advocate of charter schools. a lot of cornell schools are charter schools. on the other hand looking clear eyed generally the best evidence is that it's kind of wash between charter schools and regular schools, taken overall. here in new york, you have some particularly good ones and so there was a recent study in which showed charter schools in new york did better than the public schools. but over the country that's not the case and you hit on the answer which is that yes, they're pushing some of the ideas that are prevalent in schools of education and they don't have a curriculum either.

and so, i consider charter schools -- it's based on an idea about human motivation and human action. and i appear to buy think is generally sound but it's not based on an educational theory. it's an extrinsic rentable. it's a standoff. let the system somehow fixed itself. it's not sane with actually needed to fix the system. it's an extrinsic solution to the problem. we need an intrinsic solution that will tackle this anti-curriculum view head-on. >> let me stand up here. bob from the current university nyu. they've set for decades you can't teach improvement in sat. they've had a running battle with stanley s. you all know. now during this time stanley

capital and sell them learning how supposedly educated millions of kids on how to improve their test scores on the s.a.t. obviously to new avail. let me put one more piece on the table that as people like charles murray have said, the s.a.t. is heavily related to iq. the conclusion you can draw given a downward turn that americans have gotten stupidly and all the effort is just like etf says that for whatever reason it just simply gives you an alternative interpretation of the data that the cognitive storehouse and ability in the united states has declined and that is stanley kaplan gives you a money back guarantee as you well know. if your test scores do not go up it gives you your money back. now he is apparently not succeeding. now what do you say to that?

>> you say he has not? >> well, the score problem which is stanley kaplan's high school version and sell them learning and many other lending institutions are all claiming to teach the s.a.t. judging by this data here, they have not succeeded. and they have enormous incentive with the money back guarantee to improve those scores. >> erased a great issue. let me put it another way. what do we really need to do to raise the scores? i think you talked about raising the iq and charles murray. of course i want to stay away from that issue and decline but i told him frankly that i couldn't do it because i thought he didn't observe the distinction that psychologists observed between fluid and crystallized intelligence. that is behind your normal

inborn sort of abilities and your achieved abilities after you are educated. and knowledge makes you smarter. that's an interestingly documented fact so that you get smarter when you know more and charles murray didn't take that into account. and so, there's this problem with murray's analysis, let's not worry our heads about this. but how do you change that? you have a more coherent school-based approach to how children gain the enabling knowledge they need. right now we have a helter-skelter approach. >> can tell men. you mentioned massachusetts, it's a democratic state. the way you mentioned it to use it as an example that i took to be something you would like to see emulated across the country.

what enabled them to be able to pull this off? what forces came together that sort of allowed for this magic moment? >> you have three or four marvelous people who are also politically advanced. paul gagnon was an ally -- early allied mine said yes we have to have grade by grade specificity in history and geography and of course we had to upgrade by grade specificity. he was very influential in massachusetts and i'd send your sicko. the other two important figures that i know in detail what the president of the massachusetts senate, tom irving him, a marvelous forceful man. he said yes, we have to do this and is associated with mark

roosevelt. i think it was 93 it was pushed through. that was the date and you see the results -- and xander saucy wrote the language arts. you add all of these people who are allies of core knowledge and the antiestablishment views and they prevailed in massachusetts because of the expertise of the politicians. [inaudible] >> last question. all the way in the back. shout out for me. >> gas i was wondering, given the decline of the wide college

admission is still escapade and if not more so than it's ever been. and the other question i had was one thing you'd elected to mention with technological literacy and it seems to me just interacted with younger people and occasionally as they have a much greater proficiency in that area than most of us older people ever had and probably still do. >> consonants are the first thing to go when you get old. and i'm sorry i missed -- >> the first thing i mentioned is why given this decline is college admission still as competitive if not more so than it's ever been lax and the second question was what about technological literacy be in that there's a greater amount of that among younger people than there's ever been. >> i think there were two unconnected questions were that? i couldn't connect them. while technological literacy is

marvelous if you know how to look things up. i wrote a piece once on the whole claim that what you're really teaching in school is how to learn not learning and how to look things up and use technological literacy and so on is what you chiefly need. but again i have this piece of added by the top psychologists in the country and it essentially said no, you can't just learn how to look things up because you have to know a hell of a lot to look things up intelligently. as for your first? college admissions, i don't know anything about current college admissions except that it's highly competitive. but obviously what the colleges are admitting is not quite at the same level as what they used to admit. so that's too bad. >> that ends the question.

[applause] >> e.d. hirsch was a distinguished fellow at the hoover institute and also the founder and chair of nonprofit core knowledge foundation. to find out more, go to or knowledge.org.

>> pulitzer prize-winning oscar neil sheehan offer of a bright shining lie has a new book out on a theory piece in the cold war. what is an icbm? >> an icbm is a rocket with a hydrogen bomb in its way. it's fired up into space, travels through space at 60,000 miles an hour for six to 7000 miles a minute would come down and strike here it it crosses -- there's no way to stop it. they've never been used.

you and i would probably not be having this conversation if it wasn't for these people. they built this weapon not to make war with but as a way to say over and over again this is the first history of the humankind which is being built not to use in war but to deter war. >> i wanted to start with what an icbm was because i think that tells the story of bernard shreve are in the to upgrade it. >> he was six years old when he came to germany in world war i. his mother brought him here. two months before we declared war in germany he broke down in texas headed to the army air corps and was a protége of general arnold who was the u.s. air force during world war ii. then went to work on scientific -- bringing science into the air force. he used utilized science and saw

this weapon would guarantee the peace because if we had it we could deter the russians from doing anything that would trigger nuclear water and then we ended up he ended up creating the nuclear stalemate which is referred to the nuclear people as nuclear assured destruction in other words neither side could get a surprise attack on the other because they would destroy themselves in the same process. >> in the book you talk about the resistance he issued during his team-high reading this team together. can you talk about the resistance? >> sure, this is a book not about hardware but about people. there was tremendous resistance from curtis lemay who was the head of the strategic air command. a great bomber leader from world war ii who became -- he went over the edge in his later years and became the model for the general cooper rubrics

dr. strangelove. and so shreve or in the people had tremendous resistance. they got to eisenhower advisor understood what they were trying to do just in time. he signed off on september 13th and that his heart attack ten days later. >> how long have you been researching this book? >> i worked on the book for 14 years altogether, but ten intensive years. i did 52 interviews with shreve are. everybody was alive that was worth putting in, chasing the grim reaper because they were older men. i catch them before the grim reaper did. they all cooperated with me. he gave me all of his papers and his diary all of which were

terribly valuable, but this book is written not as an academic history. it's written as a fast-paced narrative and novelistic farm because i believe in re-creating history for the reader. bringing your reader into history. and that's what i do here. >> fifteen years of research is a long time. did your views on the cold war change at any point during that time? >> i realize, yes, we all think of the cold war as one of the long ice age and i discovered her this writing of the book that it was not bad in the beginning it was a period that was