Unwillingly to school

National Review, March 2, 1992 by Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Though Hirsch had nothing directly to do with it, Diane Ravitch and I did lend a hand in designing the Administration's strategy (and Ravitch, of course, continues to do distinguished public service at the Education Department). But Miss Lerner, however, sorely misrepresents our thinking and writing about education priorities. "[L]ists of specific items of information American kids don't know at various ages are recurrent features of many of their books," she asserts. This is false. The truth is that Ravitch and I are responsible, individually and together, for some 14 books, and precisely one of these--What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? published in 1987--contains such lists. Inasmuch as the point of that volume was to report results on the first-ever national assessment of history and literature knowledge among young Americans, it's not too surprising that we would present the facts, as it were, about the state of factual knowledge. But even in our solitary work of this genre, Ravitch and I lamented the limits of an assessment that, by virtue of its test technology, was not capable of examining much more than factual knowledge; and we took pains to dispel the "false dichotomies" of "concepts vs. facts" and "skills vs. content." No careful reader of that volume could accurately conclude that we're only interested in "information."

Her own preferred alternative (to a national curriculum) is curious indeed. She urges that the plays of William Shakespeare become our "national book," required in every semester of every high school, and enforced through a national Shakespeare test--on which all diplomas hinge. Talk about narrowing the curriculum down. Talk about imposing a canon. Talk about surrendering pluralism, voluntarism, and choice to some federal Shakespeare commissar.

But there's a touch of genius to the idea, too. For Miss Lerner is certainly correct that "verbal reasoning power" is best developed by "delving deeply into

some subject matter" and there's no subject matter in the humanities that lends itself to deeper delving than the works of William Shakespeare. (That, of course, is why every good high-school English class already includes one or more of his plays.)

More than Will Power

BUT Shakespeare isn't sufficient unto himself for the education of young Americans, any more than a splendid steak comprises a full meal. What about match and science? What about the history and literature that hadn't happened by the sixteenth century (including American history)? What about the principles of democracy? Of modern physics? Of languages other than English?

Miss Lerner says she almost included the Constitution and Federalist Papers as "national book number two." She changed her mind, however, when she saw how "abstract" these works are and how lacking in emotional content, especially when (she says) few young people have the relevant background experience to make their abstractions come alive.

I wish she had yielded to her initial impulse. It reminded me of an interesting survey undertaken by William J. Bennett when he was chairman of the Humanities Endowment. He asked hundreds of prominent Americans to suggest what books all youngsters should study in school. The replies varied, of course, but five works led the list: Shakespeare's plays and sonnets; the "founding documents" of the United States (i.e., Declaration, Constitution, Federalist Papers); the Bible; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; and The Odyssey. Dickens ranked sixth.