E.D. Hirsch, Jr.

Author Bio:
E.D. Hirsch is the founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. Motivated by research on written composition at a pair of colleges in Virginia, Dr. Hirsch developed his groundbreaking concept of cultural literacy — the idea that reading comprehension requires not just formal decoding skills, but also wide-ranging background knowledge. He founded the Core Knowledge Foundation in 1986. A highly regarded English professor and literary critic early in his career, he is the author of several acclaimed books on education issues, including Cultural Literacy (Vintage, 1988), The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them (Anchor 1999), The Knowledge Deficit (Houghton Mifflin Harourt 2006), and The Making of Americans (Yale University Press 2010). He holds degrees from Cornell and Yale universities.