Realms of Gold: 2

by E.D. Hirsch Jr. (Editor), Michael J. Marshall (Editor)

All the shorter literary works — poems, stories, essays, speeches and autobiographical excerpts — specified in the Core Knowledge Sequence for Grades 6–8 are conveniently anthologized in three grade-level volumes. Each includes additional classic works in each genre, offering students handy supplemental texts from the world's greatest writers. Key speeches from the 20th century make volumes 2 and 2 useful for history teachers.

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

E. D. Hirsch, Jr. is the founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of several acclaimed books on education in which he has persisted as a voice of reason making the case for equality of educational opportunity.

A highly regarded literary critic and professor of English earlier in his career, Dr. Hirsch recalls being “shocked into education reform” while doing research on written composition at a pair of colleges in Virginia. During these studies he observed that a student’s ability to comprehend a passage was determined in part by the relative readability of the text, but even more by the student’s background knowledge.

This research led Dr. Hirsch to develop his concept of cultural literacy—the idea that reading comprehension requires not just formal decoding skills but also wide-ranging background knowledge. In 1986 he founded the Core Knowledge Foundation. A year later he published Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, which remained at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for more than six months. His subsequent books include The Schools We Need, The Knowledge Deficit, The Making of Americans, and most recently, How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation.

In How to Educate a Citizen (September, 2020), E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began thirty years ago with his classic bestseller Cultural Literacy, urging America’s public schools, particularly in Preschool – Grade 8, to educate our children using common, coherent and sequenced curricula to help heal and preserve the nation.

Reviews

[Mark Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with Volume 3 I skipped the poetry.

Short stories include The Necklace, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Purloined Letter, Gift of the Magi, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Barn Burning, Bernice Bobs Her Hair, Araby, The Piece of String, Mu Oedipus Complex, and The Jilting of Granny Weatherall. All were noteworthy. However I dislike Faulkner’s Barn Burning. Maybe it is his style or the story. Neither appealed to me. His writing is hard to follow and the characters were not sympathetic.

Also included are two essays: Shooting an Elephant and The Night the Bed Fell. Elephant was a tragic story start to finish and Bed was a farcical tale that would make a great storyline for a Modern Family sitcom episode.

Several speeches by Churchill George Marshall, FDR, and Woodrow Wilson were all significant with their historical perspective but were profoundly dull.

Wrapping up Vol 2 are two autobiography excerpts of Benjamin Franklin and Helen Keller. Coincidentally, I was reading Keller’s piece during tech week for The Who’s Tommy a dark and mysterious story of a fictional blind, deaf, and dumb boy named Tommy.

[Josh Traylor]

A nice anthology for middle schoolers to read and study to become acquainted with modern British and American poetry. Though hardly any of these poems are favorites of mine, they are good for introducing youths to our rich British and American literary heritage.

[Hannah Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! A lot of really good short stories compiled in to a book. Fantastic for light reading that is still spectacularly written.

[Carol Oldham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this collection of literature aloud with my husband. Classic stories, poems, essays, autobiographies and speeches.