Page iii A First Dictionary of Cultural Literacy What our Children Need to Know Edited by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Associate Editors William G. Rowland, Jr. and Michael Stanford Second Edition Revised and Updated Page iv Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the netLibrary eBook. For Benjamin Lacy Hirsch Born March 15, 1989 Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 222 Berkeley Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02116 Library of Congress Cataloging­in­Publication Data A first dictionary of cultural literacy : what our children need to know / edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr.: associate editors, William G. Rowland, Jr. & Michael Stanford. — 2nd ed., rev. and updated. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0­395­82352­8 1. Children's encyclopedias and dictionaries. I. Hirsch, E.D. (Eric Donald), 1928– . II. Rowland, William G. III. Stanford, Michael, 1923– . AG5.F55 1996 031 — dc20 96­19050 CIP AC Selected descriptions used in the Guide to Further Reading in the back of this dictionary have appeared previously in Reference Books for Children's Collections, compiled by the Children's Reference Committee, The New York Public Library, copyright © 1988 by The New York Public Library. These are reprinted by permission of The Office of Children's Services, The New York Public Library. Printed in the United States of America Book design by Robert Overholtzer RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 Page v Contents Maps vi Preface to the Second Edition vii To Parents and Teachers ix To Young Readers: How to Use This Dictionary xiii Acknowledgments xvi Proverbs 1 Idioms 6 English 12 Literature 18 Mythology 41 Music, Art, and Architecture 50 The Bible 66 Religion and Philosophy 77 United States History to 1865 87 United States History since 1865 102 Politics and Economics 116 World History to 1600 124 World History since 1600 136 United States Geography 146 World Geography 164 Mathematics 191 Physical Sciences 203 Earth Sciences and Weather 212 Life Sciences 221 Medicine and the Human Body 230 Technology 245 Guide to Further Reading 259 Illustration Credits 265 Index of Entries 267 Page vi Maps Roman Empire 132 Middle Atlantic States 147 United States 148–149 The Midwest 150 New England 153 Pacific Coast States 155 Rocky Mountain States 157 The South 159 The Southwest 160 The World 166 Africa 168 Asia 170 Australia and Oceania 172 Europe 174–175 North America and the West Indies 180 South America 184 Page vii Preface to the Second Edition This revision of the First Dictionary of Cultural Literacy has benefitted from the dedicated labors of Tricia Emlet and other editors. They have improved the accuracy of the earlier book, and have also taken into account some of the historical, geographical, and scientific changes that have occurred since the original edition was published in 1989. Of equal importance, they have brought the contents into closer accord with the knowledge that children should ideally acquire during the first six years of schooling, according to an expert consensus that has been developed over a long period by the Core Knowledge Foundation. Starting in 1990, the Core Knowledge Foundation began developing a grade­by­grade knowledge sequence which has been revised and perfected over time, and which is now being followed by teachers in several hundred schools across the nation. This book can now be used more readily in conjunction with publications issued by the Core Knowledge Foundation such as What Your First Grader Needs to Know. The guiding principles that have animated this book continue to find growing acceptance in the psychological and educational communities. Americans have now passed beyond the era when sound and practical educational ideas could be objected to on grounds of political incorrectness. That was in the late Eighties. In the Nineties it has grown abundantly clear that all American children, regardless of their particular ethnic and cultural backgrounds, need and deserve a solid foundation of shared knowledge as the necessary basis for successful schooling and effective citizenship. Moreover, young children love information. There is nothing "developmentally inappropriate" in feeding that voracious appetite. On the contrary, childhood is a time when facts which may seem dull to an older child or adult may shine for younger children with the "glory and the freshness of a dream." To all who are young of heart, happy learning! E. D. HIRSCH, JR. CHARLOTTESVILLE JANUARY 1996 Page viii To Parents and Teachers This dictionary outlines the knowledge that, in the opinion of several hundred teachers and parents across the nation, American children should acquire by the end of the sixth grade. Of course, children should know many more things as well, depending on their local situation and individual interests, but they should at least share this common core of knowledge with other children across the nation. This compilation has been continually revised over a period of two years on the basis of comments and suggestions from all fifty states and from hundreds of teachers, school administrators, and parents who belong to the Cultural Literacy Network. If you have young children in your care who are not making good progress toward learning most of the information gathered here, they are being cheated, with the best intentions, by, among other things, wrong­headed theories about the primary importance of teaching skills rather than traditional content — theories that have dominated instruction in American schools in the past few decades. If that indictment sounds too sweeping, consider what a parent had to say in the following letter that arrived just as I began to write this introduction. (I have received hundreds of such letters since the publication in 1987 of my book Cultural Literacy.) The letter eloquently expresses the experience of hundreds of thousands of parents who have felt that something has been going wrong in the schooling of their children. For our children, the elementary school years were, with the exception of one teacher, a notable void. This still saddens me, as I suspect from my own experience that there is a luminosity to knowledge acquired in those years that is unique. I visit England twice a year and have a friend there with children the ages of our children. Informal comparisons of homework assignments came out as one might have expected; her children were learning things, like the names of rivers and parts of a flower. Ours had reams of ugly, sparsely written upon, very faint ditto sheets. There was very little to be learned from them at all. The frustrations of our conferences with a majority of our children's el­ Page ix ementary school teachers are still surprisingly fresh. We were quickly put on the defensive. The gist of the teachers' arguments was the claim that knowledge changes so rapidly as to be swiftly outmoded. Our knowledge, then, was largely irrelevant to the wonderful new knowledge our children were being taught how to acquire. (Baloney! By the time our children finally got to high school, much of the knowledge of their AP [Advanced Placement] courses was the same as or an expansion of the knowledge we had acquired decades before.) In Cultural Literacy, I explained why about eighty percent of the knowledge commonly shared by literate Americans has not changed for more than a hundred years and is not likely to be quickly outmoded. The remaining twenty percent of shared literate knowledge does indeed change year by year, and my colleagues and I have taken account of such changes in this book. But at least eighty percent of what is listed will probably be just as central and valid ten years from now as it is today. The current emphasis on skills in the primary grades, combined with trivial, incoherent, and watered­down content, has caused American education to decline in absolute terms, as measured by standardized test scores, and also in relative terms, as measured by comparisons with the achievements of children from other countries. In recent comparisons among developed nations, the United States ranks dead last in math, science, and world geography — subjects that are the same everywhere. Our schools' emphasis on skills rather than knowledge has also had the unintended effect of injuring disadvantaged students move than advantaged ones. Since most so­called skills are really based upon specific knowledge, those who have already received literate knowledge from their homes are better able to understand what teachers and textbooks are saying and are therefore better able to learn new things than are children from nonliterate backgrounds. Consequently, when schools emphasize skills above knowledge, they consistently widen the gap between the haves and have­nots instead of narrowing it. Such schools unwittingly heighten economic and social inequalities instead of helping to overcome them. This dictionary cannot take the place of good parenting and teaching or of good books, tapes, and videos that convey literate knowledge coherently and vividly. The dictionary can only hope to indicate what should be known by the end of sixth grade and encourage parents, teachers, and students themselves to make sure that such knowledge is effectively taught and learned. My colleagues and I hope that putting such a compilation between the covers of a book will be helpful to those who desire guidance about the specific knowledge that is the true foundation of our children's academic skills. A selection of some books that will help children learn more about the main topics we cover is provided in the back of the dictionary. Page x The list on which the dictionary entries are based is constantly being revised as comments and criticisms are sent to the Cultural Literacy Foundation.