Hoover fellows Williamson M. Evers and E. D. Hirsch Jr. joined Laura Bush, Lynne Cheney, Education Secretary Rod Paige, and other leaders in education to participate in "We the People," a White House Forum on American history, civics, and service, held at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., on May 1.
Evers and Hirsch are members of the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, an elite team of scholars who specialize in education reform. As part of Hoover Institution's five-year American Public Education Initiative, members of the Koret Task Force have been charged with analyzing the current state of public education and finding possibilities for meaningful reform.
Evers, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, participated in a panel discussion entitled "Civic and Historical Literacy: Where Are We Now?"
"As Americans, we are part of a great experiment in individual liberty and constitutional republicanism, and young Americans need to understand that experiment if they are to continue it," said Evers. "Those who teach American history are entrusted with our national heritage. Having history teachers who know our past, our traditions, and our laws cannot be just a fond wish or a long-postponed aspiration, for it is a necessity."
Evers serves on the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars and served in 2001–2 on the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board. He is coeditor of School Accountability, a 2002 publication by the Koret Task Force, and coauthor of a chapter on curriculum in the Koret Task Force's new book, Our Schools and Our Future: . . . Are We Still at Risk? an assessment twenty years after the release of the National Commission on Excellence in Education's report, A Nation at Risk.
Hirsch, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, participated in a panel discussion on promoting history, civics, and service in K–12 education at the forum.
Hirsch is a professor of education and humanities emeritus at the University of Virginia and the founder and president of the Core Knowledge Foundation. He is the author of a series of books beginning with What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know that continues through each elementary grade, concluding with What Your Sixth-Grader Needs to Know. He wrote a chapter on education in the early grades in Our Schools and Our Future.
The Hoover Institution, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the 31st president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic public policy and international affairs, with an internationally renowned archive.
