E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Biography

Eric Donald Hirsch Jr. (/hɜːrʃ/; born March 22, 1928), usually cited as E. D. Hirsch, is an American educator and academic literary critic. He is professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. In the 1960s Hirsch's Validity in Interpretation made an important contribution to contemporary literary theory and established him as "the founder of contemporary intentionalism," defending the notion of objectivity in humanistic studies and distinguishing between the "meaning" of a text, which relates to understanding and does not change, and its "significance," which relates to explanation and changes over time. In popular culture Hirsch is best known for his Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987), and is the founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation.