Eric Donald Hirsch Jr (born 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 work on cultural literacy, and is the founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation.
From Wikipedia
“Raising the level of adult literacy requires more than money and teaching skills. It requires decisive leadership that will define what every adult should know so the information can be taught. When the cultural content is determined, when we have decided what a citizen has to know to be literate in the 1980s, then adult literacy, *cultural literacy,* can be achieved”
