The British government's current educational policy for England draws on E.D. Hirsch's writings on 'cultural literacy'. This paper aims to uncover the roots of Hirsch's influential views through a genealogical critique. Hirsch admired the Scottish Enlightenment educator Hugh Blair as a model architect of a hegemonic culture to unite disparate…

John Dixon's book "Growth through English" (1967) is both an account of the four-week Anglo-American seminar on the teaching of English held in Dartmouth, New Hampshire, in 1966 and a seminal text in English studies. Fifty years later, its holding concept of "growth" remains significant to the identity of the profession…