The name John Brown should evoke in children's minds not just a simple identifying definition but a whole network of lively traits, the traditionally known facts and values. (127) .
The intensive curriculum, though different, is equally essential. Intensive study encourages a fully developed understanding of a subject, making one's knowledge of it integrated and coherent. It coincides with Dewey's recommendation that children should be deeply engaged with a small number of typical concrete instances. It is also that part of the total curriculum in which great flexibility in contents and methods can prevail. The intensive curriculum is the more pluralistic element of my proposal, because it ensures that individual students, teachers, and schools can work intensively with materials that are appropriate for their diverse temperaments and aims. (128) .
Our choice of intensive curricular materials can vary with circumstances and should depend on many grounds for choice, including student and teacher interest, local community preferences, and the aims and values that predominate in particular schools or classrooms. But there is a limit to the flexibility of the intensive curriculum. If we want people to have conception of Shakespearean drama, then a play by Neil Simon is not a satisfactory substitute for a play by Shakespeare. (130) .
Students lack cultural knowledge all right, but is this because they haven't been taught what is shared? or because they haven't been taught how cultural sharing can add to their personal power and authority as readers and writers? On the first diagnosis, Hirsch's diagnosis, what students lack is shared information. On the second diagnosis, the one I prefer, students lack precisely what Hirsch fails to offer them "a theory of cultural literacy as contributing. They lack a vision of themselves as empowered to follow and, eventually, to lead our most important cultural conversations.
