Hirsch and fellow professors Joseph Kett and James Trefil provide a 64-page Appendix, "What Literate Americans Know". This consists of words, names, and phrases of all kinds. It might be sobering to learn how much or how little of this list is recognized by high-school students; university students, bureaucrats enforcing regulations; Congressmen writing laws. Note that this is not a sealed, official list; nor are students or citizens expected to be able to write a thesis on any of these. But they should recognize and understand these terms when they are read or heard.

He really believes in the possibilities of modern education to improve individuals (and nations) and to transcend “gender, race, and class,” in the real prospect of equal educational opportunity in having access to the aggregated public goods of a civilization, mediated by the K–12 schools.