When was cultural literacy published

Perhaps there exists later, updated versions of his canon where this major problem is addressed. He does admit that contemporary language and culture are constantly evolving with antiquated details fading to the background as new concepts emerge, so it's not beyond reason that he could expand his criteria for what makes a person fully culturally literate.

I also appreciated his acknowledgement that children of lower socioeconomic backgrounds arrive at school age without necessary knowledge to learn at the established pace and that this problem snowballs as the child ages. However, he does not look deeper into why this might be or how it can be prevented, only peripherally corrected. If anything, this outdated book offers a good conversation piece, and starting point for a more evolved concept of cultural literacy in today's world.

Oct 16, Robert Holm rated it really liked it Recommends it for: radicals whose minds are not yet completely set in concrete.

Shelves: non-fiction , culture-wars , education. This book and Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind were the opening shots in the "canon wars" that started in the late s in America, and for this reason they are often lumped together. But the two books, and their authors, are in fact very different - Bloom was an elitist conservative, whereas Hirsch is an Old Left educator who was trying to bring about badly needed educational reform in American schools.

And it is only now, almost 30 years later, that Hirsch and his ideas the Cor This book and Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind were the opening shots in the "canon wars" that started in the late s in America, and for this reason they are often lumped together.

And it is only now, almost 30 years later, that Hirsch and his ideas the Core Knowledge Foundation are finally beginning to get some traction. Thus, this book is still worth reading, dated though it may be. And it is especially the opponents of Hirsch that should read him, since they have no idea what he is really advocating.

In short, cultural literacy is the necessary basic knowledge and background information that everyone needs to have in order to communicate effectively and understand each other in a modern mainstream culture. By historical necessity, this literacy is traditional in nature, but it is not static, nor is it in any sense "conservative" from a political point of view it can actually have quite the opposite consequences.

On the contrary, it is universal precisely because it is contributed to and shared by everyone, which allows everyone to take part in it. Jun 20, Bob rated it really liked it. Just finished re-reading this book, which has become something of a classic of the educational policy debate. I'm always intrigued by canon-building and personally think there is plenty to be said in favor of some subset of the public school curriculum being nationally agreed upon.

This is an idea that has somehow become the property of conservatives, who are faced with a balancing act between wanting to mandate a shared body of knowledge and supporting local i.

Hirsch is not particularly polemical in his writing in this book; a brief nod to the "culture wars" appears in a sentence like this, "Although our public schools have a duty to teach widely accepted cultural values, they have a duty not to take political stands on matters that are subjects of continuing debate", which is all very well until you realize that for some people, the question of whether the earth is more than 6, years old is a subject of continuing debate.

Mar 18, Joyce rated it did not like it Shelves: non-fiction. Free copy, now in the trash. Because I read about the author, and his socialist leanings, and I read a wonderful review of the book which backed up what I read. This book isn't what it first appeared to be. I'm interested in cultural heritage, not socialism taught in a 'core' curriculum.

This note is for my benefit, in case I forget later. View 1 comment. Oct 13, Toe rated it liked it Shelves: nonfiction. Objective Summary Hirsch argues for American educators to return to a focus on cultural literacy, meaning a common body of knowledge that literate citizens within a nation possess.

Cultural literacy is essential to efficient and effective communication. It is a prerequisite for general readers to grasp mater Objective Summary Hirsch argues for American educators to return to a focus on cultural literacy, meaning a common body of knowledge that literate citizens within a nation possess. It is a prerequisite for general readers to grasp material written in newspapers, magazines, and literature.

For example, community college students struggled with a short article describing the surrender of Lee to Grant at Appomattox. The description of this event assumed familiarity that the students did not have with the Civil War, the Union, the Confederacy, General Ulysses S. Grant, and General Robert E. Exhaustive understanding of each term is not required. But a basic sketch, or schemata, of who the relevant players, issues, and events were, and how they fit together, was required to understand that particular article and nearly all others.

If every term had to be defined in every piece of writing, all writing would be unwieldy. Writers assume a general level of understanding from readers. When readers lack the assumed level of understanding, they are either less likely to read at all, or each undertaking will be a tedious struggle with much information lost in the process.

Short term memory fails after about seven seconds or seven items. Precise forms are lost quickly, but the gist of an idea can be retained much longer. When basic facts are converted to long-term memory, they can be called upon to inform reading.

The precise terms that comprise cultural literacy will vary between nations and change over time. Core terms endure. Board of Education. There are, of course, many others. Hirsch argues that public education in the U. Students across the nation were inculcated with nearly identical information and values. The theories of education shifted around Moreover, with a rapidly changing economy, it was silly to train all children identically.

All that mattered is that they read something. Traditional curricula were under further assault from multiculturalism and progressives who objected to the focus on white, European, male ideas and events. Such focus disadvantaged minorities and excluded other, valuable insights and histories.

Hirsch calls for a return to cultural literacy. A lack of cultural literacy hobbles an individual and a society. It leads to inefficiency and confusion at best, and balkanization and antagonism at worst. An individual may be excluded from a job or an entire field. A society may be thrust into war. Young children are sponges of knowledge. The process of conveying basic facts of their culture is both enjoyable for most kids and comes easily.

The positive snowball effect inures to the benefit of all. Cultural literacy, though it has traditional facts and elements, is progressive and democratic in that everyone has access to it.

It is much easier for an impoverished child or new immigrant to learn information in several hundred pages of material than try to equalize generations of wealth, connections, and schooling.

If the curricula across schools vary widely, those in poor districts are more disadvantaged than if there is a common curriculum and all students learn the same fundamental facts. Cultural literacy is simply the shared language through which new ideas can arise and spread. Martin Luther King, Jr. And nothing stops minorities from contributing to the list of cultural literacy themselves, as King, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, and jazz demonstrate.

Hirsch suggests that education in the U. All students would be exposed to the extensive curriculum that would inculcate cultural literacy. They could also choose to study fewer topics of their choice in more depth. This system would give students the best of both worlds: general knowledge and specialization.

A shared language and cultural would naturally increase efficiency. A move away from significant facts and history seems self-evidently detrimental the functioning and unity of a society.

Though Hirsch provides only an index of terms here, he stated he will publish a dictionary of cultural literacy at a later date. Works like that contain interesting information and grant me entry into the priesthood of the cultural literate.

King envisioned a country where the children of former slaves sit down at the table of equality with the children of former slave owners, where men and women deal with each other as equals and judge each other on their characters and achievements rather than their origins. Like Thomas Jefferson, he had a dream of a society founded not on race or class but on personal merit.

To be truly literate, citizens must be able to grasp the meaning of any piece of writing addressed to the general reader. The acculturative responsibility of the schools is primary and fundamental.

Facts are essential components of the basic skills that a child entering a culture must have. What distinguishes good readers from poor ones is simply the possession of a lot of diverse, task-specific information. It has been estimated that a chess master can recognize about 50, positions patterns.

Interestingly, that is the approximate number of words and idioms in the vocabulary of a literate person. They consistently contrasted virtuous and natural Americans with corrupt and decadent Europeans; they unanimously stressed love of country, love of God, obedience to parents, thrift, honesty, and hard work; and they continually insisted upon the perfection of the United States, the guardian of liberty and the destined redeemer of a sinful Europe. I did cut it with my hatchet.

But in fact, multilingualism enormously increases cultural fragmentation, civil antagonism, illiteracy, and economic-technological ineffectualness. These are the very disabilities the Chinese are attempting to overcome. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter,— but the King of England cannot enter. The contrasts between them bring into clear relief the change in educational theory that occurred in the first quarter of this century.

The content of the extensive curriculum is traditional literate knowledge, the information, the attitudes, and assumptions that literate Americans share—cultural literacy. The intensive curriculum, though different, is equally essential. Too many cooks may spoil the broth, but many hands make light work.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind. The single most effective step would be to shift the reading materials used in kindergarten through eighth grade to a much stronger base in factual information and traditional lore. Dec 26, Skylar Burris rated it liked it Shelves: education. I read this when I was in college because it was written by one of the professors at my school.

I think it helped kick off the furor for higher standards and, eventually, a common core. Still, nothing like a common "cultural literary" standard has ever been implemented--i. There is a small common vocabulary, however - things you are bound to pick up in 90 percent of schools, but this common cultural vocabulary seems to grow smaller w I read this when I was in college because it was written by one of the professors at my school.

There is a small common vocabulary, however - things you are bound to pick up in 90 percent of schools, but this common cultural vocabulary seems to grow smaller with each passing generation. I was fairly widely read from a young age, but I recall reading his list in the back of this book of common cultural references from scientist and writers to battles and theories everyone should know and finding I didn't know quite a few of them. I remember my father, who as long as I could remember devoured books of all kinds on all subjects, highlighting the things he didn't know well so he could look them up, and he had more highlights than I would have expected.

That is to say, while I may agree with Hirsch's general concept that we need more common cultural literacy, the details are where things get hung up. His details may be a bit unrealistic, and educational theorists will always fight over the particulars, and perhaps that is why nothing useful like an information-rich, specific curriculum ever seems to get implemented in education.

I don't think our biggest problems in modern education are class size or funding or the quality of teachers - I think it's curriculum. The curriculum used in most public schools today just isn't very good, and it keeps changing, from one poor curriculum to another.

Kids love to learn and memorize at a young age, but we don't really pump their little brains full of as much cultural information as we could, of people and places and epochs and such.

Vague standards written up in academic gobbledygook isn't what I mean here - but rather very content-specific curriculum. Have you ever tried reading the description of what your kids will learn in, say, 3rd grade from a public school website?

I mean, just tell me, what specific mathematical operations will they learn? What specific historical figures and periods will they learn about? What specific books will they read?

No vague generalities about process and standards using academic jargon, please. But finding that information is like pulling teeth. Dec 10, Ellen rated it it was ok Shelves: pedagogy. To some degree, E.

Adams recognizes that cultural literacy must be processed and integrated before it is of any worth. For Henry Adams, education will always be a failure in the sense that it cannot be possessed completely, nor should it.

Culture is transmitted though language, material objects, ritual, institutions, and art, from one generation to the next. View all 6 comments. Jun 14, Andrea rated it liked it Shelves: homeschooling , ideas. This book is not enjoyable to read. It does have a very interesting thesis. The main idea in the book is that the education in America has changed in the last years and the results are that children today struggle with reading and comprehension. Hirsch cites lots of research to validate his claim that reading and the comprehension associated with it require a certain amount of basic background information.

The children with high vocabularies comprehend more of what they read. The vocabulary This book is not enjoyable to read. The vocabulary of literate people is cultural and held in common. It is the stuff everyone ought to know to understand words in our culture. He suggests that Educational policies need to change so that reading is related to information and not just a decoding skill.

Shelves: american-literature , psychology , non-fiction , education , reference , sociology. It's really rare that I give a nonfiction book five stars. In this case, I'm doing it because it's one of the few nonfiction books I've read yet that I feel really thoroughly changed my view of a subject.

Do I think his list is biased? Without question. But I found the theory behind the creation of a list of concepts in a curriculum of cultural literacy absolutely fascinating and in a lot of respects, very persuasive. I highly recommend this book to anyone who's It's really rare that I give a nonfiction book five stars. I highly recommend this book to anyone who's interested in education. It's even more fascinating in light of the recent debates over the Common Core.

Nov 03, Sharon rated it did not like it. If I could give this book negative stars - I would. This was one of the most classist, eurocentric, sexist books on education I've read.

And yet the author was filled with self admiration and a very inflated ego in regards to how he believed he'd figured out the literal set of distinct things that makes a person "literate". Seriously such a terrible book I listed it because its remained on my book shelf as an example of what total trash is. Apr 22, Tori rated it did not like it Recommends it for: Educators. Shelves: about-teaching. That said, I feel it's important to always know what "the other side" is up to, and that was my main focus when reading this literary gem.

Feb 01, Glenn rated it liked it. This book tries to tackle the illiteracy of our nation by claiming that we can't communicate if we don't have a shared core background knowledge - so schools should teach such a knowledge. Having seen high school kids not know things I assumed to be the most basic, fundamental ideas of our society, I do see some merit to this. Jul 01, Jeffrey rated it really liked it Shelves: social. This book was interesting in theory. But like a lot of "theory" books, difficult to get people to do what is suggested.

This goes back to Plato's Republic where the "intelligentsia" was to lead the masses to a Utopian society. Nice thought, difficult to enforce. Jan 14, Charles rated it liked it Shelves: nonfiction. Useful as a goad to irritation. I did think there were a lot of good points in the book, but a lot of important need to know stuff was left out.

Apr 24, Shauna rated it liked it. This was more in depth than I was looking for, geared more toward professionals working in the field of educaiton.

The Cultural Literacy Dictionary gives a summary of this book in the beginning and that was all I really wanted. May 03, Lindsey Babies, Books, and Beyond rated it did not like it. Interesting idea, but really boring. The only part I liked was the list at the end of all the things that all Americans should be able to recognize. The great test of social ideas is the crucible of history.

To thrive, a child needs to learn the particular traditions and culture it is born into. The more computers we have, the more we The great test of social ideas is the crucible of history. The more computers we have, the more we need shared fairy tales, Greek myths, historical images, and so on. Within a few seconds. Bad memory for words, but good memory for meaning.

Distorted in the shape of habitual schemata. Mental shorthand, as if schemata were entire item. We cannot pause over words at a time. Rapid deployment of schemata needed for function. Writing is the rhetoric of the day. The greatest human individuality is developed in response to a tradition, not in response to disorderly, uncertain, and fragmented education. Facts and skills are inseperable.

The smaller the circle, the greater the amount [of information] shared. It should energize people to learn that only a few hundred pages of information stand between the literate and the illiterate, between dependence, and autonomy.

You can only study scientific methods in specific instances, and in order to understand those instances, you need to know the scientific facts and concepts represented in our list.

I should have read a description of this book before listening to the whole thing. There are no facts or other information listed about the entries, just a list of terms. This would be all well and good for a print book, but who thought they should turn I should have read a description of this book before listening to the whole thing.

This would be all well and good for a print book, but who thought they should turn this into an audiobook? Who in their right mind would sit and listen to a six-hour list? Based on the title and subtitle, I was hoping for just such a list, but with some summary facts included.

We do need a common set of information from which to operate. I also like that the author is not smug or holier-than-thou about any of this.

He actually seeks to demystify all culturally literate information and to ensure that all people in our society have access to that information. He believes this will lead to greater social and economic equality among us. The more everyone in a society has a common background of shared information, the more that society prospers, because of the efficiencies of communication and shared understandings.

An example Hirsch provides for this is an experiment done in Boston that showed people gave much shorter and simpler directions to someone they believed was from Boston and already had a shared understanding of its public transportation system. So before the reading of the list, the author makes a great case for promoting cultural literacy in schools. He convinces the reader that for social flourishing, certain terms must be understood by all members of the literate public and, a la Jefferson, believes that a near-universally literate public is essential for the flourishing of democracy.

We Americans have long accepted literacy as a paramount aim of schooling, but only recently have some of us who have done research in the field begun to realize that literacy is far more than a skill, and that it requires large amounts of specific information.

Multilingualism enormously increases cultural fragmentation, civil antagonism, illiteracy, and economic technological ineffectualness. Jan 14, Jim Cook rated it really liked it. Mature or cultural literacy means, in addition to theses skills, the possession of a broad spectrum of cultural information - albeit,much of it in a vague, limited, and telegraphic form.

Awareness of the content of this background knowledge enables effective national and intergenerational communication. Nations lacking a high level of this type of national literacy are unlikely to achieve economic success or value democracy or social justice. Hirsch makes the dubious claims that successful countries need to be unilingual and that multiculturalism is a grievous error. You would think his list would acknowledge some references to the neighbouring country of Canada but they are very few and far between.

Apart from the names of three cities in Canada, references that are NOT on the list for literate Americans include: hockey, lacrosse, snow, maple leaf, maple syrup, poutine, Mountie, or the names of any Canadian politicians, actors, writers, hockey players,etc.

Apr 23, Clint Lum rated it really liked it. This was a helpful read. Hirsch--though he was writing in the 80s--is trying to rescue education from the content-drift it has undergone since the early 20th century with the advent of the Cardinal Principles Hirsch's insists that the content of curriculum, that is, what is being taught, is the curriculum.

This is in contrast to progressive education that, according to Hirsch, has won the day in American schools. Whereas the progressive educator cares not for what students are being taug This was a helpful read. Whereas the progressive educator cares not for what students are being taught, but only the skills that they acquire, Hirsch convincingly argues that particular content is inextricably linked to the skills students acquire.

I tend to agree. Where Hirsch is perhaps mistaken, is his incredibly optimistic view of education. A set of shared referents and symbols.

It may be drift and slow disunion. So, first of all, Americans do need a list. And third, it should not made the way he made his. In the balance of this essay, I want to unpack and explain each of those three statements. Literacy is not just a matter of decoding the strings of letters that make up words or the meaning of each word in sequence. It is a matter of decoding context: the surrounding matrix of things referred to in the text and things implied by it.

Hirsch, as an authority on reading and writing, is concerned with traditional texts. But his point about background knowledge and the content of shared public culture extends well beyond schoolbooks. And in all cases, pattern recognition requires literacy in particulars. Lots and lots of particulars. After all, parents on both left and right have come to accept recent research that shows that the more spoken words an infant or toddler hears, the more rapidly she will learn and advance in school.

Volume and variety matter. And what is true about the vocabulary of spoken or written English is also true, one fractal scale up, about the vocabulary of American culture. Hirsch was taken by some critics to be a political conservative because he argued that cultural literacy is inherently a culturally conservative enterprise. It looks backwards. It tries to preserve the past. Not surprisingly, Hirsch later became a fan of the Common Core standards, which, whatever their cross-partisan political toxicity today, were intended in earnest to lay down basic categories of knowledge that every American student should learn.

But those who demonized Hirsch as a right-winger missed the point. Just because an endeavor requires fluency in the past does not make it worshipful of tradition or hostile to change. Indeed, in a notable example of the application of cultural literacy, Hirsch quoted in his book from the platform of the Black Panther Party:.

These samples demonstrated for Hirsch two important points: First, that the Black Panthers, however anti-establishment, were confidently in command of American history and idiom, comfortable quoting the Declaration of Independence verbatim to make their point, happy to juxtapose language from the Bible with the catch phrases of the Nixon campaign, wholly correct in grammatical and rhetorical usage.

And second, that radicalism is made more powerful when garbed in traditionalism. And it is made more urgently true by the changes in American demography since Hirsch gave us his list in The new America, where people of color make up a numerical majority, is not a think-tank projection.

It may well be the condition of the people born in the United States this very year. But an America where nonwhites hold a majority of the power in civic life is much farther off. If you are an immigrant to the United States—or, if you were born here but are the first in your family to go to college, and thus a socioeconomic new arrival; or, say, a black citizen in Ferguson, Missouri deciding for the first time to participate in a municipal election, and thus a civic neophyte—you have a single overriding objective shared by all immigrants at the moment of arrival: figure out how stuff really gets done here.

Literacy in the culture confers power, or at least access to power. Illiteracy, whether willful or unwitting, creates isolation from power. And so any endeavor that makes it easier for those who do not know the memes and themes of American civic life to attain them closes the opportunity gap. It is inherently progressive. Americans need to be able to have a broad base of common knowledge so that diversity can be most fully activated. But why a list, one might ask? Well, yes and no.

It is true that lists alone, with no teaching to bring them to life and no expectation that they be connected to a broader education, are somewhere between useless and harmful. Lists that catalyze discussion and even debate, however, are plenty useful.

In fact, since I started writing this essay, dipping into the list has become a game my high-school-age daughter and I play together. Consider, from pages and This of course is not a good way for her teachers to teach the main content of American history or English.

But it is definitely a good way for us both to supplement what school should be giving her. And however long we end up playing this game, it is already teaching her a meta-lesson about the importance of cultural literacy.

Sometimes she does so proudly, sometimes with a knowing look. My bet is that the satisfaction of that ownership, and the value of it, will compound as the years and her education progress. They were displaced, as time passed, by sayings and songs of people from other places.

Which brings us back to why diversity matters. The same diversity that makes it necessary to have and to sustain a unifying cultural core demands that Americans make the core less monochromatic, more inclusive, and continuously relevant for contemporary life.

It is an evolving document, amendable and ever subject to reinterpretation. Americans need a list made new with new blood. Americans are such a list. What, then, are the 5, things that an American in should know? The assumption was that multiculturalism sits in polar opposition to a traditional common culture, that the fight between multiculturalism and the common culture was zero-sum.

Dead White Men against Afrocentrists. But that was a profoundly artificial dichotomy. As scholars like Ronald Takaki made clear in books like A Different Mirror , the dichotomy made sense only to the extent that one imagined that nonwhite people had had no part in shaping America until they started speaking up in the second half of the twentieth century.

The truth, of course, is that since well before the formation of the United States, the United States has been shaped by nonwhites in its mores, political structures, aesthetics, slang, economic practices, cuisine, dress, song, and sensibility. Yes, America is foundationally English in its language, traditions of law, social organization, market mindedness, and frames of intellectual reference. But then it is foundationally African as well—in the way African slaves changed American speech and song and civic ideals; in the way slavery itself formed and deformed every aspect of life here, from the wording of the Constitution to the forms of faith to the anxious hypocrisy of the codes of the enslavers and their descendants.

As the cultural critic Albert Murray wrote in his classic The Omni-Americans , the essence of American life is that it relentlessly generates hybrids. American culture takes segments of DNA—genetic and cultural—from around the planet and re-splices them into something previously unimagined. The sum of this—the Omni—is as capacious as human life itself, yet found in America most fully. This is jazz and the blues. This is the mash-up. This is everything creole, mestizo, hapa.

It simply claimed that the omni-American story—of diversity and hybridity—was the legitimate American story. Yes, it is true that in a finite school year, say, with finite class time and books of finite heft, not everything about everyone can be taught.

There are necessary trade-offs. But in practice, recognizing the true and longstanding diversity of American identity is not an either-or. It is additive. It brings more complexity and fosters a more world-ready awareness of complexity. Which brings us back to the list. The list, quite simply, must be the mirror for a new America. It needs new references that illuminate how Hindus worship, how Koreans treat elders, what pieces of African custom were grafted onto what pieces of Scots-Irish custom to form what kinds of Southern folkways.

It needs more than just words, because literacy in this mediated age is not only verbal. It needs images braceros on ranches, ballplayers in internment camps.