{"id":541,"date":"2011-01-25T10:24:21","date_gmt":"2011-01-25T17:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janice-campbell.com\/?p=541"},"modified":"2017-04-10T21:55:26","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T21:55:26","slug":"what-is-cultural-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doingwhatmatters.com\/what-is-cultural-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Cultural Literacy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last post, What’s the least you need to teach?,<\/a> I outlined the learning tools that can\u00a0help your student study and absorb knowledge. Now, let’s look at the concept of cultural literacy and see how it might help you homeschool.<\/p>\n

\"Cultural<\/a><\/p>\n

Who needs\u00a0cultural literacy?<\/h1>\n

If you have no idea what cultural literacy means, you’re not alone. To be literate means to be “acquainted with letters or literature ; able to read and write; educated” or a “liberally educated or learned person” (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary<\/em><\/a>). The poet Matthew Arnold<\/a> described culture as the pursuit of perfection “by means of getting to know\u00a0. . . the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits” (preface to Culture and Anarchy<\/em>, 1869).<\/p>\n

To express it more briefly, I would say that\u00a0to be culturally literate is to understand the history and ideas\u00a0that underlie a culture, and to be able to converse fluently in the\u00a0allusions\u00a0and informal content of that culture. In other words, to be educated.\u00a0Cultural literacy is essential for taking part in what has been referred to as the\u00a0Great Conversation<\/a>, an ongoing process of writers and thinkers referencing, building on, and refining the work of their predecessors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reclaiming literacy<\/h2>\n

During the twentieth century, a number of thinkers debated\u00a0about the essentials of education.\u00a0Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer Adler proposed and published a series of Great Books of the Western World, 52 volumes designed to give readers a foundation in the thought of Western Civilization, and a variety of other Great Books lists were created and promoted. Toward the end of the century, E. D. Hirsch joined\u00a0the chorus of alarm over the ever-shrinking knowledge of high school graduates, and in his best-selling\u00a0Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know<\/em><\/a>\u00a0discusses the importance of cultural literacy. As an example, he provided\u00a0a list of people, ideas, and events that an educated person could reasonably be expected to be\u00a0familiar with, such as\u00a0Waterloo, Hamlet, “Call me Ishmael,” the Wife of Bath, the Magna Carta,\u00a0Tutankhamen, the Pythagorean\u00a0Theorem, 1066, and many more.\u00a0The word\u00a0“familiarity” is the key. To be “familiar with” something is far different from being an expert in it, and\u00a0familiarity is a by-product of wide reading and conversations, both formal and informal, about the great ideas.<\/p>\n

Although Hirsch’s work was an attempt to point the way back to a genuine education, the list he provided played directly into the hands of test-obsessed\u00a0education bureaucrats. It seemed\u00a0a lot easier to create a curriculum of\u00a0bits and pieces of information that students could regurgitate on a test at week’s end,\u00a0than to spend\u00a0time reading through the Great Books list. Read a synopsis or a scene\u00a0from Hamlet during the school year, and bingo \u2014 the student would recognize the character’s names and the school could check off the “Shakespeare” box in its list of things to cover. Not quite what is meant by “cultural literacy,” and in the long run, much less interesting and more difficult than doing the thing that has worked for centuries \u2014 reading, narrating, and writing through the foundational books of Western Civilization.<\/p>\n

Following clues toward literacy<\/h3>\n

When I was in school in the 1960’s and ’70s, most students meekly accepted whatever fragments of desiccated knowledge that were tossed out, never imagining that there might be a better way to learn. I was lucky enough to be one of the few who read, and I liked old books, so I realized that what I was getting bore little resemblance to the education of the past. In the books I read, young people studied Latin and Shakespeare, and created events and plays based on classic literature.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"Somehow, even though I hadn’t heard of the concept of cultural literacy, I\u00a0understood that I was missing out on all the good stuff. Authors of the books I loved best drew on deep wells of knowledge to create vivid, convincing, and yes \u2014 living worlds peopled with compelling characters. I bumped into\u00a0Shakespeare and Spinoza in the hilarious novels of P. G. Wodehouse<\/a>, encountered Mozart, Rembrandt, Demosthenes, and\u00a0Keats in Little Women<\/em><\/a>, and found Spenser and Chesterton through the writings of C. S. Lewis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Without knowing anything about classical education, commonplace books<\/a>, or the concept of living books, I began following threads of thought and trying to read more about the people, events, and ideas in my favorite books. I copied\u00a0interesting quotes in a small notebook, memorized poetry I liked, and continually tracked ideas. Whenever I encountered an author whose work was rich in ideas, I read more books by that author. Ever so slowly, I was inching toward an understanding of the types of learning that mattered and ways of learning it that stuck.<\/p>\n

Forging a simple\u00a0path<\/h3>\n

When I started homeschooling the boys, it made sense to teach them in the way that I had begun to learn. It was in the 1980s, and there wasn’t much available for homeschool curriculum so it made sense to keep it simple and do what I knew would work. We read tons\u00a0of books, listened to audiobooks and great music, copied passages, talked about what we read, drew pictures, played music and games, and spent time outdoors. On a lot of days, we had so much fun that the boys didn’t quite realize they were learning all the time. What we did was simple, but it seemed to work.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to the present, and walk through a homeschool convention<\/a>. There’s a mind-boggling array of ways to teach everything, each shared by an enthusiastic proponent of a particular method. Students don’t have to miss out on anything. They can take Latin, Shakespeare, Geology, Ancient History, American Government, welding, and sewing, right along with multivariable calculus, algorithms, and Ruby on Rails. Not only that, they can approach\u00a0it in just about any format that pleases them, including\u00a0traditional texts, satellite, podcast, or video; and in just about any order they please, including chronologically, alphabetically, or cyclically.<\/p>\n

How can you choose what to do?<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>And if you’re like many graduates of institutional\u00a0schools, how can you teach what you don’t know?<\/p>\n

You can’t do everything, but you can do the most effective things. Just as great tutors through the ages have done, you can provide an atmosphere<\/a> that helps students learn, spread a broad feast of great ideas through living books, and together, you and your student can learn and grow just as\u00a0Cicero, Dante, Shakespeare, Leonardo daVinci, and Thomas Jefferson learned. Together, the tools of learning and living books\u00a0are\u00a0the foundation\u00a0and means of becoming educated, and thus\u00a0culturally literate. It’s a path that is both simple and challenging, and it’s worth taking.<\/p>\n

Now . . . wouldn’t you like to go read a good book?<\/p>\n

Ingredients in an\u00a0education for cultural literacy<\/h3>\n

I realize that any list invites reductionism, so this list is intentionally broad and relatively general.<\/p>\n