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5 1 Cultural Literacy Reconsidered ERNEST R CULTURAL LITERACY RECONSIDERED 59 In Literacy for a Diverse Sociev: Perspectives, Practices, and Policies, hardback copies, a phenomenal number, and What Do Our 17-Year-Olds edited by Elfrieda H. Hiebert, pp. 58-74. Know? by Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn, Jr. (1987), has also enjoyed New York: Teachers College Press, 1991. popular success. All of these books have received considerable media atten- tion, but we will concentrate here on Hirsch's ideas. 5 1 Cultural Literacy Reconsidered ERNEST R. HOUSE THE CONCEPT OF CULTURAL LITERACY CAROL EMMER NANCY LAWRENCE Hirsch (1983) contends that there is no doubt that our national cultural University of Colorado, Boulder literacy has declined. The chief culprit is the pluralism of the school curric- Recently a student in an American high school was asked on a test who ulum, which has diluted the content of the traditional English and history Socrates was. He answered that Socrates was an Indian chief. Whether this courses. Educators, afraid of attacks by minority groups accusing them of incident is apocryphal is difficult to say. It does have the ring of authenticity: cultural imperialism, have promulgated a content-free curriculum focused One can imagine the hapless student, in desperate search for an answer, as- exclusively upon formal cognitive skills. "Literacy is not just a formal skill; sociating Socrates with Seneca, the ancient Roman philosopher, then con- it is also a political decision. Literacy implies specific contents as well necting Seneca to the Indian tribe of the same name. In any case the story is as formal skills" (p. 162). This essential "canonical knowledge" Hirsch la- a favorite of former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Chester E. Finn, bels "cultural literacy." Jr., and has been used repeatedly to illustrate the cultural illiteracy of Amer- In his view the United States is becoming so fragmented as to lose its ican students and to dramatize the urgency of restoring the nation's cultural coherence as a culture. He proposed a National Board of Education that knowledge. In fact, a formidable educational reform movement has devel- would define broad lists of suggested literary works for the schools to teach. oped, aimed at improving the teaching of American culture within the If such a national board could not be set up, other organizations should pro- schools. vide recommendations, including a lexicon of words and phrases that high These ideas about public education, if carried forward, have strong im- school graduates should know and that could serve as a guide to instruction. plications for the school curriculum at both the elementary and secondary Currently only the Scholastic Aptitude Test provides such guidance, Hirsch levels and for the content of standardized achievement tests at all levels. That thought. "Is the Educational Testing Service our hidden National Board of is, both the content of what is now taught and tested for would be changed Education? Does it sponsor our hidden national cumculum? If so, the ETS quite substantially if the schools were to focus on cultural literacy. In this is rather to be praised than blamed" (Hirsch, 1983, p. 168). Hirsch later chapter we will examine the core ideas of cultural literacy with a view to retreated from this position somewhat: "The common background knowledge assessing their merit. required for literacy does not depend on specific texts" (Hirsch, 1986, p. 1). The phrase "cultural literacy" was popularized by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Perhaps the point Hirsch is trying to make is that "canonical knowledge" (1987b), in his best-selling book Cultural Literacy: What Every American may be arrived at through a number of means, only one of which may be by Needs to Know. The book has been lauded by top government officials as reading a set of prescribed texts (Hirsch, 1984, 1987b, 1988b). critical to the future of American education and lambasted by critics as "edu- In 1987 Hirsch presented his full rationale: "The civic importance of cational trivial pursuit." Hirsch published a sequel, The Dictionary of Cul- cultural literacy lies in the fact that true enfranchisement depends upon tural Literacy (1988c), and his organization, the Foundation for Cultural Lit- knowledge, knowledge upon literacy, and literacy upon cultural literacy" eracy, also has been developing special tests. Another highly influential book (1987b, p. 12). In his view, reading requires background or "world knowl- about cultural literacy in higher education, Allan Bloom's (1987) The Clos- edge"-cultural literacy. And this background knowledge is national in char- ing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy acter rather than either local or international. The false doctrines of cultural and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, sold more than 650,000 pluralism and educational formalism were preventing our national culture from being taught, and the schools must teach specific national cultural con- tent in the early grades. 60 PERSPECTIVES CULTURAL LITERACY RECONSIDERED 61 There are four major strands to Hirsch's rationale. First, reading literacy cultural literacy (cultural schemata). But the analogy does not hold very well depends upon background knowledge, and, similarly, getting along in society when cultural literacy is defined as simple knowledge of a list of specific depends upon cultural literacy, that is, knowing the culture one lives in; sec- terms. What one might reasonably conclude is that reading ability is depen- ond, modem industrial nations depend upon the development of homoge- dent in part on reading schemata, and that chess playing is dependent on neous national cultures; third, traditional American pluralism does not pre- chess schemata, and that knowledge of a list of specific cultural terms may clude the necessity for conformity to the national culture; and fourth, help one do well in society but that cultural knowledge is neither necessary education has fallen victim to romantic formalism and misguided pluralism, nor sufficient for doing well. Our opinion is that cultural knowledge is ex- which has led to a diluted school curriculum and consequent cultural frag- tremely desirable to have but that it is not necessary to or sufficient for "suc- mentation. The solution is to reestablish the national culture as the core of cess in life," as that term is normally understood in American society. The the curriculum. Hirsch concludes his book by presenting a list of about 6,000 fact that the upper social classes have more cultural knowledge in general terms that comprise the national culture and that should be taught in the and the lower classes do not is a relationship of correlation, not of cause and schools. effect. So in our judgment Hirsch pushes his argument too far, although we In the first argument Hirsch relies heavily upon research conducted by would agree that cultural knowledge helps one interpret the social world. Anderson and his colleagues at the Center for the Study of Reading at the It is also the case that Hirsch ignores the implications of his own argu- University of Illinois. In brief, this research demonstrates that specific back- ment as well as the research on the social context of learning. Eisenhart and ground knowledge, called a schema, is critical to reading a given text. For Cutts-Dougherty in Chapter 3 survey the substantial research by anthropolo- example, in a study often cited by Kirsch, Americans reading about an gists on how and what students learn in a particular context. Learning to American wedding understand the text much better than East Indians do, and read, or learning anything else, is highly dependent on the student's cultural East Indians understand the text about an Indian wedding much better. background, as Hirsch asserts, but the anthropologists arrive at the conclu- Hence, reading ability depends upon preexisting knowledge. The work by sion that the student's own cultural background itself must be taken into Anderson and his colleagues is highly regarded within the educational re- account if the student is to learn. To use Hirsch's own example, teaching search community and is leading to significant changes in reading instruction American students about an East Indian wedding will be much more success- in the schools. ful if one recognizes the conceptions about weddings that the students al- There are problems with Hirsch's argument, however. Hirsch draws ready have. In other words, their own cultural backgrounds must be taken conclusions beyond the research studies: "What distinguishes good readers into consideration. Hirsch draws the opposite conclusion, that the students from poor ones is simply the possession of a lot of diverse, task-specific are culturally deficient and one must ignore their culture. information" (p. 61). It is one thing to say that background information plays an important role in reading, consistent with the research, and quite another to say that such specific information is everything, which the research does NATIONAL CULTURE not. One of Hirsch's own examples calls his extrapolation into question. He argues that master chess players recognize and employ chess schemata to The second strand of Hirsch's rationale is an argument asserting the organize and guide their play, which seems reasonable. However, it would criticality of a national language and a national culture for the development seem highly unlikely that teaching a list of chess terms and concepts to chess of the modem industrial nation. He contends that a modem nation must have novices would transform the novices into master chess players. Whatever both a single national language and a homogeneous national culture. Hirsch chess schemata consist of, surely they are not simply lists of chess terms. first develops an argument for the necessity of a national language, essen- Rather the novice must learn schemata by playing chess extensively and tially a case for standards: "Inside a national border, education helps to keep studying it intensively.
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