Cultural Literacy

We often take so much for granted. This is especially true in our communication. We say something and assume everyone else knows what we’re talking about. The reality is that we are in the midst of a national communication breakdown.

Our American education system can’t be entirely to blame, but it is a contributing factor. Instead of teaching young people to love literature and learning, we “teach to the test” and strive to simply make sure they get a passing grade, even if they learn nothing. Sure, there are exceptional teachers, but all too often the pressures are there for outcomes and not real learning.

E.D. Hirsch, Jr. wrote an important book called Cultural Literacy which addresses this theme. The subtitle is What Every American Needs To Know. Hirsch argues that there is certain knowledge that is fundamental in order to function in our modern society. When writers write and politicians speak, there is a background to their words. Without understanding that background, we often miss the point of what they are attempting to convey.

Wikipedia defines “cultural literacy” as “the ability to converse fluently in the idioms, allusions and informal content which creates and constitutes a dominant culture. From being familiar with street signs to knowing historical references to understanding the most recent slang, literacy demands interaction with the culture and reflection of it.”

Professor Hirsch devotes many pages of his book to making a distinction between important knowledge and trivia. In the realm of people, for example, it is important to know who Benedict Arnold and Judas were, not so important to know Betsy Ross. Arnold and Judas have become metaphors for betrayal. Betsy Ross was of many who made early contributions in our history.

Hirsch ends his book with an appendix that lists 5000 names, phrases, dates and concepts which “every American” ought to know. Here are some of the items from that list. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t know some of them. Instead, make a decision to be a lifelong learner. It will increase your influence and strengthen your confidence as you interact with others in our challenging, modern world.

Important Dates
1066

1492

1776

1861-1865

1914-1918

1939-1945

and (the book) 1984

Important People (these are just a few of the many names in Hirsch's list)

Henry Aaron

Adam and Eve

John Adams

John Quincy Adams

Adonis

Muhammed Ali

Woody Allen

Hans Christian Anderson

Attila the Hun

Saint Augustine

Bacchus

Clara Barton

Ludwig von Beethoven

Chuck Berry

Billy the Kid

Robert Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Cain and Abel

Catherine the Great

Fidel Castro

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Copernicus

John Dewey

etc.

Examples of expressions, concepts and events would include:

Conditioned reflex

Crossing the Rubicon

Cuban missile crisis

Cum laude

Custer's last stand

Cut the Gordian knot

Diplomatic immunity

Dialectical materialism

Double indemnity

Dreyfuss affair

Fiddling while Rome burns

Fireside chat

Frankenstein's monster

Golden Rule

etc.

You get the picture. The book is worth your time, as is your investment in lifelong learning. At the very worst, you'll become a better team mate in your next game of Trivia Pursuit.

1960

1960 was a big year in my life. That was the year I got out of school for three weeks in spring and went cross country with my grandparents. From my home in Cleveland to Reno, NV, all by rail, through Chicago, Salt Lake City, prairies, mountains, day and night for three days each way. Destination: my cousins, aunt and uncle an hour outside Reno. Uncle Dale did geology and the Wolfe family lived a free, remote life. Later that same year we went to Niagara Falls with cousins, aunt and uncle on my Dad's side...

That's not the reason, however, that 1960 is today's theme. This year is an election year. 1960 also proved to be a significant election. Perhaps all are, but 1960 seems especially so. John F. Kennedy electrified voters with his oratory skills, charm and wit, and in November was elected the youngest president of these United States, breaking new ground as the first Catholic to sit in the Oval Office.

I've heard said that Obama is being compared to JFK. This week I can see a bit of that. He has charm, and panache. And so I went online (everything is but a click away these days!) and found a site that assembled JFK quotes, among others. Here are a few that pertain to the arts.

"Too often in the past, we have thought of the artist as an idler and dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy and effete. We have done both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and intense discipline."

"We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth."

"I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty...an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft."

"In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation."

I chose these quotes about the arts, several from remarks made at Amherst, because 1960 was also the year that artist/poet/musician Bob Dylan emerged on the scene in NYC. Behind me here in my office is a Sept 1960 poster announcing that Dylan would be performing on the 19th at the Underground Cavern in Greenwich Village.

To think that Dylan is still making music today, 48 year later, and that that other beacon of 1960 was snuffed out 45 years ago...

Thinking of Kennedy brought to mind this very short essay by Jorge Luis Borges, which I discovered in a Fall/Winter 1970-1971 edition of The Antioch Review.

IN MEMORIAM J.F.K.

This bullet is an old one.

In 1897, it was fired at the president of Uruguay by a young man from Montevideo, Avelino Arredondo, who had spent long weeks without seeing anyone so that the world might know that he acted alone. Thirty years earlier, Lincoln had been murdered by that same ball, by the criminal or magical hand of an actor transformed by the words of Shakespeare into Marcus Brutus, Caesar's murderer. In the mid-seventeenth century, vengeance had employed it for the assassination of Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus in the midst of the public hecatomb of battle.

In earlier times, the bullet had been other things, because Pythagorean metempsychosis is not reserved for humankind alone. It was the silken cord given to viziers in the East, the rifles and bayonets that cut down the defenders of the Alamo, the triangular blade that slit a queen's throat, the wood of the Cross and the dark nails that pierced the flesh of the Redeemer, the poison kept by the Carthaginian chief in an iron ring on his finger, the serene goblet that Socrates drank down one evening.

In the dawn of time it was the stone that Cain hurled at Abel, and in the future it shall be many things that we cannot even imagine today, but that will be able to put an end to men and their wondrous, fragile life.

~by Jorge Luis Borges