Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: _The Closing of the American Mind_ (was: Re: Cultural Literacy)
Message-ID: <296@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 20 Aug 88 06:17:19 GMT
References: <1043@mmm.UUCP> <2776@hubcap.UUCP>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Followup-To: comp.edu
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 28

[I've directed followups to comp.edu, as "Cultural Literacy" is about
 education, after all.]

In article <2776@hubcap.UUCP> shorne@citron (Scott Horne) writes:
>Hirsch seems to say that "cultural literacy" can be achieved by memorizing a
>bunch of information from an encyclopedia.  _Au contraire_!  What we need is
>a truly *liberal* education.

This is a fairly serious misreading.  Hirsch's thesis is
(a) reading is important to education (even, one presumes, a "truly
    liberal education", whatever that might be)
(b) there is more to reading than just being about to decode marks on
    paper
(c) in particular, you have to have a certain amount of background
    knowledge of your own culture in order to be able to read effectively
(d) and the book offers a particular list of topics as an instance of
    what a minimal background might look like.

That is, "Cultural Literacy" does not claim that to know that list of facts
is to be educated, but that you need to understand most of those topics at
some level in order to be able to read and comprehend a newspaper.  (For
example, as an alien in the USA, I am still stumped when I see the term
"carpetbagger", and get nothing from it.  Someone who has been taught about
the Reconstruction should understand the metaphor.)	

"Cultural Literacy" might also be useful to writers: if you use a metaphor
not on the list, you had better check that your intended audience is likely
to understand it.