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.