Reflections on the book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, by E.D. Hirsch Jr.:
Donn’s perspective: I went to school in southern Vermont in the 1940s and 1950s, and Jean went to school in suburban Illinois and a private high school in Colorado, just five years behind me. Three of our children stayed at home with us through most or all of their “high school” education, and therefore have similar, if not superior, backgrounds. When we discuss key events in history or major works of literature, we usually understand each other very quickly; we learned the same basic information, and don’t need to give each other long parenthetical explanations of our reference points before continuing a general discussion.
One of our children attended an “alternative” boarding high school. Our expectations of an “alternative education” were that it would encompass most standard subjects, such as English, math, history, science, etc., but in a non-standard manner: i.e., without rote learning of dead facts without reflection, without quarterly exams, without grading of papers and performance, and so on. We soon realized, that the school’s definition of “alternative,” especially in some subjects, was very different from ours, and often depended largely on what the students felt like studying. Theoretically, that’s the basis of “invited learning,” and in theory I’m all for it. In practice, I need to see it working; if it isn’t, I favor a little uninvited learning.
E.G. One student chose to study American history through its music, which we thought was a good idea. He began his “study” with Bob Dylan’s later, “electrified” rock music, decided it was too tame, and devoted the rest of his time, including a four-week intercession, to being a Grateful Dead groupie, following the rock group from city to city, sleeping in his car and skipping meals so he could pay for rock concert tickets. And so on.
All the students chose what we thought would be excellent behind-the-scenes approaches to history, and ended with little or no knowledge at all of even the most basic facts of U.S. history, such as the causes of the Civil War or of the two world wars, the significance or even the existence of the Monroe Doctrine, and relations between the United States and other countries. To the question, “Did you study U.S. history in school?” all the students will answer, “Yes,” but their various impressions are more faulty and incomplete than those of the six blind men trying to determine what an elephant is. There are very good examples of the importance of Hirsch’s message – that being “culturally literate” is to possess a large amount of shared knowledge of basic information about our world and our culture. Without that shared knowledge, says Hirsch, communications fail, and then the undertakings; and that, he adds, is the moral of the story of the Tower of Babel.
Shared knowledge is neither more nor less than a kind of language that has evolved in our culture over many, many years; it provides a short-cut to effective communication. If our family is sitting around the TV discussing a news item about some U.S. activity in the Middle East, someone may comment that it seems to be in violation of the Monroe Doctrine; for all of us, many years of U.S. history and policy-making are summed up in that one reference, including many of the problems preceding Monroe’s administration as well as more recent activities such as the never-declared Korean War. For someone unfamiliar with the Monroe Doctrine, a lengthy explanation may be necessary to make it relevant to the present discussion, and by that time everyone else has wandered off to play Ping-Pong.
The second example is my allusion to the six blind men. For most children of my generation, it’s a familiar story; for many children growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, it’s a mental blank. If you know the story, my point is made quickly and picturesquely with fewer than a dozen words; if you don’t know the story, I must either tell it to you or use ten times as many words to communicate my thought to you.
Hirsch blames much of our society’s decreasing shared knowledge on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Dewey, although he concedes that their ideas may have been carried to unreasonable extremes by their adherents. Until about 1960 or a little earlier, children’s stories, literary heroes, and school subjects across the country were very similar, as were basic courses in secondary schools and universities, and such short-cuts in communication as I’ve described were easy and common. Then many leading educators decided that children were being made to memorize too many facts without being taught how to think about them. Public education changed almost overnight to emphasize “thinking skills” and “communication skills.” At first, this seemed to be an important advance, but gradually people began to see that although children might have been learning how to think, they had nothing to think about. Publishers and teachers, not wanting to be accused of teaching dead facts, reduced history and science and literature to the bland consistency of vanilla pudding. Magazine articles complained that Johnny and Janie couldn’t read, but no one seemed to realize that Johnny and Janie no longer cared about reading because their storybooks and textbooks were as exciting as yesterday’s oatmeal. Today’s students are still being taught “how to think,” and are still being given very few facts or ideas to think about. They’re absorbing their cultural knowledge from television and rock music because no one else is telling them anything of interest. There is very little on television about the Monroe Doctrine, and rock groups seldom sing about the Renaissance or the Reformation. Hollywood no longer makes movies about Joan of Arc or King Arthur or Lewis and Clark or the Oklahoma Land Run. The people and events of the past that were a part of our everyday lives – in books, movies, radio programs, and even early television programs – are no more than blank faces and meaningless dates to most children today.
A friend in New Jersey wrote, “I told my husband I thought ‘cultural literacy’ was just what everybody knows. He just looked at me, and didn’t say anything.” That, of course, is the point: Cultural literacy used to be what everyone knew. Each day now, fewer and fewer people know the same things. “We have ignored cultural literacy in thinking about education,” says Hirsch, “precisely because it was something we have been able to take for granted. We ignore the air we breathe until it is thin or foul.”
Hirsch has been most seriously criticized for his book’s 63-page appendix, an alphabetical listing of words, phrases, book and song titles, historical and geographical references, aphorisms, and quotations Hirsch says “literate Americans know.” Critics ignore Hirsch’s own disclaimer that the list is meant to be suggestive rather than definitive. Not every literate person, Hirsch says, is familiar with every item in his list, and, although he and two colleagues worked hard to make their list as complete as they could, Hirsch invites interested readers to suggest amendments and additions to the list
Conversations and correspondence among educated, “literate” people are rife with references and allusions that often convey paragraphs or even volumes of meaning in a few well-chosen words. Much more than idle whim directs many authors to borrow from the Bible, Shakespeare, and other great literary works for their titles. Readers are given extra measures of meaning in the books if they are familiar with the chosen phrases in their original contexts.
“Learning without thought is labor lost,” said Confucius, seemingly in agreement with Rousseau and Dewey, but, he added, “thought without learning is perilous,” which I think is Hirsch’s contention. We want our children to know how to think, of course, but without the lessons of history, the examples of good literature, knowledge of other peoples and cultures, and basic information about the physical world around them, their ability to think won’t help them emerge from a personal repetition of the Dark Ages. We don’t want to teach our children what to think, but how to think, and to do that, we must help them find facts and information and ideas to think about. Word games and puzzles in logic are no substitute for information and ideas about the “real world” of the past and present and – if we’re ready – the future.
One important omission in his list of “what literate Americans know” – which Hirsch could not have foreseen – is the phrase “cultural literacy” itself. Besides conveying a meaning far beyond a basic competency in reading and writing, the phrase now represents a new way of looking at education. In discussing educational theories and practices with other educators, I feel the conversation would be as difficult without a shared knowledge of Hirsch’s ideas as it would be without a shared knowledge of the basic ideas of Rousseau, Dewey, and John Holt. “Cultural literacy” has become an important part of cultural literacy. $14.95. There is more on this subject in The Lifetime Learning Companion.
THE NEW DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL LITERACY: What Every American Needs to Know, by E.D. Hirsch Jr., Joseph Kett, and James Trefil. Includes 1000 revised entries and 500 new ones thus expanding and augmenting the controversial list of “what literate Americans know” from the book Cultural Literacy, this book identifies the people, places, sayings, and ideas that form the common heritage of American culture. Twenty-three alphabetically arranged sections address major categories of knowledge with hundreds of entries that discuss ideas, events, and individuals, explaining their significance in our culture and placing them in context. Features maps, charts, illustrations and brings this book into the digital age. This book isn’t a course in “instant cultural literacy,” nor is it intended to be, but it will be a very useful skeleton guide to enjoyable productive reading and study: With the collection of ideas and information in this book as jumping-off points, the reader can become acquainted (or reacquainted) with vast areas of knowledge that may be vague or missing. $29.95.
Of A First Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Our Children Need to Know, by E.D. Hirsch Jr.,, Donn said, “This book is even more controversial than Hirsch’s other two, but I think those who object that “Hirsch is telling us what to teach our kids” are like medieval kings who beheaded messengers who brought bad news. Would you rather have a national committee tell you what your child should know? If we don’t set some standards for ourselves (not values for everyone, just ourselves), we will not achieve our goals. Public educators agree more and more with the opinion home-schoolers have had for years – that today’s kids are not being educated. Taking them out of school is no solution if they aren’t being educated at home. This book presents Hirsch’s concept of the core body of knowledge that has been (and should be) the framework of American society and culture, particularly for children through the sixth grade. More than 2,000 concise, understandable entries are presented in 21 sections, ranging from the Bible and mythology to geography, history, and mathematics to the sciences, health, and technology. Richly illustrated with photographs, drawings, charts, and maps. Like the lists in Cultural Literacy and The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, this one is meant to be suggestive, not definitive, and readers can easily adapt it to their use. We think it’s a very useful skeleton for all parents and teachers – especially home-schoolers – to use as a basic reference in designing a curriculum, in stocking a home library, or both before and after the children have learned to read. The suggestions in this book give children many things to think about while they’re learning to think. $15.00.
Then there is the Core Knowledge Series, edited by E.D. Hirsch Jr. Originally there were just six books in this series: What Your First [Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth] Grader Needs to Know, subtitled, “Fundamentals of a Good First- [Second-, Third-, etc.] Grade Education.” Now the series has expanded to include two separate volumes, What Your Preschooler… and What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know. All the previous books have been updated. Each book is a very comprehensive, almost encyclopedic outline of basic information for each respective grade level in language arts, fine arts, history, geography, mathematics, science, and technology. The mathematics sections don’t have “lessons” as such, but their very detailed summaries of all the basic facts, information, and skills that are most desirable will serve as excellent skeletons (or cores, as the series title suggests) around which to build your materials and activities. All the other subjects – such as nursery rhymes and Aesop’s fables in the first-grade book through stories and poems and more advanced literature selections in the higher grades – are very good, but will need to be supplemented with other similar materials (more literature, more biographies, etc.). The series seems to be similar in some ways to Saxon’s approach to math, using an incremental method of teaching, presenting very basic information at first, and then slowly building on this information, year by year, to give a more complete picture without bombarding the child with so much information that it can’t be remembered or used. We have reservations about a few details, but in general we’re very favorably impressed by the books. If they had been published when we were still teaching young kids, they would have made it much easier for us to design our own curricula. The arithmetic and math sections of these books – supplemented with some of the other early-learning books we recommend – can easily be all that’s necessary to prepare for Essential Mathematics (or Saxon’s Math 76, if you prefer a more academic program), with no need for the monotonous drill in standard school textbooks. Each book in the series is now in paperback.
BUT -
Having praised and recommended the Core Knowledge Series, I have to remind you that the books were not written by E.D. Hirsch Jr., but were edited by him, and we sometimes wondered if he was watching Sesame Street at the same time. Most of the books in the series are well done and need no apology, but we did find some examples of idiocy so you will want to read and use these books with your brain turned on and tuned in. I still think it’s a good core for a first-grade curriculum, but don’t be surprised if you sometimes feel like throwing it on the floor and jumping on it. All but grade six are $15.00. Grade six is $35.00.
BOOKS TO BUILD ON: A Grade-by-Grade Resource Guide for Parents and Teachers, edited by E.D. Hirsch Jr., author of Cultural Literacyå. This book is designed to be a companion to the Core Knowledge Series (K-6) [What Your First- (Second-, Third-, etc.) Grader Needs to Know, see "Homeschooling and Cultural Literacy"]. If you’re using this series, this book will be invaluable. If you need to write an impressive curriculum, I highly recommend this as a “guide” to resources you can use. Please remember that although it is written in a book, it is not written in stone. Use your own judgment. Allow latitude for following up areas of special interest. Keep in mind that if your child doesn’t learn it all this year, there will be another chance next year or the one after. If I had to write a curriculum, I would use this book in conjunction with the Typical Course of Study listed above (which is free) as a guide. A word of caution: I’d use the book for writing a guide, but I doubt I would try to do it all within a school year. Although the material is good, I think there’s just too much to reasonably do within a year. I’d stick with the most important elements.
The book is organized by subject and grade, with many good recommendations covering all phases of language arts, history, geography, visual arts, music, science, and mathematics through grade six. You are given the title, author, publisher, and age or grade levels, along with a written review of the book. If you’re not using any curriculum, this is an excellent reference book when your child wants information on a particular subject and you want to know what’s available and appropriate for a certain age level. If you want books for an eight-year-old child interested in Egypt, this book will suggest titles, with reviews, and the approximate age or grade level of each book. This information is particularly useful if you are studying a subject with children of different ages. I think this is the best way to use this resource. $15.00
Hirsch lists the publisher’s address and ordering information for some titles, but you may not save money by buying directly, because most publishers charge at least $3.50 for shipping. Your local bookstore will be the cheapest supplier. We have listed some of these books, but not all. If you can’t find the books recommended by Hirsch at the library or in your local bookstore, we can probably get them for you. Please write and ask us. I think you’ll find we charge less for shipping than most publishers.
Homeschooling THE FIRST YEAR OF HOMESCHOOLING YOUR CHILD: Your Complete Guide to Getting Off to the Right Start, by Linda Dobson. This book starts off acknowledging all the doubts, fears, and questions you may have about beginning homeschooling. Then it goes on to make you feel comfortable and competent to deal with these uncertainties whether your child has been in school before or you are beginning this journey before your child has attended public school.
ABOVE ALL, BE KIND: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times, by Zoe Weil.
The Lifetime Learning Companion is hot off the press and available at a special price for a limited time.