Are Our Students Culturally Literate?

Cultural Literacy.

Is there a specific body of knowledge that every American needs to know? Who should decide what we need to know and how do we determine what is to be included in that body of knowledge?

Dr. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., former professor  of Humanities and English at the University of Virginia decided to address that issue.  His book, Cultural Literacy – What Every American Needs to Know, when published in 1987 became at once both a best seller and a controversial flashpoint. Hirsch maintained that “to be culturally literate is to possess the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world.” (Hirsch, p.xiii). His thesis, while well meaning, angered multiple groups of educators. There were those who challenged Hirsch with righteous indignation. Who is Hirsch to decide what Americans should know? His book provided a “list” of about 5000 items including historic events, names of famous scholars and politicians, opera and music, religion, and so on. So the argument went on as to what should be included on this list. A subsequent publication of Hirsch’s Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, gave brief descriptions and illustrations of the items he included on his now famous list.

The other group of offended scholars and intellectuals included those who saw this as exposing class differences in American education. Minority and disadvantaged students were not exposed to the same experiences as their middle and upper middle class counterparts. They had not been to museums, concerts or the opera. They had not read the same books (like Shakespeare’s plays), magazines or even vacationed in the same places.

Those familiar with public education in the United States know that with the exception of the Advanced Placement program in high schools, there is no standardized national curriculum. What this means in a mobile society is that students who move from one state to another may either be ahead or  behind their peers, depending in what state they end up in. Thus if Hirsh’s theory would be adopted there would be a common universal fund of knowledge that all American students would know.

It should be pointed out that there is a movement under consideration that would standardize knowledge in specific subject areas (like math).

In 1986 Hirsch established the Core Knowledge Foundation ( www.coreknowledge.org)  in an effort to develop a uniform curriculum for elementary school students. The foundation subsequently published a series of books  about what each grade level student should know.

Where do you stand on this issue? Should there be a uniform national curriculum? What should its contents be? Who should devise it? We want to hear from you.