Cultural Literacy

 This week's post is brought to us by Susan P. We have recently been looking at how sharing the literacy experience enriches our lives... and this post points to the very core of the shared experience! Read on for some great ideas and a fantastic link at the end. Enjoy! Thanks, Susan!

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Last week, my daughter Jaclyn was writing an essay like you might write for a college application. She wanted to include a phrase from Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road not Taken.” She wondered how much of the line she needed to use to communicate her point, whether the reader would understand the idea behind the words “…and that has made all the difference.” What followed was a discussion of the idea that some things are known by just about everyone, that they are such a part of our culture that we need no explanation of the background or meaning.

The concept of “Cultural Literacy” was first presented to the public in 1987 in the book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. When I heard the book discussed, the idea made sense. There are things that tie us together as a culture, as Americans, that make it easier for us to communicate with each other. There is some basic cultural knowledge, from literature and art to science, math, history, and geography, which promotes clear communication.

And this knowledge is constantly evolving. When the book first came out in 1987, there was a list of about 4,700 points of data that a literate American should understand. In the 1988 paperback edition, they dropped about 25 items from the list, but added close to 300! But don’t despair. Over 80% of that list of 5,000 has been in use for over 100 years. That constancy in our culture makes it easy to communicate across generations, geographic boundaries, and racial differences.

As an example of how this cultural literacy helps us, let’s imagine I’m giving directions to my husband’s office. If the new patient has lived in the area for a while, I can tell them the office is one mile east of the Big Chicken on Roswell Road. In fact, I said this once to a resident of Roswell. His expression was priceless. His eyebrows reached almost to his hairline as he said “The WHAT?” Even though he lived less that 20 miles away, I needed to introduce him to that local landmark that is a part of Marietta’s culture and gives us an understandable shorthand, but is totally unknown to an relative outsider.

So we share a common literacy as Americans. But we are each part of multiple smaller groups that have their own literacy. The language spoken at my office is different that Principal Griffeth would speak in her workplace or Sister Mason might use in her work, but we each understand others in our workplace or our field. We have cultural literacy in our families: stories, sayings, or gestures that mean something only to the closely related. These inside jokes and shared history help us feel a sense of belonging, a part of a larger whole that loves us.

We also have the shared culture in the church and in our ward. Members of the church speak the same language no matter where you go. Relief Society and Fireside are the same here or in Canada or in England. We sing many of the same songs throughout the world, and while you may not understand the words in another language, you can still sing along in your own. But a newcomer to our midst, someone who hasn’t been exposed to the lingo and weaned on the culture, may have a hard time breaking the language barrier. We need to be aware at church, just as we do in our other associations, of terms and ideas that may exclude the new member, and make them feel that they don’t belong.

It’s a fun thing to do, to pay attention to our communications and see what cultural references we use without even knowing about it. Hirsh stated that this cultural literacy helps us to promote the general welfare and insure domestic tranquility. Can you name that source?

And if you want to see the whole list of 5,000 things YOU should know, go here. Scroll down to page 152. The list starts there.