From Literature To Cultural Literacy

Researchers in the new field of literary-and-cultural studies look at social issues – especially issues of change and mobility – through the lens of literary thinking. The essays range from cultural memory and migration to electronic textuality and biopolitics.

A must-read for parents and teachers, this major bestseller reveals how cultural literacy is the hidden key to effective education and presents 5000 facts that every literate American should know. In this forceful manifesto Professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that children in the United States are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. They lack cultural literacy: a grasp of background information that writers and speakers assume their audience already has. Even if a student has a basic competence in the English language, he or she has little chance of entering the American mainstream without knowing what a silicon chip is, or when the Civil War was fought. An important work that has engendered a nationwide debate on our educational standards, Cultural Literacy is a required reading for anyone concerned with our future as a literate nation.

How can educators improve the literacy skills of students in historically underachieving urban high schools? In this timely book, the author offers a theoretical framework for the design of instruction that is both culturally responsive and subject-matter specific, rooted in examples of the implementation of the Cultural Modeling Project. Presented here, the Cultural Modeling Project draws on competencies students already have in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) discourse and hip-hop culture to tackle complex problems in the study of literature. Using vivid descriptions from real classrooms, the author describes how AAVE supported student learning and reasoning; how students in turn responded to the reform initiative; and how teachers adapted the cultural framework to the English/language arts curriculum. While the focus is on literacy and African American students, the book examines the functions of culture in facilitating learning and offers principles for leveraging cultural knowledge in support of subject matter specific to academic learning. This much-awaited book offers important lessons for researchers, school district leaders, and local practitioners regarding the complex ways that cultural knowledge is constructed and plays out in classroom life, in the life of a school, and in the life of a whole-school reform initiative.

A practical handbook for students and trivia buffs utilizes a host of multiple-choice questions to test readers' knowledge of American and world history, geography, science, art and architecture, music, literature, myth and religion, quotations, current events, and other topics. Reprint.

This book explores a new approach to cultural literacy. Taking a pedagogical perspective, it looks at the skills, knowledge, and abilities involved in understanding and interpreting cultural differences, and proposes new ways of approaching such differences as sources of richness in intercultural and interdisciplinary collaborations. Cultural Literacy and Empathy in Education Practice balances theory with practice, providing practical examples for educators who wish to incorporate cultural literacy into their teaching. The book includes case studies, interviews with teachers and students, and examples of exercises and assessments, all backed by years of robust scholarly research.

Fully updated and revised, the second edition of New Learning explores the contemporary debates and challenges in education and considers how schools can prepare their students for the future. New Learning, Second Edition is an inspiring and comprehensive resource for pre-service and in-service teachers alike.

In this forceful manifesto, Hirsch argues that children in the U.S. are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. Includes 5,000 essential facts to know.

Thirteen experts in the visual arts, literature, music, dance, and theater responded to the arguments of E. D. Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know", focusing particularily on his alarm at the serious slippage that has occurred in the background knowledge and information prerequisite for effective communication. These authorities addressed two questions: (1) What it means for people to be "literate" (that is, able to understand communications and have relevant experiences) in various art forms? (2) What sorts of context should such individuals bring to their encounters with works in these art forms and what would that imply for arts education? The contributing specialists are E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Harry S. Broudy, Jerrold Levinson, Patti P. Gillespie, Walter H. Clark, Jr., John Adkins Richardson, Francis Sparshott, Clifton Olds, Marcia Muelder Eaton, Ronald Berman, Lucian Krukowski, Michael J. Parsons, and David J. Elliot. (KM)

An argument for establishing a core curriculum of the basic information everyone needs to know, based on the author's hypothesis that being culturally literate is the foundation of intellectual competence.