Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to KnowA 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. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Abraham Lincoln achievement American education associations background knowledge basic beanball Benedict Arnold bird canaries Cardinal Principles cation chess civil religion cognitive communication course cultural literacy developed Dewey Diane Ravitch dictionaries diversity E. D. Hirsch effective elements English experiment extensive curriculum fact Gettysburg Address Glucksberg grade grammar high school Hilary Putnam human ideas important John John Dewey Lincoln linguistic literate Americans literate culture materials meaning Mental Models modern nation national culture national language national vocabulary oral dialects Otto Jespersen political pronunciation psychology R. C. Anderson Rates of Group Ravitch readers reading and writing Reading Rates Rosch Rousseau schema schemata school curriculum scientific sentence short-term memory social society song speech spelling standard written subjects teaching tests theory tion traditional understand verbal W. S. Gilbert Washington words written language York