mental."
45
HIRSCH I PREFACE TO CULTURAL LITERACY
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Time has shown that there is much truth in the durable educational
theories of both Rousseau and Plato. But even the greatest thinkers,
being human, see mainly in one direction at a time, and no thinkers,
however profound, can foresee the future implications of their ideas
when they are translated into social policy. The great test of social
ideas is the crucible of history, which, after a time, usually discloses a
one-sidedness in the best of human generalizations. History, not supe-
rior wisdom, shows us that neither the content-neutral curriculum of
Rousseau and Dewey nor the narrowly specified curriculum of Plato is
adequate to the needs of a modern nation.
Plato rightly believed that it is natural for children to learn an adult
culture, but too confidently assumed that philosophy could devise the
one best culture. (Nonetheless, we should concede to Plato that within
our culture we have an obligation to choose and promote our best tradi-
tions.) On the other side, Rousseau and Dewey wrongly believed that
adult culture is "unnatural” to young children. Rousseau, Dewey, and
their present-day disciples have not shown an adequate appreciation of
the need for transmission of specific cultural information.
In contrast to the theories of Plato and Rousseau, an anthropologi-
cal theory of education accepts the naturalness as well as the relativity
of human cultures. It deems it neither wrong nor unnatural to teach
young children adult information before they fully understand it. The
anthropological view stresses the universal fact that a human group
must have effective communications to function effectively, that effec-
tive communications require shared culture, and that shared culture
requires transmission of specific information to children. Literacy, an
essential aim of education in the modern world, is no autonomous,
empty skill but depends upon literate culture. Like any other aspect of
acculturation, literacy requires the early and continued transmission
of specific information. Dewey was deeply mistaken to disdain "accu-
mulating information in the form of symbols." Only by accumulating
shared symbols, and the shared information that the symbols repre-
sent, can we learn to communicate effectively with one another in our
national community.
2
8
Now let's take a look at the steps for doing a rhetorical analysis.
Identify the Situation
The situation is what moves a writer to write. To understand what moti-
vated Hirsch to write, we need look no further than the situation he iden-
tifies in the first paragraph of the preface: “the social determinism that
now condemns [disadvantaged children] to remain in the same social and
AS A READER
HIRSCH I PREFACE TO CULTURAL LITERACY
43
$
did
in
following preface
American Needs to
as long been inter-
his (and others)
students
many observers
and poverty can
own questions
ysis (following
and audience.
2
3
many ac-
Pon't Have
1 Literacy
of educa-
our
4
uin."
DEWEY
to teach a fragmented curriculum based on faulty educational theories.
Some say that our schools by themselves are powerless to change the
cycle of poverty and illiteracy. I do not agree. They can break the cycle,
but only if they themselves break fundamentally with some of the theo-
ries and practices that education professors and school administrators
have followed over the past fifty years.
Although the chief beneficiaries of the educational reforms advo-
cated in this book will be disadvantaged children, these same reforms
will also enhance the literacy of children from middle-class homes. The
educational goal advocated is that of mature literacy for all our citizens.
The connection between mature literacy and cultural literacy may
already be familiar to those who have closely followed recent discus-
sions of education. Shortly after the publication of my essay “Cultural
Literacy,” Dr. William Bennett, then chairman of the National Endow-
ment for the Humanities and subsequently secretary of education in
President Ronald Reagan's second administration, championed its
ideas. This endorsement from an influential person of conservative
views gave my ideas some currency, but such an endorsement was not
likely to recommend the concept to liberal thinkers, and in fact the idea
of cultural literacy has been attacked by some liberals on the assump-
tion that I must be advocating a list of great books that every child in the
land should be forced to read.
But those who examine the Appendix to this book will be able to
judge for themselves how thoroughly mistaken such an assumption is.
Very few specific titles appear on the list, and they usually appear as
words, not works, because they represent writings that culturally liter-
ate people have read about but haven't read. Das Kapital is a good exam-
ple. Cultural literacy is represented not by a prescriptive list of books
but rather by a descriptive list of the information actually possessed by
literate Americans. My aim in this book is to contribute to making that
information the possession of all Americans.
The importance of such widely shared information can best be un-
derstood if I explain briefly how the idea of cultural literacy relates
to currently prevailing theories of education. The theories that have
dominated American education for the past fifty years stem ultimately
from Jean Jacques Rousseau, who believed that we should encourage
the natural development of young children and not impose adult
ideas upon them before they can truly understand them. Rousseau's
conception of education as a process of natural development was an
abstract generalization meant to apply to all children in any time or
place: to French children of the eighteenth century or to Japanese or
American children of the twentieth century. He thought that a child's
intellectual and social skills would develop naturally without regard
to the specific content of education. His content-neutral conception
of educational development has long been triumphant in American
eg you
best
and
boy
NSON
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of
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to
CHAPTER 2 FROM READING AS A WRITER TO WRITING AS A READER
can
from ED Hirschs book Cultural Literacy. What Every American Needs
We discuss each of these elements as we analyze the following preface
ested in educational reform. That interest developed from his (and others')
how (1987). Formerly a professor of English, Hirsch has long been inter-
perception thar today's students do not know as much as students did in
the past. Although Hirsch wrote the book decades ago, many observers
poverty
Read the preface. You may want to mark it with your own questions
the preface) of Hirsch's rhetorical situation, purpose, claims, and audience.
and responses, and then consider them in light of our analysis (following
still believe that the contemporary problems of illiteracy and
be traced to a lack of cultural literacy.
to teach
Some si
cycle of
but onl
ries and
have fo
Alth
cated i
will als
educat
The
alread
sions
Litera
ment
Presid
ideas.
views
likely
E. D. HIRSCH JR.
Preface to Cultural Literacy
E. D. Hirsch Jr., a retired English professor, is the author of many ac-
claimed books, including The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have
was a best seller in 1987 and had a profound effect on the focus of educa-
Them (1996) and The Knowledge Deficit (2006). His book Cultural Literacy
tion in the late 1980s and 1990s.
of cul
tiont
Rousseau points out the facility with which children lend themselves to our
false methods: ... The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin."
-JOHN DEWEY
land
Bu
judge
Very
word
There is no matter what children should learn first, any more than what leg you
should put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best
to put in first, but in the meantime your backside is bare. Sir, while you stand
considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy
ate p
has learn't 'em both.
- SAMUEL JOHNSON
ple.
but
liter
info
T
ders
To be culturally literate is to possess the basic information needed
great, extending over the major domains of human activity from sports
to science. It is by no means confined to “culture” narrowly understood
as an acquaintance with the arts. Nor is it confined to one social class.
Quite the contrary. Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue of
opportunity for disadvantaged children, the only reliable way of com-
bating the social determinism that now condemns them to remain in
the same social and educational condition as their parents. That chil-
dren from poor and illiterate homes tend to remain poor and illiterate
is an unacceptable failure of our schools, one which has occurred not
because our teachers are inept but chiefly because they are
to c
don
from
the
ide:
cor
abs
pla
An
int
to
of
compelled
DER
41
READING AS A WRITER: ANALYZING A TEXT RHETORICALLY
in and make
what you
made to
agraphs of
s of your
loss when
aragraphs
regation
e student
sto che
Although the racial climate of the United States im-
proved outwardly during the 1970s, racism still restricted
the residential freedom of black Americans; it just did so in
less blatant ways. In the aftermath of the civil rights revolu-
tion, few whites voiced openly racist sentiments; realtors no
on public record
longer refused outright to rent or sell to blacks; and few local
Luck of enforce
ment of Civil Rights
governments went on record to oppose public housing proj-
Ace Fair Housing ects because they would contain blacks. This lack of overt
Acer Gautreaux
and Shannon? Why?
racism, however, did not mean that prejudice and discrimi-
Why not?
nation had ended.
Notice how the student's annotations help her understand the argu-
ment the authors make.
1. She numbers the three key factors (racist attitudes, private behaviors,
and institutional practices) that influenced the formation of ghettos in
the United States.
2. She identifies the situation that motivates the authors' analysis: the
extent to which "the spatial isolation of black Americans” still exists
despite laws and court decisions designed to end residential segregation.
3. She makes connections to her own experience and to another book she
has read
by
2 urban
black
sive
By understanding the authors' arguments and making these connec-
tions, the student begins the writing process. She also sets the stage for her
own research, for examining the authors' claim that residential segrega-
tion still exists.
er
nce
READING AS A WRITER: ANALYZING A TEXT
RHETORICALLY
2
When you study how writers influence readers through language, you
are analyzing the rhetoric (available means of persuasion) of what you
read. When you identify a writer's purpose for responding to a situation
by composing an essay that puts forth claims meant to sway a particu-
lar audience, you are performing a rhetorical analysis. Such an analysis
entails identifying the features of an argument to better understand how
the argument works to persuade a reader:
• how the writer sees the situation that calls for a response in writing
• the writer's purpose for writing
• intended audience
• kinds of claims
• types of evidence
CHAPTER 2 FROM READING AS A WRITER TO WRITING AS A READER
40
Second
process of
you
Sube
on pe
read. It's a sure way to avoid that sinking feeling you get when you retum
important, confusing, or linked to specific passages in other texts you have
by marking key ideas in a text, noting your ideas about them, and make
to pages you read the night before but now can't remember at all.
writing an essas When you start writing the first draft of your essay, you
ing connections to key ideas in other texts, you have begun the
find significant about them based on the notes you have already made to
can quote the passages you have already marked and explain what
yourself. You can make the connections to other texts in the paragraphs of
your own essay that you have already begun to make on the pages of your
textbook. If you mark your texts effectively, you ll never be at a loss when
of Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton's American Apartheid: Segregation
Let's take a look at how one of our students marked several paragraphs
underlines what she believes is important information and begins
and the Making of the Underclass (1993). In the excerpt below, the student
Lack
men
Act
Act
and
Why
you sit down to write the first draft of an essay.
to cre-
m
1
ate an outline of the authors' main points.
1
=
The spatial isolation of black Americans was achieved by
1. racist attitudes
a conjunction of racist attitudes, private behaviors, and
2.private haviors
institutional practices that disenfranchised blacks from urban
3.& institutional
practices lead to ghet:
tes (authors claim2)
Discrimination in employment exacerbated black poverty
housing markets and led to the creation of the ghetto.
Ghetto = "multistory
high-density housing
and limited the economic potential for integration, and black
projects."Fost-1950
residential mobility was systematically blocked by pervasive
discrimination and white avoidance of neighborhoods con-
I remember this happen taining blacks. The walls of the ghetto were buttressed after
ing where I grew up, but! 1950 by government programs that promoted slum clearance
didn't know the govern
ment was responsible
and relocated displaced ghetto residents into multi-story,
Is this what happened in high-density housing projects.
There Are No Children
Here?
In theory, this self-reinforcing cycle of prejudice,
discrimination, and segregation was broken during the
1960s by a growing rejection of racist sentiments by whites
t
С
t
2
Authors say situation
of "spatial isolation"
remains despite court
decisions. Does it?
and a series of court decisions and federal laws that banned
discrimination in public life. (1) The Civil Rights Act of 1964
outlawed racial discrimination in employment, (2) the Fair
Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in housing, and
(3) the Gautreaux and Shannon court decisions
prohibited
public authorities from placing housing projects exclusively
in black neighborhoods. Despite these changes, however, the
nation's largest black communities remained as segregated as
ever in 1980. Indeed, many urban areas displayed a pattern
of intense racial isolation that could only be described as
hypersegregation
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