# What happened to basic cultural literacy?



## Albert7

I just made a basic poetic reference and my friend thought that I was talking about a video game. So I am curious.

Do you think that basic cultural literacy is gone now?


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## Guest

It was only ever a social construct, Albert.


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## Taggart

Times change and we change with them.

So few people nowadays would, for example, get the references to Mrs Heman's _Casabianca _ in the Swallows and Amazons books or even read Swallows and Amazons. Eric Morecambe's parody

The boy stood on the burning deck
His lips were all a-quiver
He gave a cough, his leg fell off
And floated down the river.

now passes most people by.

We no longer have a standard canon of books that everybody knows and can (mis)quote from. Much of modern culture is based around the ephemera of film, television, video games and popular song.

To judge by some popular music, even basic literacy is lacking.


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## Balthazar

I fear it has been supplanted by Dada Inspired Premonitions.


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## Ingélou

Albert7 said:


> Do you think that basic cultural literacy is gone now?


Probably. It's been on the ebb for some time. Thirty years ago I remarked that soon the only thing the name Kipling would mean to anyone would be Mr Kipling's Apple Pies. My sister asked her teenage son what Kipling meant to him - and the time had already arrived!


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## Guest

No, I don't think it's "gone" - it's evolving.


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## Lukecash12

Albert7 said:


> I just made a basic poetic reference and my friend thought that I was talking about a video game. So I am curious.
> 
> Do you think that basic cultural literacy is gone now?


What happened was people became literati of a new culture. Probably the main thing, under the surface, that bothers us isn't so much the fact that people aren't aware of older cultural items, rather we are probably being disturbed by the intrinsic values of these new cultural macrocosms. They don't even basically value the same things as us.


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## Bulldog

It's been gone for a long time.


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## TxllxT

Not everywhere: in St Petersburg the St Peterburg incrowd talk with each other in such a jargon, that first you *have* to learn Pushkin's poems by heart, just to get an inkling about what they are talking. The hidden cross references to Pushkin inside their communication function like a magical step-through-the-mirror-like-Alice-in-Wonderland: you never know where you are walking your walk. By the way, Pushkin's language is very rich & very close to our everyday common speech, so magic mirrors are everywhere!


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## GhenghisKhan

It begs the question: what do you consider to be basic cultural literacy?


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## Taggart

Even when it comes to the new culture, I wonder how many people got Schulz's reference here:











The phrase comes from the original opening sentence of the novel Paul Clifford by Bulwer-Lytton:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness".


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## Levanda

I fear of new culture, video games heads are exploding and in films. I am in shock culturally.


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## GreenMamba

Don't assume the old-timers necessarily would have passed whatever cultural literacy test you come up with. I'm sure there was plenty of ignorance back then as well. Heck, go back more than a century ago and plain old literacy couldn't be taken for granted, even in the industrialized world.


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## Mahlerian

Taggart said:


> Even when it comes to the new culture, I wonder how many people got Schulz's reference here:


I can remember the name of the author (Wagner's Rienzi is based on one of his novels), but never the name of the novel itself.


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## Xaltotun

My two cents are that basically, we need a Western canon of art. I know a lot of people disagree (feminists among them). Let's put it this way: a canon is always partially open, and although our canon is dominated by male artists due to historical reasons, there should be no such exclusion to the future additions to our canon.

Put another way, we need a healthier balance of tradition to innovation in our culture.


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## Figleaf

TxllxT said:


> Not everywhere: in St Petersburg the St Peterburg incrowd talk with each other in such a jargon, that first you *have* to learn Pushkin's poems by heart, just to get an inkling about what they are talking. The hidden cross references to Pushkin inside their communication function like a magical step-through-the-mirror-like-Alice-in-Wonderland: you never know where you are walking your walk. By the way, Pushkin's language is very rich & very close to our everyday common speech, so magic mirrors are everywhere!


Ugh, I was married to somebody like that. (From Novosibirsk as it happens, but same difference.) He would always laugh at my 'provincialism' because I hadn't read, or even heard of, the poems of Maya-bleedin'-kovsky. Grrr. If that attitude is 'basic cultural literacy' then you can keep it! I never laughed at _him_ because he hadn't read any of the classical authors I'd studied, or listened to any music that wasn't Russian punk or some kind of guitar-based pop. These cultural snobs are a bunch of hypocrites: everything they like is canonical, everything someone else likes and they've never heard of is further proof that the other person is some kind of ignorant rube. Good riddance to that guy, and sorry for the rant!


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## Figleaf

Taggart said:


> Even when it comes to the new culture, I wonder how many people got Schulz's reference here:
> 
> 
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> 
> The phrase comes from the original opening sentence of the novel Paul Clifford by Bulwer-Lytton:
> 
> "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness".


I love Lord Lytton- I randomly came across 'The Last Days of Pompeii' when I was ten, and read and re-read it until that copy fell apart. (I can hear the Russian snarling 'How _provincial_!'- but then he thought that about Jane Austen too...) Lytton showed me that there was a world beyond the formulaic children's stories I had become bored with, and was the start of a fascination with the classical world that lasted until I studied Classics as an undergrad. (Too much of a good thing... )

In fact, it's not just that novels generally are going out of fashion, but novels set in the ancient world, and/or which quote bits of untranslated Latin and Greek, are never likely to regain popularity, as they rely on the reader having a classical education such as few now possess. Sure, there are more 'educated' people (i.e. people who are functionally literate and/or possess educational credentials of a very basic kind) but they are not educated to the same degree or in the same academic subjects as Lytton's contemporary readers would have been.


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## brotagonist

Taggart said:


> Even when it comes to the new culture, I wonder how many people got Schulz's reference here:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> The phrase comes from the original opening sentence of the novel Paul Clifford by Bulwer-Lytton:
> 
> "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness".


Italo Calvino's _If on a winter night a traveller_, of course!


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

Someone should say what kind of works being culturally literate entails knowledge of.........because as of right now I have no clue of even the kind of thing I'm supposed to be aware of.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

Xaltotun said:


> My two cents are that basically, we need a Western canon of art. I know a lot of people disagree (feminists among them). Let's put it this way: a canon is always partially open, and although our canon is dominated by male artists due to historical reasons, there should be no such exclusion to the future additions to our canon.
> 
> Put another way, we need a healthier balance of tradition to innovation in our culture.


I would say I disagree to a limited extent, because what people are attracted to is a combination of what is novel and what is familiar. Having a canon of music that is played or discussed over and over and over again (something that has already existed for almost 200 years) over-saturates ears, hearts and minds to the point where it becomes cliche and uninteresting, and eventually the listener can no longer experience any genuine exhileration from it.

Maybe that's just my conception of it, and I tend to experience music as having a drug-like quality, which means that the experience ultimately fades after the first several times, while some people listen to the same works their whole lives without ever feeling their experience is compromised....... but I think there's at least some truth to my view.


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## Albert7

Here is the book that addresses this topic:


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## superhorn

There have always been well-educated , cultured and , knowledgable people and others who are ignorant , anti-intellectual philistines . Today is no different . The snobs vs. the slobs .
People with intellectual curiosity and those who lack it .


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## Figleaf

Albert7 said:


> Here is the book that addresses this topic:


There's something rather sad about those types of self help books, isn't there? Like those little potted encyclopedias that people who do pub quizzes semi-professionally memorize. (Possibly superseded by an app or something these days: I haven't socialised much this century.) I always feel that memorizing out-of-context facts in order to be able to parrot them when called for, completely defeats the point of knowing anything at all- but then, I don't really care if people think I'm an ignoramus. (Except for the aforementioned ex husband, who _really_ knew how to wind me up!)


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## GreenMamba

It's interesting that Hirsch was a hero of the right when that book was published, but now is linked to the Common Core curriculum which many on the Anerican right despise (though I think if Obama spoke out against it, conservatives would suddenly embrace Common Core).

Anyway, I am somewhat sympathetic to Hirsch, who really wasn't arguing for a Canon in art, but for knowledge-based education. You do need to know certain things and even (gasp) memorize a few dates every now and then. 

Figleaf talks about "out-of-context facts," and the best way to remember a fact is to understand it in context. Maybe vice-versa too. So maybe I'm conflicted. But I do think that my fellow Americans are long on opinions and short on facts.


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## SixFootScowl

I often feel culturally illiterate when people make references to something that is on television because I have no clue to what they are talking about. I quit watching television in 1989.


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## Albert7

Okay, not to be flippant, perhaps on my next date I will give a quiz to the lady in question...

Here is a sample of name drops during the past week that I have done...

--Amy Schumer
--Max Reger
--Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth
--Frankfurt School
--Theodor Adorno
--Lars von Trier
--Kirsten Dunst
--Ludwig van Beethoven
--Claire Underwood
--Frank Underwood
--Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
--Bill Moyers
--Jon Stewart
--Amy Winehouse
etc. etc.

For me, cultural literacy is knowing about both high and low culture.


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## GhenghisKhan

Figleaf said:


> listened to any music that wasn't *Russian punk* or some kind of guitar-based pop.


Bahahaha! Snobbism comes from strange quarters!


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## KenOC

What use knowing the full poem starting "The boy stood on the burning deck" when you don't even know the all-time high score in Donkey Kong? Some things are important, some not.

Robert Service, of course, is an exception. _The Shooting of Dan McGrew _and _The Cremation of Sam McGee _will be committed to memory in any civilized nation.


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## Taggart

brotagonist said:


> Italo Calvino's _If on a winter night a traveller_, of course!


Time travel yet - Peanuts from July of 1965 quoting from a 1979 Italian novel translated into English in 1981.


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## Guest

GreenMamba said:


> Anyway, I am somewhat sympathetic to Hirsch, who really wasn't arguing for a Canon in art, but for knowledge-based education. You do need to know certain things and even (gasp) memorize a few dates every now and then.
> 
> Figleaf talks about "out-of-context facts," and the best way to remember a fact is to understand it in context. Maybe vice-versa too. So maybe I'm conflicted. But I do think that my fellow Americans are long on opinions and short on facts.


The second opportunity in a week to quote Gradgrind...(Taggart - wasn't it you in another thread?)

Hirsch is reviled this side of the Pond too, by those who see it is infecting our current (and last) government's attitudes to education which is that it must serve primarily utilitarian purposes.

It's interesting that 'basic cultural literacy' can be sold as nothing more than a currency for exchange between those who wish to trade (and to deliberately exclude the poor: how can we be 'in' if there is no 'outside'?). Whether it serves any more significant purpose is another matter.


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## Ingélou

Figleaf said:


> There's something rather sad about those types of self help books, isn't there? Like those little potted encyclopedias that people who do pub quizzes semi-professionally memorize. (Possibly superseded by an app or something these days: I haven't socialised much this century.) I always feel that memorizing out-of-context facts in order to be able to parrot them when called for, completely defeats the point of knowing anything at all- but then, I don't really care if people think I'm an ignoramus. (Except for the aforementioned ex husband, who _really_ knew how to wind me up!)


 It does open up the whole world of Pub Quizzes, though...


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## Taggart

Guilty as charged.

You can see some of the problems about dates and events when you look at _1066 and All That_(A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates). This is partly a collection of howlers and partly a parody of the textbooks of the time. The trouble is you need an excellent grasp of history, the Bible and Shakespeare to get all the jokes.


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## Guest

Ingélou said:


> It does open up the whole world of Pub Quizzes, though...


During this close season, I'm going to be memorising US state capitals, and the sizes of the world's lakes... I'm rubbish at Geography and popular culture (soaps, Taylor Swift, Kardashian's booty etc) but still hold a regular place in the team.


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## Guest

Taggart said:


> Guilty as charged.
> 
> You can see some of the problems about dates and events when you look at _1066 and All That_(A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates). This is partly a collection of howlers and partly a parody of the textbooks of the time. The trouble is you need an excellent grasp of history, the Bible and Shakespeare to get all the jokes.


...and the realisation that it is Very Important to spell some things with Capital Letters, or you might miss the Irony!


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## Ingélou

GreenMamba said:


> Don't assume the old-timers necessarily would have passed whatever cultural literacy test you come up with. I'm sure there was plenty of ignorance back then as well. Heck, go back more than a century ago and plain old literacy couldn't be taken for granted, even in the industrialized world.


I absolutely agree. The people who knew such a lot of things in the past were a tiny minority. Now, it's even tinier - but the bulk of the people are more awake to the world of culture & more interested in reading & knowing things - just not the same things. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Still, being a retired teacher, I can't resist one more little story. This came from an A-level English lesson (16-18 year olds), where we'd been reading Lovelace's 'Lucasta, going to the wars.'

Me: Okay - and what war would this be?

General silence - at last one boy tentatively raised hand: Would it be the English Civil War?

Me (excited!): Right, James - and who fought against whom in that war?

James (as if astounded at his own cleverness): Was it - the Roundheads and Cavaliers?

Me: Absolutely. And who won?

James (fed up): Oh, I don't know that!*


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## TxllxT

Figleaf said:


> Ugh, I was married to somebody like that. (From Novosibirsk as it happens, but same difference.) He would always laugh at my 'provincialism' because I hadn't read, or even heard of, the poems of Maya-bleedin'-kovsky. Grrr. If that attitude is 'basic cultural literacy' then you can keep it! I never laughed at _him_ because he hadn't read any of the classical authors I'd studied, or listened to any music that wasn't Russian punk or some kind of guitar-based pop. These cultural snobs are a bunch of hypocrites: everything they like is canonical, everything someone else likes and they've never heard of is further proof that the other person is some kind of ignorant rube. Good riddance to that guy, and sorry for the rant!


Well, 'basic cultural literacy' IMO is mostly used as ballotage: either you're 'in' or you're 'out'. Personally I don't know Pushkin by heart, but sometimes I'm marveling when my wife (who's 'in') and her father talk with each other with the upper stream of Pushkin-recitations (sometimes almost the whole of Yevgeny Onegin comes alive) and lower streams of minor poetry quotations getting inserted into their small talk. So either you're from St Petersburg and everyone is able to hear that you're 'in' or you're not.. I don't mind, that I'm 'out', life is beautiful!


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## Figleaf

GreenMamba said:


> It's interesting that Hirsch was a hero of the right when that book was published, but now is linked to the Common Core curriculum which many on the Anerican right despise (though I think if Obama spoke out against it, conservatives would suddenly embrace Common Core).
> 
> Anyway, I am somewhat sympathetic to Hirsch, who really wasn't arguing for a Canon in art, but for knowledge-based education. You do need to know certain things and even (gasp) memorize a few dates every now and then.
> 
> Figleaf talks about "out-of-context facts," and* the best way to remember a fact is to understand it in context.* Maybe vice-versa too. So maybe I'm conflicted. But I do think that my fellow Americans are long on opinions and short on facts.


The importance of context as an aid to memorization of facts certainly holds true for the majority of people, pub quiz prodigies aside. (I always remember my dad, trying to make me learn times tables, bellowing 'You don't have to UNDERSTAND it, you just have to REMEMBER it!!!' Sadly I never succeeded in doing either.) Dates are probably the main example of facts that should be learned by rote, as you can't understand much history if everything happened at some vaguely defined time in 'the olden days', i.e. between prehistory and one's own earliest memories. The largely fact free approach to history teaching was in vogue when I was at secondary school in the 80s and early 90s: we would write 'empathy pieces' in which we would imagine ourselves in the position of a peasant during the black death, then jump centuries ahead to 'study' the introduction of turnips in agriculture (I kid you not) or write advertisements for the first canals. I suppose that, in a comprehensive which was a former secondary modern, we weren't deemed intelligent enough to memorize facts, so pointless make-work activities took the place of the learning that was not for the likes of us. I found the process beneath me, withdrew my cooperation, and was an academic failure at that school. '1066 and All That', mentioned by Taggart, is obviously a satire on the opposite approach, which seems to have been somewhat Gradgrindian in its emphasis on rote learning of facts, but at least that traditional history curriculum did have some actual content, even if it was rather dry. I believe public schools still use a similar fact-heavy approach, and when us comprehensive 'educated' oiks find ourselves at university alongside them, we are shocked and ashamed of our general ignorance and lack of 'cultural literacy'. So, a resounding victory for education which places much emphasis on the learning of facts, but which is not limited to that, like the shortcuts taken by pub quiz enthusiasts.


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## Figleaf

Albert7 said:


> Okay, not to be flippant,* perhaps on my next date I will give a quiz to the lady in question...*
> 
> Here is a sample of name drops during the past week that I have done...
> 
> --Amy Schumer
> --Max Reger
> --Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth
> --Frankfurt School
> --Theodor Adorno
> --Lars von Trier
> --Kirsten Dunst
> --Ludwig van Beethoven
> --Claire Underwood
> --Frank Underwood
> --Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
> --Bill Moyers
> --Jon Stewart
> --Amy Winehouse
> etc. etc.
> 
> For me, cultural literacy is knowing about both high and low culture.


Great idea, if she's really boring and you want to bring the date to a very swift conclusion and never be bothered by her again! :devil: :lol:


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## Figleaf

GhenghisKhan said:


> Bahahaha! Snobbism comes from strange quarters!


No, I just meant that his cultural references were different from mine, and he used this fact to score points off me in a way that I felt was rather underhand, and motivated no doubt by his feelings of insecurity at not having had a university education, due to bad choices made when he was a youngster. The punk music (banned during his adolescence in the USSR?) was more of a rebellious political statement than an aesthetic preference, as far as I'm aware. At least he had heard of such artists as Chaliapin and Kozlovsky, even if he didn't think much of them. (Sample criticism: 'My grandad sang better than that, but I recorded over the tapes...')


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## Albert7

Florestan said:


> I often feel culturally illiterate when people make references to something that is on television because I have no clue to what they are talking about. I quit watching television in 1989.


You are to write a 500 word essay on the influence of Dickens on David Simon when he created The Wire. Allez-vous!


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## brotagonist

This thread shows that there is no _basic_ cultural literacy, because we are all interested in different things. My low culture is western writers and NFL quarterbacks, not rappers and pop divas. I have general knowledge of English history, but I know far more about Canadian and German history. As a Canadian, it has always irked me that we are lumped into two groups, francophones and anglophones. The problem is that the francophones are an ethnically (recent immigrant waves excluded) and culturally homogeneous group, while the 'anglophones' are the rest of us and largely not of British descent. Here in the west, the dominant 'anglophone' communities have been German and Ukrainian-and since the '70s, Indian and Chinese.


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## Musicophile

I agree with several of my predecessors, what is culturally relevant will evolve over time, and unfortunately the repertoire of what could be considered relevant is getting larger every day. 

I'm sure some movie buff will be disappointed that I don't get his reference of Scandinavian arthouse cinema of the 1980s, while somebody else will consider relevant to discuss whether Better Call Saul is a worthy spin-off of Breaking Bad or not.

And how do you chose what is "basic"? Some artificial measure of "quality"? At least half of Mozart's output was for contemporary entertainment. OK, it was well done intelligent entertainment, but so is e.g. House of Cards, to take another TV series examples (as you can tell, I'm a big fan of well made contemporary series as well). 

Let's just live with the increasing fragmentation of "culture", and enjoy that there is still so much else out there to be discovered.


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## SixFootScowl

Is it possible that in this information age, people are so overwhelmed with such a great variety of information and orders of magnitude greater musical and literary (low and high) works that it is impossible for the populace as a whole to have the same cultural reference set. That is the standard deviation of cultural reference sets is much greater among the present population than it was a hundred or so years ago.


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## Wood

*Pretentious, vous?*

I've generally found that when people drop a cultural reference into a conversation, usually without much context, they are rather assertively telling you that they consider themselves to be intellectually witty and sophisticated. Of course, the opposite is true. There is nothing clever about learning and regurgitating a couple of lines from a book of quotations, or whatever.

When I can be bothered, which fortunately isn't very often, I summon all of the intellectual wit and sophistication that I can muster, and tell them to **** Right Off. Usually, they do.


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## Figleaf

Musicophile said:


> I agree with several of my predecessors, what is culturally relevant will evolve over time, and unfortunately the repertoire of what could be considered relevant is getting larger every day.
> 
> *I'm sure some movie buff will be disappointed that I don't get his reference of Scandinavian arthouse cinema of the 1980s, *while somebody else will consider relevant to discuss whether Better Call Saul is a worthy spin-off of Breaking Bad or not.
> 
> And how do you chose what is "basic"? Some artificial measure of "quality"? At least half of Mozart's output was for contemporary entertainment. OK, it was well done intelligent entertainment, but so is e.g. House of Cards, to take another TV series examples (as you can tell, I'm a big fan of well made contemporary series as well).
> 
> Let's just live with the increasing fragmentation of "culture", and enjoy that there is still so much else out there to be discovered.


He probably just watches those films for the naked ladies. 

In an ideal world, everyone would like what _I_ like :angel:, but failing that, let's hear it for increasing cultural fragmentation: an intellectual environment in which nobody needs to feel coerced into paying lip service to things they don't care about, just so they don't get left out of the conversation.


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## Wood

Figleaf said:


> He probably just watches those films for the naked ladies.


I think he watches them for Liv Ullman, naked or not.:tiphat:


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## Ingélou

Wood said:


> I've generally found that when people drop a cultural reference into a conversation, usually without much context, they are rather assertively telling you that they consider themselves to be intellectually witty and sophisticated.


Not necessarily - if a quotation springs to mind, one would have to be preternaturally strong-minded not to utter it, just for the sheer delight of it. This sort of frothing-over happens to us older bods who learned vast chunks of quotations in the past; it's part of the way we think. And the quotes aren't necessarily all that cultured, either: I've always found this one useful, from the film *The Man who Shot Liberty Valance*: 'All right, dude - this time, right between the eyes!'

And you'd just tell me to jump in the lake - I feel quite hurt...


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## Ukko

Wood said:


> I've generally found that when people drop a cultural reference into a conversation, usually without much context, they are rather assertively telling you that they consider themselves to be intellectually witty and sophisticated. Of course, the opposite is true. There is nothing clever about learning and regurgitating a couple of lines from a book of quotations, or whatever.
> 
> When I can be bothered, which fortunately isn't very often, I summon all of the intellectual wit and sophistication that I can muster, and tell them to **** Right Off. Usually, they do.




Long term Vermonters have another way. In my experience, the culture dropper gets one or two blank looks before the conversation resumes - his input ignored. I get the blanks looks too when I'm around 'new people', but what I've 'dropped' ain't culture. It's usually an association I've made that nobody else can connect with. That includes humorous asides that are _apparently_ obscure.


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## Manxfeeder

I used to think the best educated would speak of the deepest things, but I work around doctors and lawyers, and all they talk about is sports and high-priced eateries. I've forced myself to listen to sports radio just so I can relate to them. 

The nice thing is, the young judges (29- to 30-year-olds) I'm working with now have no clue about much of anything that we used to consider cultural, so when I come up with a bon mot, they think I'm really smart. 

But it's sad that I have to go to the closet to read Eliot and Dylan Thomas. I miss the judges from the '70s and '80s who would talk of art, literature, and music. One time the judge I worked for even walked down the hall singing "Credo, credo" from Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. Ah, the good old days.


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## SiegendesLicht

What happened to basic cultural literacy?

Why, the _Pax Americana_ and the lowest common denominator happened. The entire direction the modern culture is going does not exactly contribute to any kind of literacy regarding high or classical culture. The only literacy modern culture wants you to have is the knowledge of who won the latest reality show or who is the current coolest rapper - and that is all.


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## Ukko

SiegendesLicht said:


> What happened to basic cultural literacy?
> 
> Why, the _Pax Americana_ and the lowest common denominator happened. The entire direction the modern culture is going does not exactly contribute to any kind of literacy regarding high or classical culture. The only literacy modern culture wants you to have is the knowledge of who won the latest reality show or who is the current coolest rapper - and that is all.


Sorry _SL_, have to ask: What is "high or classical culture"? I know all of the words, I just can't fit them together. That's probably why the 'literacy regarding' thing is a puzzler too. I'm pretty sure I don't have any of it anyway, but please take a stab at it?


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## GhenghisKhan

To butcher one of Stalin's quote:

T.S. Eliot? How many divisions has he got?


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## KenOC

You mark my words: In a hundred years schoolchildren will be studying Kim Kardashian.


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## GreenMamba

KenOC said:


> You mark my words: In a hundred years schoolchildren will be studying Kim Kardashian.


Nah, they won't. College students may be studying her, if they aren't already.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

Manxfeeder said:


> I used to think the best educated would speak of the deepest things, but I work around doctors and lawyers, and all they talk about is sports and high-priced eateries. I've forced myself to listen to sports radio just so I can relate to them.
> 
> The nice thing is, the young judges (29- to 30-year-olds) I'm working with now have no clue about much of anything that we used to consider cultural, so when I come up with a bon mot, they think I'm really smart.
> 
> But it's sad that I have to go to the closet to read Eliot and Dylan Thomas. I miss the judges from the '70s and '80s who would talk of art, literature, and music. One time the judge I worked for even walked down the hall singing "Credo, credo" from Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. Ah, the good old days.


Yeah, I can picture that. I only have a high school diploma and absolutely no status or esteem in the world, but I'm frequently unimpressed with not how much people in elite or highly-respected positions know about culture, but their capacity for subtle or critical thinking generally.

Look at all the economists who couldn't predict the economic recession, but could only parrot what they were taught to think by people who tried to monopolize all intellectual authority for themselves. To be honest I don't think it's an amazingly different situation in many professions of equal importance.


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## Guest

> The snobs vs. the slobs .
> People with intellectual curiosity and those who lack it .


Depending on the company, I'm either a snob who masquerades as a slob or a slob who masquerades as a snob. Little do they know both are true.


----------



## Guest

http://www.readfaster.com/culturalliteracy/

These are fun. I only took the history tests so far and scored excellent. It's American history though. I think history is the most important aspect of cultural literacy. While we can say cultural literacy changes over time, the one thing that should never change is history because it's already happened and everybody should be familiar with what happened because it's why we're here.


----------



## GreenMamba

Victor Redseal said:


> http://www.readfaster.com/culturalliteracy/
> 
> These are fun. I only took the history tests so far and scored excellent. It's American history though. I think history is the most important aspect of cultural literacy. While we can say cultural literacy changes over time, the one thing that should never change is history because it's already happened and everybody should be familiar with what happened because it's why we're here.


True to a certain extent, but as time passes on and there's more history to learn, some stuff gets dropped.

That being said, I think people are woefully ignorant of history. I find it fascinating, but it's one of those things where the more you learn, the more interesting it becomes.


----------



## Guest

I write my own histories and I learn a lot that way. The internet then affords me a platform from which to post them so that many may read them and marvel at my incredible scholarship and erudition. But seriously I often don't know many of the things I put in my histories until I started researching and writing them and I'm so fascinated by what I learned that I want to share them and if people don't care then so be it.

Btw, I scored a "good" on Music I and an "excellent" on Music II--go figure.


----------



## Crudblud

Big business has given us disposable culture based on the assembly line principle of planned obsolescence. As long as they can keep replacing the current _chose du jour_ with a new variation every so often, they don't have to worry about becoming obsolete themselves. Of course, there are situations, such as social media, where the mechanics of this process no longer need to be guided much if at all. Google provides a good example of this. Through YouTube they don't even have to worry about what to replace with what, since that all works itself out, Fred was replaced with PewDiePie, who will be replaced by someone else by YouTube's userbase through automatic, pseudo-autonomous procedures. The particular methods of cultural engineering have been disseminated among us by osmosis to the point that we can perpetuate it ourselves without much involvement from the people in charge. It's very easy to sustain such a situation once you no longer have to pull the reins, and that is the exact position Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. are in right now, all they have to worry about is what medium is going to be big next. Google is pursuing augmented reality, through which one's vision could be occupied up to a certain percentage by their products and advertisements for their partners, while Facebook, in acquiring the Oculus Rift, is exploring virtual reality, which does not superimpose a new information layer upon the real but creates a new real entirely.

So not only is the public culturally literate, it is in tune with the mechanics of cultural control and automates its processes. The real concern people have here is not with cultural literacy but with the culture itself being other than what they want it to be. But I guess we'll just sit here complaining about it because that's easier than actually doing something, and in complaining we will perpetuate the situation. In the interest of fairness there has to be opposition, but it must be non-threatening. People, like the people here, who voice concerns about how deplorable all this degeneracy (or whatever reactionary lingo you want to use) is, but can never actually do anything to affect it, are an acceptable response precisely because they have no power, they are a non-entity, which allows the companies simply to focus on besting each other. If you want to change something, you have to get your hands dirty, looking on with disdain won't solve your problems.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

Victor Redseal said:


> I think history is the most important aspect of cultural literacy. While we can say cultural literacy changes over time, the one thing that should never change is history because it's already happened and everybody should be familiar with what happened because it's why we're here.


 But history changes all the time too, every time it's re-written, revised, 'restored', burnt...


----------



## Ingélou

Richannes Wrahms said:


> But history changes all the time too, every time it's re-written, revised, 'restored', burnt...


Historical facts (if well-attested) don't change; but I agree that the interpretation varies enormously. I learned Protestant history at school and after I became a Catholic discovered that my in-laws didn't share my admiration for Elizabeth I. 

Many of the heroes of my childhood history have now been knocked off their pedestal, though the future may see them picked out of the dust and put on a level surface.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Ukko said:


> Sorry _SL_, have to ask: What is "high or classical culture"? I know all of the words, I just can't fit them together. That's probably why the 'literacy regarding' thing is a puzzler too. I'm pretty sure I don't have any of it anyway, but please take a stab at it?


The best definitions I can come up with are "that which has survived through time" and "that which, in order to enjoy it, makes you think that extra bit rather than passively consume".


----------



## Ukko

SiegendesLicht said:


> The best definitions I can come up with are "that which has survived through time" and "that which, in order to enjoy it, makes you think that extra bit rather than passively consume".


Thanks for the attempt, _SG_. Maybe too general (it seems to apply to my Remington rolling block rifle) but it's a start.


----------



## starthrower

Hey, Jeb Bush thinks we should work more hours, so no time for art, music, and literature. And according to the mainstream media here in the states, our cultural icons are business people and crappy politicians. The extent of discussion about any artistic project is how much did it sell.


----------



## schigolch

Mine was the last generation in my home country that learned Latin as a mandatory subject for everyone going to High School. I do remember some people claimed at the time that Latin was part of the "basic cultural literacy". It's the ability to read Caesar, Lucretius or Virgil in their own language really "basic"?. Well, once it clearly was. But no longer.

Life moves on, and we need to move along.


----------



## Ingélou

Yes, I learned Latin & took it to A-level. I wasn't the last generation, but few British schools other than the private ones now teach Latin.

However, I think the 'basic cultural literacy' bit in the UK was based not on reading Virgil in the original, but:
* - in being able to appreciate the Latinate words in English (which are more academic & serious than the Anglo-Saxon root words)
* - in having a head start for historical documents, church music & liturgy, the law, botany and medicine
* - in having a 'root language' for French, Spanish & Italian
* - through learning conjugations, declensions, tenses & agreements, one had a tool for analysis of English too.

By the way, I *was *the last generation of British students to be examined on English grammar at O-level. By the time I came to teach English at A-level, few students had a knowledge of grammar from any source, and I was once asked by a modern-languages colleague to teach a course of English grammar to her French students.

Actually, I always enjoyed Latin; it did what it said on the tin, and when I was researching my MA on religious ballads in my later twenties, I retained enough of it to be able to read the medieval Latin Christian legends that these ballads were based on. Even now, I can guess at an unfamiliar word's meaning from its Latin root.

There has been a minor revival of Latin in state schools in the last twenty years for some of the above reasons.* Very* minor, though.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Back in the days of old, poetry, dance and music were one and the same.


----------



## Taggart

I went to Glasgow in the 1960's where Latin was a requirement for matriculation - entering one's name in the matricula or register - where one also signed a Latin pledge. Not only that, the students were divided into "nations" - Glottiana (Clydesdale), Loudonina (other areas), Lothian (the borders) and Transforthiana (rest of Scotland) - much like the continental medieval universities. This sort of thing strengthened one's understanding of the university system both in Britain and abroad.


----------



## Ukko

(Ingelou) " * - through learning conjugations, declensions, tenses & agreements, one had a tool for analysis of English too."

Deadly. Maybe as deadly as diagramming sentences. Even so, "tenses and agreements" provides a useful tool for extracting sense from convoluted sentences - _that happen to employ tenses and agreements correctly_.

Two semesters of Latin and its interminable sets of rules made English class a relaxing place.


----------



## Cheyenne

Ingélou said:


> Not necessarily - if a quotation springs to mind, one would have to be preternaturally strong-minded not to utter it, just for the sheer delight of it. This sort of frothing-over happens to us older bods who learned vast chunks of quotations in the past; it's part of the way we think. And the quotes aren't necessarily all that cultured, either: I've always found this one useful, from the film *The Man who Shot Liberty Valance*: 'All right, dude - this time, right between the eyes!'
> 
> And you'd just tell me to jump in the lake - I feel quite hurt...


I think people deliberately suppress knowledge of relevant cultural things to avoid being seen as elitist, trying to appear smart &c. I've always wanted to use the immortal "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend" though...! 

I knew a young politician who would come to me a lot for information on classical music and literature, he borrowed a lot of my CDs and books, but the books curiously enough were always returned evidently unread... As for the CDs, he stated he listened only to the Vivaldi concertos in the end. It became clear he wanted to be able to feign huge cultural literacy, only to hold up an appearance of being cultured...

It's 'safest' to be unassuming then, and pretend to know little about it all, to appear humble and average, instead of being assumed an elitist, pretentious &c. &c.


----------



## Ukko

Cheyenne said:


> I think people deliberately suppress knowledge of relevant cultural things to avoid being seen as elitist, trying to appear smart &c. I've always wanted to use the immortal "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend" though...!
> 
> I knew a young politician who would come to me a lot for information on classical music and literature, he borrowed a lot of my CDs and books, but the books curiously enough were always returned evidently unread... As for the CDs, he stated he listened only to the Vivaldi concertos in the end. It became clear he wanted to be able to feign huge cultural literacy, only to hold up an appearance of being cultured...
> 
> It's 'safest' to be unassuming then, and pretend to know little about it all, to appear humble and average, instead of being assumed an elitist, pretentious &c. &c.


Openly 'cultured' politicians...(as in widely knowledgeable) have been thin on the ground around here for awhile. Shucks, I can't come up with a nationally known one since Adlai.


----------



## cwarchc

My youngest (he's 24 this year) had to learn Latin in school
I did wonder at the relevance at the time.
I think he's finding it useful with his medical studies now though
So perhaps there are times it's useful


----------



## TxllxT

Taggart said:


> I went to Glasgow in the 1960's where Latin was a requirement for matriculation - entering one's name in the matricula or register - where one also signed a Latin pledge. Not only that, the students were divided into "nations" - Glottiana (Clydesdale), Loudonina (other areas), Lothian (the borders) and Transforthiana (rest of Scotland) - much like the continental medieval universities. This sort of thing strengthened one's understanding of the university system both in Britain and abroad.


I still vaguely remember the festive ceremony (1993) in the aula of the Universtita Karlova (Charles' University), Prague when the diplomas were issued. One professor held a twenty minute speech in Latin by heart, no paper in front of him. Well, we all of course pretended we were able to understand him. But I agree: this continental medieval university belonged to a greater whole and this was reaffirmed by the _lingua franca_ of Latin.


----------



## Bulldog

starthrower said:


> Hey, Jeb Bush thinks we should work more hours, so no time for art, music, and literature. And according to the mainstream media here in the states, our cultural icons are business people and crappy politicians.


Right, and I would add famous (but not particularly talented) entertainers such as Bieber and Kanye West.


----------



## breakup

What happened to basic cultural literacy? 

Rap killed it.


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## GreenMamba

breakup said:


> What happened to basic cultural literacy?
> 
> Rap killed it.


Yeah, everyone was sitting around reading Milton until rap hit the scene.


----------



## KenOC

The _I Love Lucy _weekend discussion groups have almost disappeared. It's the Dark Ages, I tell ya!


----------



## Ilarion

TxllxT said:


> Not everywhere: in St Petersburg the St Peterburg incrowd talk with each other in such a jargon, that first you *have* to learn Pushkin's poems by heart, just to get an inkling about what they are talking. The hidden cross references to Pushkin inside their communication function like a magical step-through-the-mirror-like-Alice-in-Wonderland: you never know where you are walking your walk. By the way, Pushkin's language is very rich & very close to our everyday common speech, so magic mirrors are everywhere!


A humble question: I trust that you read Pushkin in the original language?


----------



## Ilarion

GreenMamba said:


> Nah, they won't. College students may be studying her, if they aren't already.


Might that be the Kim Kardashian who is married to Kanye "Mr. Pottymouth" West?


----------



## Wood

I received my degree by kneeling in front of the Master of my College. He was wearing robes which made him look like Father Christmas and he recited something unintelligible in Latin whilst clasping both my hands in his.

It was so _weird_. Even stranger was the fact that all of my fellow students submitted to this bizarre prostration without any murmur of surprise, discontent or humour. They generally seemed pretty weird too.

Being cultured is not always a _good_ thing.


----------



## Figleaf

Wood said:


> I received my degree by kneeling in front of the Master of my College. He was wearing robes which made him look like Father Christmas and he recited something unintelligible in Latin whilst clasping both my hands in his.
> 
> It was so _weird_. Even stranger was the fact that all of my fellow students submitted to this bizarre prostration without any murmur of surprise, discontent or humour. They generally seemed pretty weird too.
> 
> Being cultured is not always a _good_ thing.


Haha- I had morning sickness during my graduation ceremony so it's all a bit of a blur. I do remember being (gingerly) whacked on the head with a heavy volume (the Bible?) by the vice chancellor or some other university bigwig- the only time I've ever seen the phrase 'Bible bashing' being enacted literally.


----------



## TxllxT

Ilarion said:


> A humble question: I trust that you read Pushkin in the original language?


A humble answer: my wife and her father do. Her father knows Pushkin by heart. It's just common to hear their conversations on Skype step up into poetic declamations...


----------



## Bellinilover

Posters here are talking about knowing Latin, etc., but personally, I think of "basic cultural literacy" as simply knowing the most basic facts about your country's history or about world history -- or even about practical, everyday things. I do find that many native-born Americans do not know these things. Example: I teach SAT preparation (the SAT being the test US high school students must take to get into college), and I was surprised to find students -- American-born students, not immigrants or the children of immigrants -- who had no concept of the writing style of Mark Twain. In other words, they could not tell me that Mark Twain was known for his sense of humor, and they did not "get" that an excerpted passage from one of his works (_A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_) was supposed to be funny (and they certainly couldn't tell me _why_ it was funny). Given that Twain's _Huckleberry Finn_ is supposedly the Great American Novel, I thought this was sad. Likewise, years ago in Washington, DC a reporter randomly stopped passersby and asked them to recite the first verse of the National Anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner." As I remember, few if any of them could do it, and I'm not sure all of them knew "The Star Spangled Banner" _was_ the National Anthem. I've also seen teens who thought that Benjamin Franklin was one of the presidents, did not know when the Civil War or World War II took place, and did not know what the Preamble to the Constitution is. One of my students thought Mozart was a painter, rather than a composer. A couple of years ago on December 7th, I found myself wondering how many people my age or younger (I'm a member of "Generation X") knew the significance of that date (the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor) In my opinion, this is all very unfortunate, because it's not about knowing detailed information regarding American or European history; it's about knowing basic facts.

On the practical level: I remember being in my university library once, and being asked the time by another woman. I told her that it was "a quarter to five," and she answered, "I don't know what that means." It really surprised me that a person of college age would never have learned the meaning of "a quarter to" or "a quarter past."


----------



## Taggart

Bellinilover said:


> Posters here are talking about knowing Latin, etc., but personally, I think of "basic cultural literacy" as simply knowing the most basic facts about your country's history or about world history
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Likewise, years ago in Washington, DC a reporter randomly stopped passersby and asked them to recite the first verse of the National Anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner." As I remember, few if any of them could do it, and I'm not sure all of them knew "The Star Spangled Banner" _was_ the National Anthem.


Same thing would apply in the UK. Most people mime to the National Anthem.



Bellinilover said:


> I've also seen teens who thought that Benjamin Franklin was one of the presidents, did not know when the Civil War or World War II took place, and did not know what the Preamble to the Constitution is.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In my opinion, this is all very unfortunate, because it's not about knowing detailed information regarding American or European history; it's about knowing basic facts.


Quite. And it spoils your enjoyment of Star Trek especially the Omega Glory built around knowing the *text *of the preamble.

Same line of country, I wonder how many people know who John Hancock was and why his name is used for giving your signature? (I love the wiki description - a smuggler and a Patriot  )


----------



## Levanda

Maybe we sold our souls to Hollywood.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Levanda said:


> Maybe we sold our souls to Hollywood.


Yes, but not _all_ of us.


----------



## breakup

Taggart said:


> Same line of country, I wonder how many people know who John Hancock was and why his name is used for giving your signature? (I love the wiki description - a smuggler and a Patriot  )


Didn't he have a large and showy signature.


----------



## Tristan

ITT: Everyone's idea of "basic cultural literacy" is different. What a shocker  If all I had to do was learn Latin to be culturally literate, then I could've appended that label to myself years ago. 

Reading some of these responses makes me feel as if I were a million years younger than some of the people here. And I might as well be when it comes to some issues. This is coming from someone who considers himself fairly culturally literate (with the qualifier of "for my age"), if I may "boast".  I just have an interest in so many different things; the idea that I could limit myself to what's in the media or in my small social circle is unthinkable. My thirst for knowledge is endless.

To the point, a lot of people I know just aren't that interested and don't see a purpose to it. They learn what they need to in order that they may some day make good money. Some of my friends aren't even that interested in what they study in college, and the ones that are aren't studying anything that would increase their "cultural literacy" per se (although they may gain plenty of scientific knowledge). It's all just practical for them; they know what they need to know in order to make a living (I certainly understand that) and having more knowledge of history, literature, music, art, whatever it may be, isn't part of it. At least, it's not enough for them to put much effort into it.


----------



## Ingélou

So - the idea that you only need to know enough to make good money is still fashionable among the young? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.


----------



## Guest

Ingélou said:


> So - the idea that you only need to know enough to make good money is still fashionable among the young? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.


 A utilitarian "philosophy" to simply align with capitalism. How depressing.


----------



## breakup

Tristan said:


> ITT: Everyone's idea of "basic cultural literacy" is different. What a shocker  If all I had to do was learn Latin to be culturally literate, then I could've appended that label to myself years ago.
> 
> Reading some of these responses makes me feel as if I were a million years younger than some of the people here. And I might as well be when it comes to some issues. This is coming from someone who considers himself fairly culturally literate (with the qualifier of "for my age"), if I may "boast".  I just have an interest in so many different things; the idea that I could limit myself to what's in the media or in my small social circle is unthinkable. My thirst for knowledge is endless.
> 
> To the point, a lot of people I know just aren't that interested and don't see a purpose to it. They learn what they need to in order that they may some day make good money. Some of my friends aren't even that interested in what they study in college, and the ones that are aren't studying anything that would increase their "cultural literacy" per se (although they may gain plenty of scientific knowledge). It's all just practical for them; they know what they need to know in order to make a living (I certainly understand that) and having more knowledge of history, literature, music, art, whatever it may be, isn't part of it. At least, it's not enough for them to put much effort into it.


On another forum, on which I am a member, there is another member who is a biology professor at the college level and has recently taken a position at a different school. At the previous school he was encountering many students that were of the opinion that if they paid their tuition they deserved a passing grade, even if they didn't do any of the work, or attended classes, or actually learn anything. This would have been a case of the student getting the class listed as one that they passed, with no other benefit to the student. It seemed that the only interest of the administration was to collect as much tuition as possible and increase the profit of the school, actual education was very far down on the list of priorities.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Tristan said:


> To the point, a lot of people I know just aren't that interested and don't see a purpose to it. They learn what they need to in order that they may some day make good money. Some of my friends aren't even that interested in what they study in college, and the ones that are aren't studying anything that would increase their "cultural literacy" per se (although they may gain plenty of scientific knowledge). It's all just practical for them; they know what they need to know in order to make a living (I certainly understand that) and having more knowledge of history, literature, music, art, whatever it may be, isn't part of it. At least, it's not enough for them to put much effort into it.


I think knowledge of history is necessary if only in order to understand how the world you live in came to be the way it is and why it is that you have to make a living the way you do.


----------



## Tristan

SiegendesLicht said:


> I think knowledge of history is necessary if only in order to understand how the world you live in came to be the way it is and why it is that you have to make a living the way you do.


I agree. At the very least, one could learn history for that reason.



breakup said:


> On another forum, on which I am a member, there is another member who is a biology professor at the college level and has recently taken a position at a different school. At the previous school he was encountering many students that were of the opinion that if they paid their tuition they deserved a passing grade, even if they didn't do any of the work, or attended classes, or actually learn anything. This would have been a case of the student getting the class listed as one that they passed, with no other benefit to the student. It seemed that the only interest of the administration was to collect as much tuition as possible and increase the profit of the school, actual education was very far down on the list of priorities.


Oy.

I can't speak for everyone who attends college nowadays, but the education is the number one reason for me. If I could've had a decent job right out of high school, I still would've wanted to go to college. I still would've wanted the education.


----------



## breakup

Tristan said:


> I agree. At the very least, one could learn history for that reason.
> 
> Oy.
> 
> I can't speak for everyone who attends college nowadays, but the education is the number one reason for me. If I could've had a decent job right out of high school, I still would've wanted to go to college. I still would've wanted the education.


When I attended college I had already become disenchanted with teachers and professors.

In HS the physics teacher was giving a lesson on the co-efficient of friction, and ended with the fiction that putting wider tires on a car didn't improve traction at all. I knew from experience that he was wrong.

A history teacher in HS made the statement that all the North Vietnamese needed to do, was to fly a plane in low, under the radar, and drop a bomb down the smoke stack, and blow up one of the battleships. I didn't know all the details of how wrong that was, but I knew it wasn't right. I learned about the details later.

In college an Earth Science professor was describing the process of making steam in a nuclear plant and said "That's a lot of trouble Just to boil water", I knew it sounded wrong, and I discovered the details of how wrong it was later.

Teachers and professors have a lot to teach us on a particular subject, but beyond that they are not the be all and end all of all knowledge. They should stick to what they know, and not talk about what they do not understand.


----------



## hpowders

On TV, a cable news station frequently sends out a reporter to ask folks on the street basic questions of history, civics and culture.
The only questions they seem to answer correctly are the pop culture questions like what's the name of Madonna's latest album.

I don't know if folks were this culturally illiterate in the past, but it is shocking how poorly they are educated. Some even confess to being college graduates.

When did the USA become independent? 1987. From which country? Paris.

Gives me a headache. Astonishing!


----------



## breakup

hpowders said:


> On TV, a cable news station frequently sends out a reporter to ask folks on the street basic questions of history, civics and culture.
> The only questions they seem to answer correctly are the pop culture questions like what's the name of Madonna's latest album.
> 
> *I don't know if folks were this culturally illiterate in the past, but it is shocking how poorly they are educated. Some even confess to being college graduates.*
> 
> When did the USA become independent? 1987. From which country? Paris.
> 
> Gives me a headache. Astonishing!


People at the top 1% might know some of the history of their own country, but the vast majority, scratching in the dirt to find or grow food, would only know enough to have something to eat till the next day. As ill informed as people are, they are still much better informed that many were in the past.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

breakup said:


> People at the top 1% might know some of the history of their own country, but the vast majority, scratching in the dirt to find or grow food, would only know enough to have something to eat till the next day. As ill informed as people are, they are still much better informed that many were in the past.


But they still know enough about pop culture.

It seems that in the past, when knowledge was more difficult to come by, people also valued it more. Now that it is freely available to everyone via public libraries, internet etc. it has also become less valuable. Just the same thing that has happened to classical music.


----------



## TxllxT

Today the premier of Austria posed a rude & arrogant attack on the premier of Hungary, drawing comparisons with the Holocaust. Nauseating! This is one of results when basic knowledge of history disappears.


----------



## breakup

SiegendesLicht said:


> It seems that in the past, when knowledge was more difficult to come by, people also valued it more. Now that it is freely available to everyone via public libraries, internet etc. it has also become less valuable. Just the same thing that has happened to classical music.


Yep, I think you're right about that. But in the past knowledge was not just difficult to come by, it was almost impossible for most.


----------



## breakup

It still holds true. 

"People who do not know their history, are bound to repeat it."


----------



## haydnfan

breakup said:


> In HS the physics teacher was giving a lesson on the co-efficient of friction, and ended with the fiction that putting wider tires on a car didn't improve traction at all. I knew from experience that he was wrong.





> They should stick to what they know, and not talk about what they do not understand.


As a physics teacher I can say that you are right. Tires are deformable rubber and not a sliding wooden block.

But I can say that you are too harsh and overcritical of your teachers. They are human and are fallible. For every mistake they made that you stored away, you've overlooked the hundred+ more times they taught you something true or insightful.

As a teacher, and being surrounded by teachers, I can tell you that we do not see ourselves as omnipotent.

Case in point: I should have used the word omniscient.


----------



## Guest

Albert7 said:


> Do you think that basic cultural literacy is gone now?


No. It never existed in the first place. The idea that it did is based on the erroneous belief that there is a single discrete community (of which we are surely all members) that carries a discrete cultural knowledge.

Society is comprised of many different communities, each valuing its own culture, which changes over time by accumulating and shedding knowledge along the way, as well as changing members who hold the knowledge. There may be overlaps, but what I think may be a basic 'fact' in my community which everyone knows is probably no such thing.

And in any case, it's only of use to those who want to belong to the community or to those who want to exclude others from it. Why worry?


----------



## Nereffid

MacLeod said:


> No. It never existed in the first place. The idea that it did is based on the erroneous belief that there is a single discrete community (of which we are surely all members) that carries a discrete cultural knowledge.
> 
> Society is comprised of many different communities, each valuing its own culture, which changes over time by accumulating and shedding knowledge along the way, as well as changing members who hold the knowledge. There may be overlaps, but what I think may be a basic 'fact' in my community which everyone knows is probably no such thing.


Yes. Reminds me of "They're a popular beat combo, m'lud".


----------



## Bellinilover

*To the point, a lot of people I know just aren't that interested and don't see a purpose to it. They learn what they need to in order that they may some day make good money. Some of my friends aren't even that interested in what they study in college, and the ones that are aren't studying anything that would increase their "cultural literacy" per se (although they may gain plenty of scientific knowledge). It's all just practical for them; they know what they need to know in order to make a living (I certainly understand that) and having more knowledge of history, literature, music, art, whatever it may be, isn't part of it. At least, it's not enough for them to put much effort into it.*

Well, at least one great man had basically this philosophy: Sherlock Holmes! As he tells Watson in "A Study in Scarlet," he never puts anything into his "brain attack" that will not help him in his daily work. As a result, he is a great detective but ignorant of the fact that the earth moves around the sun.

I don't actually think this is a good philosophy, but at least in Holmes' case it paid off and made him a truly great detective.


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## KenOC

SiegendesLicht said:


> It seems that in the past, when knowledge was more difficult to come by, people also valued it more. Now that it is freely available to everyone via public libraries, internet etc. it has also become less valuable.


From a CNN poll reported today: "Overall, 29% of Americans say they think the President is a Muslim, including 43% of Republicans." The mind quails and the soul shrinks.


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## trazom

Albert7 said:


> I just made a basic poetic reference and my friend thought that I was talking about a video game. So I am curious.
> 
> Do you think that basic cultural literacy is gone now?


Yes, and I blame sprigs of mint.


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## Nereffid

Bellinilover said:


> I don't actually think this is a good philosophy, but at least in Holmes' case it paid off and made him a truly great detective.


Although admittedly he had the added advantage of being fictional.


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## Belowpar

haydnfan said:


> As a physics teacher I can say that you are right. Tires are deformable rubber and not a sliding wooden block.
> 
> But I can say that you are too harsh and overcritical of your teachers. They are human and are fallible. For every mistake they made that you stored away, you've overlooked the hundred+ more times they taught you something true or insightful.
> 
> As a teacher, and being surrounded by teachers, I can tell you that we do not see ourselves as omnipotent.
> 
> Case in point: I should have used the word omniscient.


HA! So you admit to feelings of omnipotentcy!

For my part I think this is part of the trade off that roughly speaking, the 60's brought.

AS much as I value cultural literacy I can see it has often been used as a way of distinguishing the (UK SPEAK) Public or Grammar School Educated from the masses. That such Cultural snobbism is now diminished is clearly a good thing but...it came at a huge cost. I do believe there was more cross over from the high arts to the general public in the past. But still there have always been folk who are interested in nothing more than the price of their next pint.

In the 60's egalitarianism poo pooh'd much that was old and established as limiting, reactionary and means of oppressing the masses. Rightly so in many cases. I try not to sound like an angry old git when I say the problem of not having any established standards of what's good and what's not, means the race to the bottom becomes the only way.


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## Badinerie

Today's standard of cultural literacy is defined by the lowest common denominator. "Thank god" I say, otherwise I wouldn't have a clue what was going on around me!


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## breakup

haydnfan said:


> As a physics teacher I can say that you are right. Tires are deformable rubber and not a sliding wooden block.
> 
> But I can say that you are too harsh and overcritical of your teachers. They are human and are fallible. For every mistake they made that you stored away, you've overlooked the hundred+ more times they taught you something true or insightful.
> 
> As a teacher, and being surrounded by teachers, I can tell you that we do not see ourselves as omnipotent.
> 
> Case in point: I should have used the word omniscient.


I taught Industrial Arts in a Jr. HS for 7 years, and after I quit I worked in machine shops, and as a draftsman, metal working was a subject that I taught and drafting I was qualified to teach. When I worked in industry, I found out just how wrong what I was taught was. With Both Drafting and operating machines the teaching had strayed so far from practice as to be almost totally useless, as well as wrong. In college we were taught to not erase, or the drawing would be marked down. In industry working as a draftsman, one of my tools was an electric eraser which I used almost as much as a pencil. BTW this was just before CAD systems became the norm, I was drawing with a pencil on mylar. When teaching we would get a substitute (usually a retired older teacher) after several times of a sub totally screwing up a students project, I decided that no matter what, I would not take a sick day. The wood shop teacher had a sub tell his students to "Never short chuck a drill", How were you supposed to drill through thicker material without extending the drill bit out far enough. In the machine shops we almost always short chucked the drill bits, the sub was totally out of touch with reality, but this is what he had been taught in college.


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## breakup

Bellinilover said:


> *To the point, a lot of people I know just aren't that interested and don't see a purpose to it. They learn what they need to in order that they may some day make good money. Some of my friends aren't even that interested in what they study in college, and the ones that are aren't studying anything that would increase their "cultural literacy" per se (although they may gain plenty of scientific knowledge). It's all just practical for them; they know what they need to know in order to make a living (I certainly understand that) and having more knowledge of history, literature, music, art, whatever it may be, isn't part of it. At least, it's not enough for them to put much effort into it.*
> 
> Well, at least one great man had basically this philosophy: Sherlock Holmes! As he tells Watson in "A Study in Scarlet," he never puts anything into his "brain attack" that will not help him in his daily work. As a result, he is a great detective but ignorant of the fact that the earth moves around the sun.
> 
> I don't actually think this is a good philosophy, but at least in Holmes' case it paid off and made him a truly great detective.


I used to read a lot of Sherlock Holmes and this is one of Conan Doyle's beliefs that weren't quite correct. He believed that the brain had a capacity that could be exceeded in the course of a normal human education, and there fore had Holmes make that statement that he avoided learning anything that would not help him in his work. I believe it is now accepted that the human capacity to learn is much greater than previously believed.

I should add that I can see how learning some things could distract you from a particular task, but I don't think there are many, if any, people who could learn enough to exceed the capacity of the human brain to absorb knowledge


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> From a CNN poll reported today: "Overall, 29% of Americans say they think the President is a Muslim, including 43% of Republicans." The mind quails and the soul shrinks.


My question is what percentage of non-Republicans (even Democrats?) makes up that 29%....

Given that an "actual" candidate has a record of questioning Obama's US citizenship, we do have a good portion of the electorate that doesn't really seem to care much about facts.


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## TxllxT

OK, back to basics: can you tell the fairy tale that is being shown here?


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## Dr Johnson

Polycrates and the ring?


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## TxllxT

Well, my best guess was the _Ring des Nibelungen_ being returned to one of the _Rhine maidens_ in a children's popular version :lol:


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## TxllxT

http://www.authorama.com/english-fairy-tales-38.html


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## Dr Johnson

TxllxT said:


> http://www.authorama.com/english-fairy-tales-38.html


Sounds much more likely.

Interesting how often fish and rings seemed to have cropped up together in myth.


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## Figleaf

breakup said:


> I used to read a lot of Sherlock Holmes and this is one of Conan Doyle's beliefs that weren't quite correct. He believed that the brain had a capacity that could be exceeded in the course of a normal human education, and there fore had Holmes make that statement that he avoided learning anything that would not help him in his work. I believe it is now accepted that the human capacity to learn is much greater than previously believed.
> 
> I should add that I can see how learning some things could distract you from a particular task, but I don't think there are many, if any, people who could learn enough to exceed the capacity of the human brain to absorb knowledge


I think I have probably reached the capacity of my own brain, less capable than Holmes's, to absorb knowledge, at least without having to jettison old knowledge to make way for the new. Given that finite mental capacity, I don't regret not knowing the six, seven and eight times table, though I do regret the thousands of hours I was forced to spend on the Sisyphean task of trying to cram contextless mathematical facts into an uncomprehending mind. Once one times table was learned the previous one was forgotten instantly, and so on. I suspect Holmes simply lacked curiosity about physics, or whatever uninteresting academic discipline describes the movement of planets- he couldn't simply have had a brutally utilitarian outlook, or he wouldn't have bothered learning the violin! I think it's an eminently sensible thing to focus on one's strengths and interests as much as is practically possible and to avoid wasting energy by laboriously striving for mediocrity in areas where one has little interest or ability- and the diversity of human intellects and personalities means that generalisations about 'the capacity of the human brain' are of little practical relevance to what an individual person's intellectual priorities should be. That said, the mention upthread of chucking drill bits makes me think that it would have been sensible to try to learn some more intrinsically not that interesting but practical techy stuff- it sounds like it would have been much more useful than Latin or opera trivia when the bumper fell off the car yesterday just outside Besançon, at the furthest point of a long road trip. (We're holed up in a motel now, the car held together with cable ties and duct tape.) Bearing in mind my own blind spots, I feel sympathy for Bellinilover's students who couldn't see why Mark Twain was supposed to be funny- I suspect you can't really teach that, just like you can't teach somebody to memorize times tables. It's not so much a case of ignorance, as of many people being ill suited to the 'one size fits all' nature of formal school education. I wish that the education system would allow more specialisation earlier on between sciences and arts in particular, abandoning the ideal of the 'well rounded person' which has no relation to the particular abilities and interests of most individuals- and also that it would not demoralise its students by futilely trying to force square pegs into round holes. So, while I might conceivably judge somebody for not bothering to learn Latin, and they might judge me for being hopeless with figures, realistically I can recognise that learning stuff which is important to me but not to them would be a poor use of their time, and vice versa.


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## breakup

Once there was a "Back to School Night" where the parents came in to meet and ask questions of the teachers. I had one parent, who happened to be a plumber, asking why I wasn't teaching some advanced method of soldering to the students, (this was in Jr. HS). While his son may have benefited from that teaching, I had a class room full of other students who didn't have the slightest idea what soldering was, let alone the more advanced methods in use in industry. Public schools need to teach to the "lowest common denominator" and allow the students individual interest to carry them beyond that. Public schools simply do not have the resources to tailor a program for each individual student. Yes, for the most part, public schools teach a "one size fits all" program, but it's all they can do, I've been there. Most of the knowledge I have acquired, that is meaningful to me, has been learned after graduation, and that includes college, but HS and college gave me the basis on which to build the later acquired knowledge, and much of it I was digging up during HS and college.


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## breakup

Figleaf said:


> I think I have probably reached the capacity of my own brain, less capable than Holmes's, to absorb knowledge, at least without having to jettison old knowledge to make way for the new. Given that finite mental capacity, I don't regret not knowing the six, seven and eight times table, though I do regret the thousands of hours I was forced to spend on the Sisyphean task of trying to cram contextless mathematical facts into an uncomprehending mind. Once one times table was learned the previous one was forgotten instantly, and so on.


This attitude is just a bit unfortunate and I have encountered it before. One time stands out in my memory. I was helping a student learn the 2nd Kata in the isshinryu system and after he had gotten it to the point that I thought he was ready to test I asked him to do the 1st Kata. He seemed dumbfounded and didn't think he would need to remember the 1st when he had learned the 2nd. I had to remind him that when testing he might be asked to preform the 1st as well, so he had better have that one down. At that point we proceeded to review the 1st, just to make sure he remembered it. What you learn in school is a mixed bag, some of it you will use constantly, others you will never use again and will soon forget. It really depends what you do after graduation, but only those who have graduated and been out in the world, really know what is useful and what is not, to them.


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## Meyerbeer Smith

A lot of basic cultural literacy is missing. And I say this as someone in their early thirties.

In the 19th century, people had much more idea of history, literature and mythology, even if only through opera and theatre. (We get Captain America and explosions.) 

In the twentieth century, popular genres in the '20s to '50s like detective stories assumed a higher degree of cultural literacy. Apart from the real quote droppers like Michael Innes, SS Van Dine and Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie refers a lot to Shakespeare, Tennyson and opera (especially Wagner and Debussy ), Ngaio Marsh set most of her books in the theatre, and John Dickson Carr loved history. Conan Doyle - not an intellectual - refers to Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Mallarme; Holmes is a keen amateur musician who listens to the de Reszkes singing the Huguenots at the end of Hound of the Baskervilles, and goes to a Sarasate concert during The Red Headed League. Chesterton is in a class of his own. 

Same thing with television. Doctor Who in the '60s could do episodes about the Barthelemy or the travels of Marco Polo, and the early '70s were a crash course in Jung, Buddhism and environmentalism. These days, it's about the characters' emotions.


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## Jos

Whooha, here in the Netherlands a commitee of wise men suggested to abolish history from the secondary school curriculum altogether. Now there is some hope for our future generations !!
I'm often amazed by the sheer stupidity of those who govern us. What's next; give up reading ? Give up math ?

Oh yes, I do appreciate the great contribution that the gaming-industry and other popculture has brought to society, but seriously...?

End of rant, feeling very old after reading the article that spurred this comment.


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## Guest

SimonTemplar said:


> In the 19th century, people had much more idea of history, literature and mythology, even if only through opera and theatre. (We get Captain America and explosions.)


But the "basic cultural literacy" of this generation can't possibly be the same as preceding generations', can it? How are the 30 year olds of today supposed to retain a cultural literacy that is an accumulation of what has gone before? Not only must some of what might have been previously included be set aside, more is available to add.

I'm also not convinced that "people" in the 19th C were any more literate, culturally, than "people" are now. What I would regard as essential to converse culturally with my peers would not be the same content as all other 57 year olds even in my town, never mind nationally or internationally.


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## SarahNorthman

dogen said:


> It was only ever a social construct, Albert.


If this is the case it is a shame that society has lost that particular aspect of it. I think it is extremely beneficial to be well read and properly schooled on good literature. Though I suppose the term "good literature" is subjective. Everyone has different views on what is and is not good literature. In my opinion good literature teaches you things about yourself, a lot of the mindless drivel that people soak up these days do not do that, nor do they contribute to society or are a reflection of society in any way. Once literature stops reflecting society and when literature stops having an influence on society are the days where we have truly lost. Sadly, I feel those days are upon us.

Personal opinion yall.


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## Chronochromie

Jos said:


> Whooha, here in the Netherlands a commitee of wise men suggested to abolish history from the secondary school curriculum altogether.


What??? Seriously, what?


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## Jos

Chronochromie said:


> What??? Seriously, what?


http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4492/Nede.../10/02/Feiten-leren-is-niet-meer-heilig.dhtml

Dutch only, I'm afraid. The next move forward in modernisation of the educational system. Or something like that.


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## Guest

SarahNorthman said:


> If this is the case it is a shame that society has lost that particular aspect of it. I think it is extremely beneficial to be well read and properly schooled on good literature. Though I suppose the term "good literature" is subjective. Everyone has different views on what is and is not good literature. In my opinion good literature teaches you things about yourself, a lot of the mindless drivel that people soak up these days do not do that, nor do they contribute to society or are a reflection of society in any way. Once literature stops reflecting society and when literature stops having an influence on society are the days where we have truly lost. Sadly, I feel those days are upon us.
> 
> Personal opinion yall.


Albert's not around to confirm, but I think he was using the term 'literacy' more generally than just referring to literature.


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## SarahNorthman

MacLeod said:


> Albert's not around to confirm, but I think he was using the term 'literacy' more generally than just referring to literature.


Well the definition of Literacy is the ability to read and write. I suppose it can be used more generally than just literature though Albert did mention making a "simple poetic reference" to a friend that was grossly misunderstood so I am taking this to mean he is referring to literature.


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## Guest

SarahNorthman said:


> Well the definition of Literacy is the ability to read and write. I suppose it can be used more generally than just literature though Albert did mention making a "simple poetic reference" to a friend that was grossly misunderstood so I am taking this to mean he is referring to literature.


http://www.talkclassical.com/39050-what-happened-basic-cultural-post910468.html#post910468


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## SiegendesLicht

Jos said:


> Whooha, here in the Netherlands a commitee of wise men suggested to abolish history from the secondary school curriculum altogether. Now there is some hope for our future generations !!
> I'm often amazed by the sheer stupidity of those who govern us. What's next; give up reading ? Give up math ?
> 
> Oh yes, I do appreciate the great contribution that the gaming-industry and other popculture has brought to society, but seriously...?
> 
> End of rant, feeling very old after reading the article that spurred this comment.


Well, education is primarily the parents' responsibility anyway. A schoolteacher can give children factual knowledge, but teaching the children about the value of that knowledge (any knowledge, not just history) is the parents' job. And the parents who try to bring up their children properly in such a rotten time as ours seem to have just had their job made yet more difficult for them. If that proposal passes, the parents will have to teach the factual knowledge too. I believe the Dutch are smarter than that, though.

I wonder if this is a very subtle form of population control: do not bring children into the world, they will grow up into mindless drones glued to their smartphones anyway.


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## Guest

Jos said:


> Whooha, here in the Netherlands a commitee of wise men suggested to abolish history from the secondary school curriculum altogether. Now there is some hope for our future generations !!
> I'm often amazed by the sheer stupidity of those who govern us. What's next; give up reading ? Give up math ?
> 
> Oh yes, I do appreciate the great contribution that the gaming-industry and other popculture has brought to society, but seriously...?
> 
> End of rant, feeling very old after reading the article that spurred this comment.


Reply with quote:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

- Santayana.


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## clockworkmurderer

If only it were so easy to create a blanket of ignorance for others to lie under. If basic cultural literacy is knowledge of poetry, what does it mean when people in another country have never heard of that poet? Culture differs so widely that the idea of having one single standard for cultural literacy seems quite fishy to me. My 2 cents anyway.


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## Figleaf

clockworkmurderer said:


> If only it were so easy to create a blanket of ignorance for others to lie under. If basic cultural literacy is knowledge of poetry, what does it mean when people in another country have never heard of that poet? Culture differs so widely that the idea of having one single standard for cultural literacy seems quite fishy to me. My 2 cents anyway.


It means that people in another country have knowledge of different poets, presumably. I'm not sure anyone ever argued that there was one universally recognized literary canon (or whatever) which completely transcended borders and spoken languages, though the study of Latin and Greek probably comes closest.


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## Blancrocher

They're doing a great job of maintaining cultural literacy at the BBC, in my opinion, though the existence of that great institution is under continual threat. If certain politicians in England get their way and manage to gut its funding I'll take to the streets in protest. Unfortunately, that would probably be ineffective given that I live in the USA.


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## SarahNorthman

MacLeod said:


> http://www.talkclassical.com/39050-what-happened-basic-cultural-post910468.html#post910468


Ah good point. I stand corrected.


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## Figleaf

Blancrocher said:


> They're doing a great job of maintaining cultural literacy at the BBC, in my opinion, though the existence of that great institution is under continual threat. If the conservatives in England manage to gut its funding I'll take to the streets in protest--though that will probably be ineffective given that I live in the USA.


If the conservatives did gut the Beeb's funding (but why would the government weaken its own propaganda service?) that would be the one good thing they ever did for us. If they gutted the BBC (starting with the mendacious 'news' channel which is like a po-faced version of Fox News) _and_ scrapped the regressive licence fee, that would be two good things. It's clearly too much to hope for.


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## Blancrocher

Figleaf said:


> If the conservatives did gut the Beeb's funding (but why would the government weaken its own propaganda service?) that would be the one good thing they ever did for us. If they gutted the BBC (starting with the mendacious 'news' channel which is like a po-faced version of Fox News) _and_ scrapped the regressive licence fee, that would be two good things. It's clearly too much to hope for.


I should say that I'm really only interested in their great radio dramas and quiz programs.


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## Figleaf

Blancrocher said:


> I should say that I'm really only interested in their great radio dramas and quiz programs.


Yes, the Beeb is far less offensive if you're not continually harrassed for non-payment of the TV tax, and not invested in British domestic politics. Which dramas do you like?


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## Guest

Figleaf said:


> If the conservatives did gut the Beeb's funding (but why would the government weaken its own propaganda service?) that would be the one good thing they ever did for us. If they gutted the BBC (starting with the mendacious 'news' channel which is like a po-faced version of Fox News) _and_ scrapped the regressive licence fee, that would be two good things. It's clearly too much to hope for.


The BBC news broadcasting is truly appalling. It is so cowed by fear it might as well become an official propaganda arm of the right. If you watch the BBC news and then Channel 4 they barely seem to be reporting from the same planet. And as for ITV...I wouldn't insult my cats by putting that on.


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## Blancrocher

Figleaf said:


> Yes, the Beeb is far less offensive if you're not continually harrassed for non-payment of the TV tax, and not invested in British domestic politics. Which dramas do you like?


My favorite stuff is quiz programs like "The Round Britain Quiz" and "The Unbelievable Truth." I listen pretty indiscriminately to their dramatizations and comedies. There's also a pretty good music quiz that one of TC's members should appear on and give us all a shout out.


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## Guest

Blancrocher said:


> My favorite stuff is quiz programs like "The Round Britain Quiz" and "The Unbelievable Truth." I listen pretty indiscriminately to their dramatizations and comedies. There's also a pretty good music quiz that one of TC's members should appear on and give us all a shout out.


What about "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" ?

That would seem to be right up your cul-de-sac...

Humph is much missed...
"And so as the loose-bowelled pigeon of time swoops low over the unsuspecting tourist of destiny, and the flatulent skunk of fate wanders into the air-conditioning system of eternity, I notice it's the end of the show."


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## Guest

Oh and of course...

"Just a Minute."


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## Blancrocher

Yeah, all the panel programs are great.


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## clockworkmurderer

Figleaf said:


> It means that people in another country have knowledge of different poets, presumably. I'm not sure anyone ever argued that there was one universally recognized literary canon (or whatever) which completely transcended borders and spoken languages, though the study of Latin and Greek probably comes closest.


First, anywhere I say "you," I'm speaking in general. I'm not accusing anyone in this thread of anything, I'm just trying to contribute to the discussion and state my point of view.

I was trying to capture my objection to this idea with a single example and remain succinct in the doing, but it seems that I must elaborate. I personally have gotten in arguments both in real life and the internet for not knowing the details of every anime product. Not because I have something against anime, far from it. I liked Full Metal Alchemist and Dragon Ball Z when I was a kid. However, when you really like something and extoll its virtues at every opportunity, it can become flabbergasting to you that another just doesn't have passion for said thing. This idea of cultural literacy makes me think of those arguments; I'm culturally illiterate in the culture of anime. I freely admit it, now ostracize me.

Thinking everyone is going to be interested in the things you like is naïve. Why else did I join this forum? I don't know a single person in real life that has passion for classical music the way I do. Is that a lack of cultural literacy, or a niche interest of mine? Other people like other things. I have learned that very acutely over the past few months as I have explored hip-hop as a complete newcomer. The cultural literacy of someone steeped in the history of hip-hop has almost nothing in common with the cultural literacy of their neighbor that listens to pop country.


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## Figleaf

^ It's great being old, nobody expects you to know what anime or hip hop are!

When I was a young fogey I was frequently shamed for knowing and caring nothing about the popular/'yoof' culture of the day, but I took 'cultural literacy' in this thread to refer to less ephemeral and probably more high culture areas of interest- not that there's an absolute divide, of course.


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## clockworkmurderer

While I don't disagree that "bad culture" is possible, I find it very stifling to think of one type of vulture (this was a typo but it strikes me as highly funny so I'm leaving it.) somehow being inherently superior to another. Going back to the anime example (it's a kind of comic/cartoon style), I always ask why one particular type of cartoon merits more interest than another. The fanatics will tell you that their chosen show is art and that American cartoons are essentially inferior and cannot be in the same class because they're generally comedic rather than serious. I'm all for enjoying culture, just not at the expense of another. While I don't intentionally listen to pop music, I do actively avoid disparaging it because I'm sure that the artist is proud and their fans enjoy that type of sound. I play video games instead of watching tv or movies, so I'm often out of the loop when people discuss such things, but again, I would never say something like "you shouldn't watch TV because video games are better."


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## kartikeys

The genesis of cultural literacy comes from family. 
Families have weakened, so culture is not passed on. 
Media has taken its place. 
This too is a culture, but perhaps not as life affirming.


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## Morimur

kartikeys said:


> The genesis of cultural literacy comes from family.
> Families have weakened, so culture is not passed on.
> Media has taken its place.
> This too is a culture, but perhaps not as life affirming.


Humanity is hurtling down a vast abyss of impenetrable darkness.


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## clockworkmurderer

Morimur said:


> Humanity is hurtling down a vast abyss of impenetrable darkness.


hahaha

as ever


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## KenOC

Morimur said:


> Humanity is hurtling down a vast abyss of impenetrable darkness.


I believe the phrase, from my parents' time, is "to hell in a handbasket." As it has been for limitless eons, since aging cavemen sat around the fire grunting their complaints. Not to say they weren't right!


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> I believe the phrase, from my parents' time, is "to hell in a handbasket." As it has been for limitless eons, since aging cavemen sat around the fire grunting their complaints. Not to say they weren't right!


"These modern cave paintings don't even look like proper animals."


----------

