The Importance of Cultural Literacy in Learning Other Languages

In interacting with some americans, i've often been disappointed how sparse and distorted their knowledge of the broader world is. This focus on deliberately cultivating a shared gingoistic mythology in America has attracted hirsch's most criticism. I would love to see a list of chinese or korean or spanish common knowledge, such as presented in the back of hirsche's book,. Even an imperfect list would help clarify what most people can be expected to know already - even for alliterate audience. Final thoughts on cultural literacy. In high school, i read shakespeare each year. A chunk of the english curriculum was devoted to going through in detail one of his plays. If that had