Cultural Literacy

I had an unexpected and refreshing discussion with a good friend today (via email, of course...no one has face to face talks anymore...reminds me of that great movie "My Facebook with Andre"). His starting position was that cultural literacy was the only redeeming value of a variety of what is considered the liberal arts/literary canon. I made the statement that there are other uses for the material but cultural literacy was part of it. If that's the case, he answered, why not isolate those components which are necessary and simply present them as sine qua nons of cultural literacy. Why must the entire body of work be learned in order to cover a relatively small percentage.

My response (geez...it's like you were there, right?) was that context and place are necessary components to the understanding of the references and allusions. He then wondered whether my position was that cultural literacy required awareness or deep study, and if the latter then most people are culturally illiterate. So of course, this got me thinking.

I think that, yes, most people are culturally illiterate in one way or another. I can talk about Shakespeare but can't about Basketball, and in my culture, a level of literacy regarding sports is necessary in many contexts. I can't talk politics and I can talk music so sometimes I am 'in' and sometimes not. Cultural literacy depends on the aspect of culture currently at play. No one can know everything about everything (except, according to my brother, my brother) and in some areas we are all bound to come up short, whether we want to admit it or not.

The problem is the word "literacy" -- I can't accept a claim to literacy which is really a claim to familiarity. Knowing that "To be or not to be" is by Shakespeare does nothing to let someone understand the psychological import which should be part of its citation in conversation (fortunately for that guy, the guy using it is probably similarly stunted and is using it in its most superficial way, simply as a shorthand for Shakespeare). Think about the scene from the Simpsons ("The Springfield Connection") where everyone is at a July 4 picnic and the band slips Twinkle Twinkle into its performance of Star Wars. Dr Hibbert's reaction? "Devilishiously satirical! I wonder if anyone else got that." Homer heard the reference but he didn't get the cultural value. One isn't literate because one can recognize a word. True reading and literacy mean comprehension of cues and clues and making inferences about importance and meaning. Sure, it isn't about full fledged expertise, but about a level of mastery which comes from something more than simple memorization.

So not to slam humanity, but most of us are culturally illiterate to a large degree. What we don't know, we don't know. And often, what we know, we only know; we don't understand. So when we see it in another context we recognize it as it triggers our factual knowledge, but it doesn't always trigger the deeper cultural significance. Only because it often isn't used with that significance in mind do we get away with not seeing anything deeper in it.