Abstract

No subject more galvanizes academic discourse in America nowadays than cultural literacy. The debate has to do on one side with the failure of American primary and secondary education to train young people in the basic skills of reading and calculation and with a failure to teach the cultural values necessary to maintain our society. Some maintain these values are inherent in and best transmitted by the study of great works of literature that have been formative of our cultural traditions; and these works are sometimes called the “canon,” in the sense of an authoritative list of the acceptable books , or “the humanities.” On the other hand, the notion of cultural literacy arouses passionate objection from some persons who do not identify readily with the “mainstream” of the European-American cultural tradition or who believe that the tradition has systematically excluded them from membership in the cultural mainstream. These include not only many feminists and African-Americans but also Spanish-speaking Americans and other people of non-European origins, although many Asian-Americans are seeking and gaining assimilation to the educational mainstream so rapidly that they are not for the moment raising their voices