Cultural Illiteracy: Scope, Causes, Consequences

The Founding Fathers "were steeped in, soaked in, marinated in, the classics: Greek and Roman history, Greek and Roman ideas, Greek and Roman ideals," says two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough:

"It was their model, their example. And they saw themselves very much like the Greeks and the Romans, as actors on a great stage in one of the great historic dramas of all time, and that they, individually and as a group, had better live up to these heroic parts in which history had cast them."

Although Greek and Roman civilizations were of the very distant past, knowledge of them was vital to the task at hand. Had the Founding Fathers not been supremely literate in a cultural sense,  there would have been no United States of America. The challenges faced by the Greeks and the Romans were the inspiration for the carefully-crafted system of checks and balances that is the United States Constitution.

McCullough, in another context: "Historical memory is as much a necessity to the preservation of liberty and American security as is our own armed forces." In that light America's young face coming threats to their liberty unarmed. They do not read, few can write, they know little. They ignore the civic life of their communities and the nation. When their time "on a great stage" arrives — in the next great historic drama, they will be mute and confused.

Newspapers' Plight

I start with the most alarming facts: Young adults are rejecting newspapers and other sources of news. Excerpts below from "Let's Blame the Readers: Is it Possible to do Great Journalism if the Public Doesn't Care?" Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2005, by Evan Cornog, publisher:

DECLINING READERSHIP IS "TOPIC A" AT THE 2004 MANAGING EDITORS CONVENTION; MOST DISTRESSING: THE PRECIPITOUS DECLINE IN YOUNG ADULT READERS:

"...in 1964, 81 percent of Americans read a daily newspaper, while today that figure hovers around 54 percent. Soon newspaper readers will be a minority of the population . . . As recently as 1997, 39 percent of Americans 18 to 34 were reading newspapers regularly; by 2001 this had dropped to 26 percent. That statistic is even worse than it seems, because newspaper reading — or nonreading — is a habit, like smoking or a preference for Coke or Pepsi, that once acquired tends to remain in place. The older Americans who are the mainstay of newspaper subscriber lists have been reading newspapers since their teens and twenties, and younger Americans who have not yet picked up the habit are not likely to develop it later in life."

THE YOUNG ARE DISENGAGED; THEY DO NOT GET NEWS FROM ANY SOURCE:

"A new study of the problem by David T. Z. Mindich, a journalism professor at Saint Michael's College in Vermont, provides a devastating survey of the extent of the problem. Ignorance of current events and indifference to the traditional news media are epidemic . . . In his new book, Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News, Mindich cites a survey showing that 'only 11% of young people cite the Internet as a major source of news.' Younger Americans know plenty about the things that interest them — they just don't follow the news very closely . . . Given the close correlation researchers have found between newspaper reading and active citizenship, the figures are worrisome . . ."

Shakespeare in Pioneer Huts

In "Reading at Risk, Culture at Risk," Teachers College Record, February 2, 2005, Mark Bauerlein, director of research at the National Endowment for the Arts, presents more data on declining historical memory and civic capability:

HISTORICAL AND CIVIC AWARENESS HAS NEVER BEEN LOWER:

"On the NAEP tests in civics in 1998, 35 percent of high school seniors scored 'Below basic,' and only four percent reached 'Advanced.' The history test (from 2001) was worse: A full 57 percent earning 'below basic.' In a Roper study commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, seniors at the top 55 colleges and universities took a history test derived from the basic high school curriculum. The result: 81 percent of them received a grade of D or F . . . only 34 percent could identify Valley Forge, words from the Gettysburg Address, or basic principles of the U.S. Constitution."

FEW HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS READ BEYOND A BASIC LEVEL:

"On the 2002 NAEP test of high school seniors in reading, 26 percent rated 'Below basic' and only five percent reached 'Advanced.'"

IN CONTRAST, THIS FAMED 19th CENTURY HISTORIAN OF EARLY AMERICA FOUND LITERACY WIDESPREAD:

"Alexis de Tocqueville caught the spirit of democratic reading when he toured the states in the 1830s and found an 'ever increasing crowd of readers.' He noted, 'There is hardly a pioneer's hut that does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare.'"

What's in a Name?

The generation of Americans Tocqueville observed were not far-removed from the "steeped in, soaked in, marinated in the classics" founding generation. Cultural literacy was to become steadily less important, however, beginning in the early twentieth century — as states assumed authority over accreditation, curricula, textbooks and teacher licensing. In particular, cultural literacy faded rapidly with the professionalization of teaching, that is, with the emergence of colleges of education. Coincidence?

For an answer, look to the origins of colleges of education. New York University education historian Diane Ravitch:

"Teachers College, the premier pedagogical institution in the nation, began as an alternative to the academic tradition. It traced its origins to the Kitchen Garden Association, incorporated in 1880 to teach 'the domestic industrial arts among the laboring classes,' that is, to train young girls to work in domestic service as cooks and housemaids. Four years later, hoping to attract boys as students, the institution changed its name to the Industrial Education Association and added classes in carpentry and manual training to its curriculum of sewing, cooking, drawing and domestic service . . ."

"In 1887 . . . the institution decided to specialize in teacher training. It was once again rechristened, this time the New York College for the Training of Teachers, and began offering courses in the history of education, pedagogy, industrial arts . . . In 1889, a final name change produced Teachers College, which in 1893 became the pedagogy department of Columbia University.

From Kitchen Garden Association (1880) to Industrial Training Institute (1884) to College for the Training of Teachers (1887) to Teachers College (1889):

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. (Romeo and Juliet , Act II)

Kitchen garden associations-industrial training institutes-teachers colleges — however called — are perfect vehicles for destroying a culture: its literature, history, art, and literacy itself; hence, for destroying a civilization. All that's wanted, all that's needed, is to put these anti-academic institutions in exclusive control of teacher education. Make them gatekeepers to the classroom. State legislatures readily did so. It was the progressive thing to do.

The effects are far-reaching. My favorite example — little known but of great consequence — is what happened to history in the early grades (where I taught for 28 years). The National Council for History Education (NCHE) is an organization that supports the teaching of history. From History Matters, NCHE's monthly newsletter (December 2001):

"During the first four decades of the 20th century, the presence of history in lower grades needed no special defense . . . Early peoples, heroes, myths, biographies, poems, national holidays, fairy tales, and historical legends formed the heart of K-4 history instruction . . . by the 1940s a content-rich curriculum had been replaced by the sociologically based 'expanding horizons' framework, typically: 'Me' (kindergarten), 'My Family, My School' (first grade), 'My Neighborhood' (second), 'My Community' (third), and 'My State' (fourth grade)."

"...during the 1980s, psychologists and educators began to reexamine the developmental premises of 'expanding horizons.' The researchers were forthright in their denunciations. 'There is little beyond ideology to commend the (expanding horizons) program and its endlessly bland versions,' wrote New School professor of psychology Jerome Bruner. Teachers College professor Philip Phenix: '...the whole purpose of education is to enlarge experience by introducing new experiences far, far beyond where the child starts . . . Young children are quite capable of, and deeply interested in, widening their horizons to the whole universe of space and time . . . And all of this from Kindergarten years, or even before.'"

These are but samples of distinguished scholarly condemnation of the vapid 'Expanding Horizons' social studies curriculum. No matter. Colleges of education and state education departments are oblivious. The featherweight Expanding Horizons curriculum is America's K-4 social studies curriculum.

Cultural Cleansing

Schools of education are aided in promoting culture-free schooling by another efficient device for that purpose: standardized tests. Culture-free high-stakes standardized tests produce — over many years — culture-free young adults. That's because what is tested is what is taught. America's standardized reading tests — from comprehension tests given to third graders to reading passages on the Graduate Record Examination for candidates for graduate school — contain NO TRACE of Western culture, history, literature, politics, art.

Standardized tests' cultural sterility does not trouble leaders of school systems. It does not disturb presidents of universities — or CEOs of testing companies. They were all "educated" in schools and universities much like those they now lead or serve. We can expect nothing from them in the way of a remedy. They cannot tell us why the young — after thousands of hours and years upon years of seat time in their institutions and hundreds of hours taking their tests — know so very little. (Standardized testing's large role in fostering ignorance is the theme of "Standardized Tests That Fire the Imagination.")

Confidence

I began with the role of Greek and Roman classics in the birth of the United States. But American civilization was not the only civilization built by these books. In Civilization: A Personal View (1969), companion book for the 13-part BBC production by that name, art historian Sir Kenneth Clark wrote:

"There is no better instance of how a burst of civilization depends on confidence than the Florentine state of mind in the early fifteenth century. For thirty years the fortunes of the republic . . . were directed by a group of the most intelligent individuals who have ever been elected to power by a democratic government . . . The Florentine chancellors were scholars, believers in the studia humanitatis, in which learning could be used to achieve a happy life . . . and believers, above all, in Florence."

"The second and greatest of these humanist chancellors, Leonardo Bruni . . . saw the Florentine republic as reviving the virtues of Greece and Rome . . . When Bruni compared Florence to Athens, he had read Thucydides. In Florence the first thirty years of the fifteenth century were the heroic age of scholarship . . ."

Alas, the Italian Renaissance "was not broadly enough based," according to Clark. "The few had gone too far away from the many . . . in knowledge and intelligence . . . " The early Italian Renaissance would not survive the first two generations of scholar-leaders.

Not so the American experiment with liberty. The Founding Fathers laid a durable foundation, save for the terrible compromise with slavery. But they did not foresee the emergence of colleges of education, nor of culture-free high-stakes tests, these perfect vehicles for the demolition of history, the shattering of confidence and, ultimately, the destruction of a civilization.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. (Ray Bradbury)

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Follow-Up

"The Founding Fathers and the Classics" by Dr. Joe Wolverton II is a 3,000-word essay, primarily about the heroes and villains of Greek and Roman antiquity that influenced the Founders. Why was Cato the Younger so admired by George Washington? Who was the target of Cicero's most famous speeches? How did Philip of Macedon subvert Athenian freedom?

Tyrants masquerading as democrats, conspiracies with foreign allies and an unquenchable thirst for power put Greek and Roman liberty at constant and, ultimately, fatal risk. The Founders learned that "republics are as fragile as they are glorious."

Tom Shuford [email protected] is a retired teacher living in Lenoir, North Carolina.

Published Hune 7, 2005