Literacy is not merely the ability to read and write. To be a literate member of society one needs to be familiar with an entire system of behavior which accompanies a language. "It is not what you say, but how you say it." (Gee 5 ) Literature of all sorts is filled with allusions, images, metaphors, and other devices which can best be fully understood within a certain cultural context. ( Hirsch 2 ) When people are taught to read, they receive more than a system of grammar and vocabulary, they receive an entire system of believes, values, behavior and background information. They use all these things, which are associated with the grammar and vocabulary, to understand what they read and hear. If literacy is looked at in this manner, there is no single literacy, but rather literacies. ( Gee 9 ) Many of these literacies are associated with people from different backgrounds such as middle or working classes. An upper class literacy, therefore, would contain all the beliefs, values, behavior and background information which would be necessary for someone to function as part of the upper class. Some of these beliefs, values, and bits of background information are political. (Gee 8-13 )
There are many examples throughout history where people have advocated certain teaching practices with a political goal. E.D. Hirsch, in his Cultural Literacy advocates teaching children a long list of facts, arguing that these facts are necessary to create a unified American culture. Hirsch's facts are both trivial and intended to bring children into "'middle-class-like' school-based was of doing and being. (Gee 11) Hirsch's list of facts resembles in many ways popular ideas regarding education during the 1950's, where educators advocated schools altering their curricula to include more social studies, American history and government. Lists of facts, attitudes, and curriculum were prepared in a manner similar to Hirsch's, "Among the lists were an appendix containing 135 behaviors and modes of thinking that characterized a good citizen..." (Hepburn 156) For example, Hirsch states "[students] do know what reconstruction means. [Students] do not know the meaning of the Brown decision and cannot identify either Stalin or Churchill" Hirsch implies that his list of facts has a nationalistic flavor, and that he intends to define a national character for America. Stating, "although nationalism may be regrettable in some of its world-wide political effects, a mastery of national culture is essential to mastery of the standard language in every modern nation." (Hirsch, 15-18) Hirsch's list of facts is uncritical and favors learning by rote. While transmission of culture by rote was popular in the 1950s so as to avoid being considered communist, leftist, or "un-American," that manner of teaching was also first attacked in the 1950s. "The uncritical transmission of culture was inappropriate for educating democractic citizens," stated one journal of the period. Hirsch's calling for "cultural literacy" also resembles the thoughts of Arthur Bestor, a Cold-War period academician who advocated "teaching the essentials." His writings were an attempt at defusing people's fears of communist infiltration of the school system. The real threat to democracy, was that schools were not "providing a basic education that had once been available only to an elite." Much as Hirsch attacks multiculturalism, Bestor attacks schools that "had become overly concerned with the personal problems of adolescents.." (Hepburn 158 )
Criticism of text books reveals the politics found in teaching "cultural literacy," "social studies," or "western civilization." Linda Gordon, David Hunt, and Peter Weiler, in the "History as Indoctrination: A Critique of Palmer and Colton's History of the Modern World" They first look at the history of "Western Civ" courses, first sighting a 1917 Columbia University course.
Through such a study of our past, values emerge: that we live in a free society in which the spirits of justice, love and scientific inquiry have been the touchstones to social invention; that in such a society the individual has laboured to achieve freedom from an arbitrary authority (whether ecclesiastical or political); and that in a climate of experimental science, technology, and liberal-capitalist institutions, man seeks to shape his world to achieve welfare for himself and for constantly growing numbers of the human race.Gordon, Hunt, and Weiler recognize this as "a political statement." It "[describes] American society 'in its own terms," if by that statement one means from the point of view of a public relations expert attempting to present the social system in the best possible light." The text Palmer and Colton wrote was designed to highlight positive forces in American society, assuming that American liberal capitalism is efficient and fair. (Gordon, Hunt, and Weiler 56 )
The idea of "providing a common intellectual framework and system of values for the population at large" ( Gordon, Hunt, and Weiler 57 ) was advocated by the Harvard, Committee on General Education(1943-1945). They blatantly argued that the function of education was to indoctrinate the masses.
The primary concern of American education today is not the appreciation of the 'good life' in young gentleman born to the purple. It is the infusion of the liberal and humane tradition into our entire education system. Our purpose is to cultivate in the largest possible number of future citizens an appreciation of both the responsibilities and benefits which come to them because they are Americans and are free.Never do they mention critical analysis of American society. The purpose of education, is to learn what your supposed to do as a American citizen (i.e. one's responsibilities) and the good things about being an American, as if these were self evident. The drawbacks of America are simply ignored. The Harvard Committee compares education to religion, that it somehow reveals the fundamental truths of the world, i.e. that America is just full of benefits. It seems odd, that in a period of segregated schools and anti-communist and liberal movements, that America should be called free. They could have phrased themselves more truthfully "that they are Americans and might be free" or "that they are Americans and some of them are free." The Committee goes on and provides another example of it's attempts to indoctrinate people into American society.
Especially with youth, which is ardent and enthusiastic, open mindedness without belief is apt to lead to opposite extreme of fanaticism. We can all perhaps recall young people of our acquaintance who from a position of extreme skepticism, indeed because of that position, fell an easy prey to fanatical gospels. It seems that nature abhors an intellectual vacuum. A measure of belief is necessary in order to preserve the quality of an open mind. If toleration is not to become nihilism, if conviction is not to become dogmatism, if criticism is not to become cynicism, each must have something of the other.Gordon, Hunt, and Weiler paraphrase the passage, "students should arrive at liberal, not radical conclusions about political and social issues."
Palmer and Colton's textbook is shown to contain strong anti-Marxist sentiments. In Gordon, Hunt and Weiler's criticism they state:
In discussing the origins of Marxist thought, Palmer and Colton make clear that conditions occasioned by early industrialism in Europe were often demoalizing for the people who had to live through them. After chronicling some of the more negative features of the period, they write, "All these facts were seized upon and dramatized in the Communist Manifesto." The picture of Marx "seizing upon" the issue of working class poverty conveys the impression that there was something dishonest about these tactics, as if Marx were simply using conditions as a pretext for some more personal vendetta. A moment later, in evaluating the Manifesto, Palmer and Colton add, "As a philosophy of history, it raised the passing events of 1848 and Marx's lifetime to a higher level of cosmic meaning. It gave Marxism the universal aspects of a religion. It made Marxian socialism into a dogma and a faith." Comparing Marxism to a religion, a dogma, or a faith is a characteristic ploy. It creates the impression that Marxism is not to be rationally evaluated as a serious attempt to interpret history but is instead to be understood as an irrational personal quirk, like the beliefs of a vegetarian or a fundamentalist. No matter how, "objective" they may appear, such passages denigrate Marx and encourage students not to take him seriously. ( Gordon, Hunt, and Weiler)All these examples show how attempts at making one "culturally literate," are in fact simply variations on the same theme: the use of historical facts and the subtleties of language to serve specific political goals. Everyone who speaks is guilty of it, because literacy and therefore language is has large political components. Literacy is no more empowering than illiteracy, because both leave one vulnerable to images and other people's analysis. Perhaps the literate are even more vulnerable to this kind of careful shaping of their thoughts, because it tends to be fairly subtle. In the case of Hirsch, nationalism was the political goal, other times, it is anti-communism, or moderatism.
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