Cultural literacy and the schools
(From "Cultural Literacy" by E.D. Hirsch)
School is the traditional place for acculturating children into our national life. Family, church, and other institutions play an important role, but school is the only institution that is susceptible to public policy control. In the modern age, the role assigned to our schools is to prepare our children for the broader activities of society and to train them in the literate public culture. Our schools have played this role less well than they should, chiefly because they have followed faulty educational ideas. The practical importance of ideas in human affairs, while not a recent revelation, is one that is too easily forgotten.
The decline of American literacy and the fragmentation of the American school curriculum have been chiefly caused by the ever growing dominance of romantic formalism in educational theory during the past half century. We have too readily blamed shortcomings of American education on social changes (the disorientation of the American family or the impact of television) or incompetent teachers or structural flaws in our school systems. But the chief blame should fall on faulty theories promulgated in our schools of education and accepted by educational policy-makers.
Why have we failed to give our children the information they lack? Chiefly because of educational formalism, which encourages us to ignore the fact that identifying and imparting the information a child is missing is most important in the earliest grades, when the task is most manageable. At age six, when a child must acquire knowledge critical for continuing development, the total quantity of missing information is not huge. The technical reading skills of disadvantaged children at age six are still on a par with those of children from literate families. Supplying missing knowledge to children early is of tremendous importance for enhancing their motivation and intellectual self-confidence, not to mention their subsequent ability to learn new materials. Yet schools will never systematically impart missing background information as long as they continue to accept the formalistic principle that specific information is irrelevant to "language arts skills."
Education formalism holds that reading and writing are like baseball and skating; formalism conceives of literacy as a set of techniques that can be developed by proper coaching and practice.
The trouble is that reading for meaning is a different sort of game entirely. Every text, even the most elementary, implies information that it takes for granted and doesn't explain. Knowing such information is the decisive skill of reading.
Assignments:
1. Translate the text using a dictionary.
2. Say whether you agree with the reasons for the decline of literacy the author gives.
A. AT THE ANGLO-AMERICAN SCHOOL
Like any school, the Anglo-American school in Moscow is filled with the hubbub of children, its pupils – 260 boys and girls from 30 countries, aged between five and 15– study here while their mothers and fathers work in the embassies and business centres. The children feel uninhibited, free-and-easy, but do not overstep limits and display any ill-breeding.
"We try to teach the children to be alert, to think critically, and to have a sense of responsibility and respect for other people's opinions," says Miss Vera Nordal, principal of the school. Teaching is conducted in English. Apart from general subjects, the pupils study Russian language and Russian literature.
"The pupil is the main person in our school," says Vera Nordal. "The teacher's task is not to 'put knowledge into their heads,' but to awaken interest in the subject, to teach them to look at phenomena from different viewpoints, not to divide everything into black and white."
Instruction at this school costs 6,000 dollars a year. Usually this is paid by the embassy.
В. MAKING FRIENDS
If you want to have lessons at a US school, you don't have to travel to the USA. Teachers at the Anglo-American School in Moscow decided to invite to their school 5th-formers from Dubna, "the physicists' town."
Eighteen boys and girls sat for three days on tables, chairs and the floors together with their US friends whom they met last year.
"I don't understand why Moscow teachers haven't yet made use of this splendid neighbourhood and 'made friends' with the Anglo-American School," says Galina Dolya, a teacher of English from Dubna. The idea of twinning* the two schools came to her and Susan Jones, an American, after the first Soviet-US seminar of teachers on overcoming stereotypes** in schools was held last year in Massachusetts.
It turned out to be very simple to organize such co-operation. With the support of Dubna's municipal authorities it was even possible to get consent from the director of the institute of Nuclear Physics for the US schoolchildren and teachers to stay a while at the homes of the institutes staff. Then children and adults from Dubnawere settled in apartments of US diplomats in Moscow, where they swam in the US Embassy swimming pool, played volleyball and had meals.
"We like the idea that at the US School you don't have to wear uniform and you can sit with whoever you like. True it isn't so comfortable on the floor," said Natasha and Lena, both 11, in unison. "After the meeting in Dubna last year, we wrote to each other and phoned."
"It's fun to go about with Russian kids," says Emma Quinn-Judge, 10, daughter of The Christian Science Monitor correspondent. "True, sometimes it is hard to say what you want and you've got to use sign language."
I don't want to argue with Emma, but I'd like to say that Dubna schoolchildren, nevertheless, know English much better than other schoolchildren who lack such contacts. And Yuri Valdo, 10, has even started to speak with a pronounced American accent.
Assignment:
Read the two articles and
a) say what skills children are taught at the Anglo-American school;
b) speak of the school rules.
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* twinning – породнение
** to overcome stereotypes – преодолеть стереотипы