What do we need to know?

At the suggestion of a friend, I borrowed from the library a thick volume called The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. The first edition of the book came out in 1987; the edition I'm looking at came out in 2002. It consists of over 5000 entries for what its editors considered everyday knowledge, from "Abraham and Issac" in the opening section on the (Judeo-Christian) Bible to "Yucca Mountain" in the section on Technology. The book has been a best seller. And a cultural flashpoint in its own way in education policy circles.

Here's how the 2002 edition states its purpose:

In the United States, reading with understanding is based on the kind of background information identified in this book ... From the start, the premise of this dictionary was that true literacy -- reading with comprehension -- requires a lot more than sounding out the words on the page. Those who possess the needed, taken-for-granted knowledge can understand what they read, and those who lack that knowledge cannot. The haves learn ever more from what they read and hear; the have-nots fall further and lose the chance to become participating members of the wider community.

The book's instigator, E. D. Hirsch, was distressed in the early 1980s to learn that community college students in Virginia had no idea who either Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant might have been or what they had done to shape the place in which they lived. He believed that there was a common American knowledge base which was needed for democratic citizenship and successful adulthood. This insight led first to this dictionary and later to advocacy of a "Common Core" movement in educational practice. Though Hirsch insists he is a "liberal" -- "practically a socialist" -- in education policy circles he has many detractors, usually Democrats, sometimes classroom teachers, who consider his common core project "elitist." Or perhaps limited, or sexist, or racist.

This is not the sort of debate anyone definitively wins.

My interest in issues of common knowledge base is highly practical. Over the years I've learned that a vital prerequisite to running a persuasive get-out-the-vote campaign, such as UniteHERE just managed in Nevada, is enabling door-knockers to explain what the offices are that your candidates are seeking, what those offices do, and what policies the "good" ones might be able to implement. Canvassers have to be able to talk about this stuff fluently -- and very few, regardless of education or economic status, arrive able to do so. Erudite Partner has repeatedly led an appreciated training on "what is a governor -- what is a U.S. Senator." Personal experience carried many of us a long way when it came to talking about reproductive freedoms. But to meet the voters where they had concerns, we had to learn something about housing policies. 

I can sympathize with the impulse to wish that as a society we shared more of a common knowledge base. But we're big and we're different and it's not likely such a thing can be agreed upon universally. However common knowledge can sometimes prove its worth in practice, when we take ourselves out of our bubbles and have to communicate. It's heartening to realize we can do that; democratic survival may depend on it.