The book cultural literacy by Hirsch provides a certain level of genius that is quite rare, and highlights some of the issues that are wrong with the American education system, and the plight of disadvantaged students as they have to try to get the same kind. Hirsch argued that the trajectory of school literacy could be changed by having a list of items that people from different backgrounds needed to understand, before they could be considered to be educated people. The list is an expansive one, but the criteria for the item to occur in the list is documented throughout the different chunks of the books. The different chapters offer a road map of what the things in the list should be. The item that was chosen for discussion is the “Pearl Harbour”. This item was on the list, and should remain on the list. The first criterion of making sure that an item should be on the list if it extends over a major human activity, and is not confined to a particular culture (Xiii). The pearl harbour is a major historical event, since it marked the entry of American people in the world war II (Britannica; Foster; Harbour). This event goes against all culture because it as an important event for all people in the world; form the Japanese that created the chaos, to the Americans that reiterated, and finally the different parties that were involved in the war (Best; Kelly). The next criterion is that it should not be a list of works that iterate people should have read, but information that the people that are culturally literate should have (XiV). The word pearl harbour might be a title of a book, but in the list it is merely a word that is supposed to trigger a lot of information that Hirsch expects anyone that is culturally literate to have. The word is not a title of work but possesses the necessary information. The criterion is that the information that is obtained is important in helping the culturally literate understand the information that is presented when reading something such as a newspaper much better and easily (2). This criterion applies to word pearl harbour because it is a significant event in history that is likely to be related to when performing various political discussions. It is a lesson that made the rest of the world learn why peace is important over getting dominance over the world (Best). The other criterion is that the information that word on the list provides happens to be a major part of the democratic decisions that people make when dealing with various people in the community (12). The word Pearl Harbour is rooted in the American political history, which means that information about the events that ensued after the Pearl Harbour was taken over can be very helpful in the process of deciding whether they should elect a particular person into office or not (Naidu). The decision could be based on the information that people have about the parties involved during the Pearl Harbour, or the thoughts of the president about having a world war, or performing acts that might lead to a world war.
The other criterion is that it should be above common knowledge used every day, and below the specialist knowledge that a person needs to have an expert opinion (19). This means that a person needs not have comprehensive information about the Pearl Harbour, just enough for them to form a valid opinion that would play a major role in helping the person participate in a discussion that involved the events that were related to the Pearl Harbour (Foster; Smith). Hirsch also argues that it is much better to reserve the events to things that people learn in school, rather than those that are associated to a family structure, social setting, or even television programming. The literacy word on the list should not eliminate any body. It should affect people across all ethnicities and social class. It is not usually a people’s first culture, but a second culture (21). The second culture is to mean that the people had a culture and a way of life even before the second world war came about and Americans had to join the war. It was a part of the second mark on their culture, rather than a first. Therefore, the word Pearl Harbour should be on the list. For the word to appear on the list, it has to invoke certain information that is not in the text, but can invoke certain meaning about the way that the word is used in a particular context (33). The context of the word can determine the meaning of the text, since there is a lot of information that is possessed by the single word. The Pearl Harbour event can mean different things to different people depending on the cultural literacy of a people, which means that a culturally literate person would have knowledge of these perspectives that would help them decipher the meaning of the text much better. Hirsch argued that cultural literacy plays a major role in the way that people end up understanding certain information that is presented to them, and used that as a basis of explaining why some children do better in school than others. The people that are from higher social classes have access to information that the children from the lower classes do not have access to. This is to mean that a child might join school with information of something such as the Pearl Harbour, while another student gets to the school with little information about the events since they did not have the resources that might have exposed them to such issues. The child that has information about the event is more likely to do much better in school as opposed to the student that did not have any information at all about the event. This is to mean that the words that are provided in the list have to offer a literate person an advantage over the other people that do not know about the word in the first place. The word Pearl Harbour brings about information about an event that was important not only to Americans, but the different parties that took part in the first world war. These kinds of words and information are important for people of different cultures, since they can talk about the issues that might drive them into the kinds of issues that arose after a single event happened. It also helps then understand the thoughts of other people whether written or otherwise that they might relate to the event. Therefore, the word Pearl Harbour should be on Hirsch’s list, especially because it fulfils a lot of the criteria discussed in the book.
Works Cited
Best, Antony. Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbour: Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936-1941. Routledge, 2013.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Pearl Harbor attack". Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Nov. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/event/Pearl-Harbor-attack. Accessed 8 May 2021.
Cadbury, Matthew. Pearl Harbor: Intelligence, psychology and command failure. Journal of Intelligence and Terrorism Studies. 2017. 2. 23S441. 10.22261/23S441.
Foster, Kevin. "The decision to attack Pearl Harbour." Journal of the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers 3.3 (1994): 13-27.
Harbor, R.P. (2001). The Pearl Harbor Fact Sheet. https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/pearl-harbor-fact-sheet-1.pdf
Hirsch Jr., E. D. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. 1 st Vintage Books ed. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 1988.
Kelly, Marjorie. "Three Views of the Attack on Pearl Harbor: Navy, Civilian and Resident Perspectives." (2001).
Naidu, R. M. "Pearl harbour, 9/11 & 26/11: revisited: a qualitative study of intelligence management system." Journal of Commerce and Management Thought 3.1 (2012): 33-38.
Robeson, Paul. “The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy”, 3 rd ed., edited by E.D. Hirsch Jr. et al. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2005. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/robeson--paul?s=t
Smith, R. L. "Water pollution in Pearl Harbour. Steps to reverse the present trend." Wat. Sewage Wks 111 (1964): 318-323.