Thus I would suggest that the stodgy classic is regarded as a deliberate barrier to entry even by those high in cultural capital, and I’m interested in you saying “the only kids who really fight off jumping through the hoops are those determined to leave the social world of their upbringing.” – surely lots of Ivy league jocks who hate Shakespeare have every intention of remaining in their social stratum, and know very well that the wider world look on it as a childish thing to be put away when they join their investment bank or whatever.

Looking at peoples collections on LibraryThing.com is a good way to see how in fact cultural literacy doesn’t depend on a shared core of cultural works. I can meet a Bach/ Mozart fanatic and have a fully engaged exchange with them as know the general deal about classical music as an activity. In fact ‘literacy’ is a misnomer here, it really is more like learning a certain kind of (often nonchalant, interested yet disinterested) shop-talk, and fundamentally an agreement on the discursive rules (again, Rose shows how being too earnest ended up being a class marker).

All of this was displayed during the Infinite Summer ‘book club’ about Infinite Jest – some saw it exactly as the grind you are describing (but read it anyway), and there were interesting clashes in the different modes in which people tried to describe it.

There’s a line in ‘Distinction’ where Bourdieu says high cultural activities are called disinterested because they offer no intrinsic interest (no palpable pleasure). So one could cynically conclude that the difficulty is a feature, not a bug. But I think the works the literati do re-read and do enjoy (say Austen, Woolf, Kafka…) are constantly getting re-used in film & TV, and thus what’s going on with the Scarlet Letter is something other than cultural literacy as normally understood. In fact, how much History does form a part of the standard reference framework of the NYRB reader – probably not that much…

That said, I think we’re in agreement. It would be interesting if the pedagogy of classic literature focused more on the understanding of such cultural tropes rather than focusing on minor plot details or analysing a writing style that hasn’t been used for a hundred years.

I understand and agree with your point about “vulgar Bourdieuian argument”.

The point of Jonathan Rose?? that you cite, that “the content of the works that British workers were reading mattered very much to them, that they were engaged in very substantive interpretations” seems exactly right, not just for British workers in that era but for any coherent cultural group. This point that is surprising mainly if one unreflectively buys into the social stratification maintained by Bourdieuian signaling, which reserves engagement with content and substantive interpretation for certain elites (readers of Bourdieu, for example).

I’d propose we should build on Rose’s point to engage the students: Respect their own engagements as a starting point, and challenge them with interpretive discourse regarding whatever “works.. matter… very much to them, [which] they [will] engage… in very substantive interpretation”.

I just can’t see The Scarlet Letter as a work that could really matter to students until much later, if ever. And if it does not, and yet it is important for them to know about it for social reasons, a fairly vulgar Bourdieuian treatment is more honest and useful in that case.

Your second more deeply felt reply deserves a deeper response.

You say “I can facilitate or negotiate for people. In that context, I?? not necessarily additive at all, and I propose that nothing is lacking in them. I?? helping to elicit something from within that?? believed to be there already.” I suppose that would be the Socratic or Platonic pose, but of course we don’t any more believe the underlying Platonic epistemology. Today perhaps the closest analog is non-directive therapy, which can be very useful for some problems.

But that is not at all what I’m talking about here, and I guess we are talking somewhat past each other for some reason. I’ll try to find some better framing.

Rather than just facilitating I’m talking about (in some cases very harsh) scaffolding of skills, self-perceptions, etc. Think of (literal) boot camps as an extreme example. Graduate school in many cases is a less extreme but still very demanding example. “Grunts” in such programs are put in situations where they have to go beyond their comfort zone repeatedly, and in the process acquire skills and self-perceptions they couldn’t acquire on their own. Sometimes this is “just” hazing, but often the subjects are being forced to extend themselves in ways required to develop key abilities.

You continue “Teaching, it seems to me, begins from a premise of a lack, that the student does not yet have something (knowledge, skill, competency) which the teacher will impart to them.” We pretty much agree, though I’d frame the student’s condition as “potential” not “lack”. This is not just rhetorical. “Lack” implies there’s a fairly determinate “hole” to be “filled” with something the teacher “has”. “Potential” implies that the student is going to be “growing” something new, that is only somewhat predictable, and that might be something the teacher doesn’t “have”. I think the second set of implications is far more accurate.

Skipping a bit, you say “So while I can bring forth an existing skill at social analysis around the device of The Scarlet Letter, and maybe help a student hone that through practice, I also think I need to teach them something about the book that they don?? already know.” I agree with all of that except “about the book”. My scenario was not intended to just bring forth and hone existing skills, though obviously I didn’t say that clearly. The sort of public role playing, critical discussion of the role play, exercises to acquire the knowledge needed to succeed, etc. would all bring to awareness lots of implicit assumptions, expose them to critique, scaffold the acquisition / construction of a language to discuss the issues raised, and push the students to actually engage with the material in new ways.

However my initial scenario is too accommodating, I suppose because I was taking the side of the 16 year old too completely. I agree we can and should demand much more of students than just facilitating development of their social skills. However I’d address your extensive concerns about the traditional curriculum not by trying to motivate it or do a better job of teaching it, but by focusing on our legitimate demands, and finding ways to address those as directly as possible. The students will know the difference. 16 year olds often appreciate boot camp, or Outward Bound, or whatever. If they feel they’re being pushed beyond their comfort zone in ways that actually realize potentials they didn’t know (or didn’t believe) they had, they will throw themselves into the process.

Finally we agree that “Knowledge involves bringing a cumulative body of not-self into what you are and what you think.” Any true growth requires that, though I’d prefer to say how you think. The problem with traditional curricula is that they mostly feed students “non-nutritive fiber” that’s never assimilated and is excreted as soon as convenient (more direct phrasing left to the reader). As you are arguing just feeding them junk food that they enjoy is no better. We need to scaffold their adoption of a comprehensive program of nutrition and exercise that they can build into their life going forward.

I see one of your issues that isn’t addressed above is developing “a passion for the content of literary and historical knowledge”. There I think Paolo Friere has pretty much provided the recipe (which requires recognizing that a focus on “knowledge” as you use it here leads us down the wrong path). Find the cultural material about which your students are already passionate.Teach them to analyze their own and each other’s engagements consciously, constructively and self-critically. (This can easily be motivated by having them analyze passions of their classmates that they don’t share.) Then (optionally) teach them to deploy those skills in domains that they don’t initially care about, such as history or literature.

This last step of course is much, much harder, but it is basically impossible without the previous ones.

Your mention “teaching to the test” in passing but I think it raises an interesting point. Everything I’ve said is “teaching to the test”, it is just teaching to a different set of tests, ones the students actually are engaged with already. Furthermore those are tests that in some sense they’ll ineluctably have to keep taking for the rest of their lives, while the academic test will soon be irrelevant.

Again in your comments about Palin and Bush, I contest your emphasis on knowledge, though of course I agree about the past and possibly future disasters. All the knowledge in the world wouldn’t help if the office holder can’t use it effectively. Conversely, I think of having the knowledge as just a way of getting the skills and intuition, plus command of a resources to make one’s communication more effective (through examples etc.

For an (admittedly somewhat far fetched) example of how this distinction plays out, consider Magnus Carlsen, the chess wunderkind. He hasn’t had the normal training or embedding in chess culture, so he doesn’t know as much chess lore, for example the huge number of classic games that high level chess players have studied to develop their skills. Instead he has played an enormous amount of chess against very good computer programs. Apparently this has developed a remarkable level of skill and intuition about chess, without the usual historical context. Possibly the computer games in which he can experiment without the risk of “real” losses also helped.

Unfortunately it’s hard to transpose that into humanistic domains, until we can effectively simulate the legendary court of Denmark or historical Timbucktu in the late Askia dynasty and let students experiment with being Hamlet or Askia Ishaq II. But at least it is useful to understand that students might be better off with a computer simulation than reading Shakespeare or actual history. (Note: I don’t know anything about the history of Timbucktu, I just skimmed Wikipedia — but if I created a decent example that proves something, I think.)

Finally to close out my rereading and your “knowledge” theme, I don’t think Niebuhr is referring to knowledge “of” at all. He’s referring to skills of analysis, judgement, human engagement, and self-management, which may be acquired through studying history, culture and philosophy in the right way but could also (perhaps more reliably) be acquired in other ways.

And that truly is all for now.

But I think your major point is a really interesting one. My initial response to it is that knowledge also matters *both* to the quality of how people perform cultural competencies *and* to the underlying consequences of having cultural competency.

The first is the easier case to make: that if you don’t *know* The Scarlet Letter both as text and in the context of the history of American literature, your performance of what’s going on in it will be less skilled or competent than it might otherwise be. I readily concede that a student who reads a Cliff’s Notes version of a text can, if they’re otherwise rhetorically skilled, perform cultural competence fairly well. But they’re always one step away from a disastrous misstep.

The second point is harder but it’s really important. Let’s say students role-play The Scarlet Letter and are guided in appearing competent users of the text. What’s going to happen in most cases is what happens in some historical re-enactments and other similar exercises: a reductive and ultimately narcissistic flattening of the text or history or body of knowledge is going to take place. In it, the students will only be encouraged to find themselves, or that which they already know.

It’s the difference between facilitation and teaching. I can facilitate or negotiate for people. In that context, I’m not necessarily additive at all, and I propose that nothing is lacking in them. I’m helping to elicit something from within that’s believed to be there already. Teaching, it seems to me, begins from a premise of a lack, that the student does not yet have something (knowledge, skill, competency) which the teacher will impart to them. Good education has a mixture of both facilitation and teaching, I think. So while I can bring forth an existing skill at social analysis around the device of The Scarlet Letter, and maybe help a student hone that through practice, I also think I need to teach them something about the book that they don’t already know. Yes, so they can make better use of what they already are but also to encounter the critical point that not everything is them, that the world is not just a solipsistic mirror. Knowledge involves bringing a cumulative body of not-self into what you are and what you think.

To ask a side question, why is using Bourdieu reductive? You keep coming back to cultural capital, the ability to display knowledge as a signifier, etc. Of course that isn’t all there is, but just looking at the weight you give various themes, it illuminates a lot of the issues. Is this perhaps something you are required to say to remain respectable within your discipline (if that’s not too reductive)?

More seriously, perhaps the strongest theme (of many important ones) is “knowledge” — does one need to “know” something, how does certain “knowledge” help, etc. You implicitly but pretty clearly frame this knowledge as propositional.

Let me deeply contest the relevance of propositional knowledge to most of your actual issues, and provide an alternative within your example.

I claim most, possibly all of these issues with respect to the needs of the students can be better addressed by teaching skills of social analysis and self-presentation, rather than “knowledge” as you frame it.

Suppose the teacher who is trying the get the students to read The Scarlet Letter started by having some students role play an interaction in which they’d be embarrassed by not knowing something about Hawthorne (or more practically showed them a video in which students like them did this role play).

But not just as a stupid incentive to get with the program. Suppose the students then expanded on the role play, exploring (and discussing) the ways to detect they are in that kind of situation, ways to rhetorically get out of it if they don’t know the content, ways to efficiently extract the minimum content from the maximum number of sources to prepare for those social milieu, etc.

This all sounds way above the heads of 16 year olds, and of course the theory is (except for the AP ones who’d have a ball). But the practice is something they do every day. 16 year olds probably spend most of their waking hours in some form of analysis of the social relations they are embedded in, and trying to improve their self-presentation. (Plus of course they dream about the same things.)

So if the teacher got them role playing the relevant situations, and critiquing each other’s self-presentation, I’m quite sure they’d bring a huge amount of skill, energy, and creative intelligence to the process. In a few sessions they’d be able to ace any interaction (except truly scholarly ones) about Hester Prynne, they’d be able to detect and navigate in similar interactions where they didn’t have the background, and they’d have at least a rough sense of how to quickly orient within some domain of cultural capital like “canonical English literature” and learn what they need to know.

To return to your initial point this would leave most people in a better position than Sarah Palin, who has never acquired the rhetorical skills to handle these situations gracefully, or the standpoint to think about her own ignorance in a healthy way.

We could (and perhaps should) argue about whether this would actually work. But suppose it did. Which of your issues remain to be addressed? For one thing, we’d need to think about the larger social impact — I’m not sure but on the whole I think it would be positive.

The most obvious broader effect is that teachers and students could operate with much less enforced pretense (false consciousness). It seems to me that this has to be healthy, though I’d be interested to see a good defense of false consciousness. Getting rid of the pretense would in turn would open up a whole lot of space for discussion of how these dynamics work in the situations the students see in their lives, on TV and movies, etc. as well as future situations in college, work, adult social environments, etc.

Conversely, of course, it is just that false consciousness that would generate a political firestorm if anything like this was attempted, especially with students who were not in the cultural elites. All the social sanctions used to enforce the pretenses would be brought to bear on anyone who tried it. Of course that in itself would be quite interesting to watch.

Maybe enough for now, I may say more later.