Problem
1) What does the writer count as "already known" in the field? Who does the author say has this common knowledge?
2) What is the author's preliminary thesis or statement of purpose? What cues does the author use? Why does the author claim it is important?
3) With what reasons are the claims supported? What kinds of evidence does the writer use? Does the writer refute any conflicting evidence? What cues are used? What reasons are given?
Cultural Literacy, Curricular Reform, and Freshman Composition
Higher education is, as even the most casual reader of The Chronicle knows by now, busily reforming itself. Departments of English are in the thick of this reform-witness the Spring Hill conference on Doctoral Studies in English in 1987, and the English Coalition Conference to study the entire English curriculum that same year. These conferences, and the subsequent reports and recommendations now in print, have provided those of us involved in curriculum reform with opportunities to declare that the literary canon is dead, that "coverage" of great works is impractical, and that instead of carving out our disciplinary territory among specific texts we should be emphasizing the processes of reading, writing, and thinking. The editors of the English Coalition Conference report (Richard Lloyd Jones and Andrea Lunsford), for example, state that the report attempts to "envision a curriculum which posits knowledge as process" (xxiii). One scholar's view runs counter to the collective wisdom of these conferences; that scholar is E. D. Hirsch, who calls not for an emphasis on process but for a return to particular content in the curriculum, a content which would result in universal "cultural literacy." Hirsch is viewed by some as a dangerous man, by others as a curricular savior. But his critics and his supporters alike have reacted only to Hirsch's recommendations-to his now-famous list and his more recent Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. What I should like to do here is discuss the findings of Hirsch's research, his notion of cultural literacy and the concept of education which undergirds it, and explore some implications of these factors for the one course in our discipline that is still required in most university curricula, freshman composition.