Author Archives: Stephen Seyfer

Teachers Teach Doers

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George Bernard Shaw wrote in Man and Superman (1903), “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.” And since that time, an errant yet common belief is that teaching is for those who lack the capacity to succeed at more substantial work. Shaw did it consider teaching to be an esteemed profession.

We need to dig deeper into Shaw to understand his quote. Shaw attended four Dublin schools before dropping out in his early teens and engaging is self-education. Interestingly, one of the world’s great authors hated school. He learned instead from broad reading and constant visits to Dublin museums where he studied the art collection. Shaw learned from literary and artistic exemplars, often declaring that he was the greatest English writer since Shakespeare. He considered himself self-taught by his study of the best examples of what he wanted to learn.

There is such fallacy in Shaw’s statement. A stronger argument for teaching lies in “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Educating children grows people and teaching changes the world.

What do we know?

When Shaw was school-age and until the early 2000s, classroom teachers were the primary source of information for learning children. A teacher not only managed classrooms, but a teacher also constructed curriculum, determined the content and skills children learn, and designed the pedagogy of teaching. The teacher, school texts, and the school library were the sources of student information. To use a common analogy, teachers were perceived as the expert in the front of the classroom.

We live in a new age. The teaching Shaw experienced ended in the last century. The Internet provides instant access to worlds of information, and tools of technology put that information at every student’s fingertips. Further, AI gives learners a tool for displaying information, if not answers, to any question a learner thinks to ask. Teachers no longer are, or are considered to be, the information expert in a classroom.

The role of teacher has changed, if not improved, and has become more important than ever. Today’s teachers are not the source of classroom information; teachers are navigators, curators, and elucidators helping children find, understand, and learn from the information they read, hear, watch, and experience. Each of these functions – navigation, curation, and elucidation – is essential for learning children in the digital Information Age.

With ubiquitous AI, children need teachers to help them navigate the world of information. Navigation has been an essential skill in Googling Internet information for decades. Left on their own, children are adrift in an ocean of information, especially information spread in social media. Navigator-teachers help children shape what they want to find out into questions. Questions are structurally worded into prompts. Prompts help AI focus its search so that the information displayed meets the student’s inquiry.

Navigation is an increasingly sophisticated skill set that children in their grade levels and various courses. Inquiries in science use the lens of a student-biologist, chemist, physicist, and earth scientist. The lens is different in the social studies where lenses taken on the inquiries of economists, geographers, historians, political scientists, and behavioral scientists. Each academic discipline presents a lens for how to navigate in the world’s information systems. Successful navigation is knowing and being faithful to your lens.

Teachers help children curate the information they obtain. Curation starts with helping children understand that AI searches are fallible and 15-20% of the information provided by a search is wrong, incorrect, or unsubstantiated. One of the great eye-openers is when children learn that AI hallucinates and often just makes up information. The deeper and more complicated the search, the greater the need for curation.

Curator-teachers work beside and behind children in their information searches. A curator is not like a parent on Halloween unwrapping every piece of candy a child brings home for hidden threats. Curators are information-whisperers helping children create their own filters for deciding the reliability and validity of information. Curation is not just a school skill set, but a function children need to exercise 24/7 in the real world.

Finally, teachers are elucidators. Information derived from an Internet search opens many opportunities for “teachable moments.” Teachers start by asking children, “What does this mean?” And “How does this connect to what you already know?” And “What new questions do you have now?” Elucidators also ask children “So, what?” Elucidation helps children find meaning and teaches them be independent finders of informational meaning.

The Big Duh!

This is my “so, what” moment. I modify Shaw’s quote to “teachers teach doers.” Every great invention and break-through event in our history stands on the shoulders of someone who taught an inventor or exploring person foundational knowledge and skills, who posed a “so, what” challenge, and stood aside to help the doing.

Shakespeare did not learn to write in school. He learned Latin and classical literature at King’s New School in Stratford. More to the point, he learned to write poetry and plays in the reality of his day – on-the-job writing and editing and performance. People in the theaters and local printers critiqued and commented on Shakespeare’s work and he refined his writing into the work we know today. The greatest English writer pre-Shaw used navigators, curators, and elucidators of his day, albeit they were not classroom teachers, to learn and perfect his craft. He could do and learned to become a doer. Shaw was a Shakespeare – he learned from others who indirectly helped him navigate, curate, and elucidate what he learned.

Teachers teach AND create doers.

Polyglots, We Need You

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It is a good thing that the United States does not have an official language. With foresight, our Founding Fathers did not adopt an official language believing that the infusion of people from all over the world onto the North American continent would influence and strengthen American culture. Our 21st century demographics makes those men prescient. The world today, expansive and distant for our forebears, has become inextricably connected. People in the four quadrants of the globe can share a single conversation today. We need multilingualism to create understanding when multicultural understanding has never been more important.

What do we know?

I read in four languages. I also listen with fair comprehension in these languages. My generative language is not as strong, partly due to a lack of confidence and fewer opportunities to write and speak in those languages. The good news to me is that I can understand what people in these languages are trying to tell me. The better news is that while different languages can express a common concept, a people’s cultural relationships are reflected in the semantics of their language. More than knowing what people using different languages want me to know, understanding the semantics of their language allows me to know how they feel about what they are saying. To use a German word, language conveys a people’s weltanschauung – the way they see the world.

I commonly use the German phrase “Es tut mir leid.” Literally, I am saying that “I am sorry.” Empathetically, it means “This causes me sorrow.” Contextually, it means “It makes me want to cry.” To a German speaker, I can convey sorrow, compassion, and humility with four words that it takes a paragraph to convey in English.

US English and American speech sometimes is very curt and direct. We see it in contemporary media and politics. Plain speak is unembellished. It is the “ugly American” déjà vu. Years ago, from the television show, Boston Legal, I learned the phrase “bygones.” Entitled lawyers without sorrow said “bygones” to tell others to “forget it and move on.” Denny Crane (William Shatner) used these words to convey no regret, no sorrow, no contextual empathy other than a personal command to “move on.” Others might have said, “I’m sorry for that.” Crane said “bygones” and meant exactly that. In the way people speak to each other today, I hear the sentiment of “bygones” expressed broadly, especially when English-speakers talk to non-English speakers.

In Japanese, these words – そうは思いません- mean “I disagree.” In the Japanese statement of disagreement, however, there is an understatement of “pardon me” first followed by “I disagree” second. There is a graciousness in the disagreement. I find these nuances in other languages also.

A son-in-law is Mexican. Our daughter and granddaughters speak Spanish and English. In their conversations, I often hear a word of Spanish inserted into their English because the Spanish word and its nuance best express what they want to say. I also hear an English word or phrased inserted in their speech in Espanol.

Knowing what is meant inside the words that are spoken creates an understanding of what people think and feel and how they consider their world. Multilingualism breeds multicultural understanding and understanding allows people to know not just what someone is saying but also what they want you to know. How can we communicate if we do not invest in understanding the nuances of language?

The Big Duh!

Though immigration into the United States is becoming more selective and more difficult, language and lingual understanding is becoming more urgent. In each of the politico-economic hotspots around the world, people speak their own languages. In many news stories, the emotional anguish we see and hear is list because we do not know their language. So, we flip channels until we hear English spoken. Although our political leadership thinks English is the international language, knowing and understanding what the world’s people want us to know makes we monolinguals a handicapped people.

I was enthused by the number of my countrymen who watched World Cup broadcasts on Telemundo. The language of soccer is multicultural.

Today, only 20% of children in US public schools enroll in world languages. The decline in programs for elementary children is in a fast decline. There is no national impetus for schools to teach world languages and decreasing local school revenues make world languages an early program reduction. When national leadership understands only one language and is not interested in understanding other languages or the people speaking those languages, they set the tone for too many followers. We are being led toward monolingualism.

The growing urgency of global climate issues, epidemics of disease, tragedies of fire, hurricane, flood, and tornado, and hunger requires our national capacity to communicate with people everywhere and with understanding.

School Friendships and Life

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In my eighth decade, I increasingly reminisce about the people it has been a privilege to know. I refer to myself as a public educator with almost 60 years working in schools, curriculum, and instruction. My world revolves around schools and teaching. I estimate that I have known 1,000+ teachers and 12,000+ school children. In quiet moments, they all come back to mind. So many and so varied. Pictures in yearbooks ignite memories and the events of years ago are as clear as my yesterday. Yet, there are two people who form my schoolhouse book ends. Completely different from each other, they touched and shaped my sense of friendships for all time.

Carol personified intelligence and Bobby the epitome of sincerity. People seldom get better than Carol and Bobby and I see these two clearly when I start trekking back in time.

As the saying implies, Carol was born put together. Tall for her age, she was blonde and blue eyed and pretty. She was not overtly outgoing. Carol carefully selected what she did, who she did it with, and how she did it, and then excelled at all she did. She was aloof if all you wanted was pretty. And she was your friend if you invested in knowing her. Somewhat prim, her shy smile was a gift that lasted weeks. I always knew Carol and she always knew me.

Kids form their own groups in grade school. No adult lined us up and assigned us to groups that would become our friends. We kind of looked at each other, got to know each other, and to use a phrase from today, leaned in towards each other. It was not a neighborhood thing; our group was spread out and lived blocks apart. It was not a family status thing; fathers in our group were doctors, businessmen, and tradesmen. All mothers were homemakers. It was a magnetic kind of thing; we were drawn together and stayed together.

We were Baby Boomer kids and there were a lot of us. In our three-section, K-6 elementary school with 30+ in each section, Carol and I were in the same section from kindergarten through 6th grade. Later as a teacher, I would observe principals and teachers use test scores to balance classes. They assured a range of student abilities in each class. I think that is what happened to us. Carol and I were informally tracked from kindergarten through sixth grade. I give my belated thanks to Miss Phillips, our principal.

It was the early 1950s and girls wore dresses with white ankle socks to school. Boys wore blue jeans and Keds. Young girls stayed neat and clean while boys ran and played hard. It also was decades ahead of equity in education issues and in that paternalistic time boys were expected to be school leaders in all things. Yet when grades were posted and honors given, girls did well and Carol always was at the top of the lists. And even we boys knew who to team up with in class. When group work was assigned in class, every student wanted to work with Carol. They wanted her because she helped everyone in her group “get it right.”

There were kids in school who were really smart. Smart as in they knew things. In fact, they knew a lot about the thing they knew best. We had kids who were a whiz in geography or science, and kids who were artistic and could draw and make beautiful works. However, those kids were not the full package of smarts. They were selectively smart. Intelligence and smart are not the same thing. Carol was supremely intelligent. She saw the kernel of a problem, seemed to understand all of its facets, and could explain it so that it made sense to others.

I remember her Carol in kindergarten. She sat with a straight back and head held high and saw and heard everything and everybody. When our teacher told us to form a large circle, we circled up a lot in kindergarten, all eyes went to where Carol stood or sat and that was where the circle formed. We knew she was special from the get-go.

Early on I knew that Carol would be the star student in our class, so I weaseled my way to sit near her in our checkerboard of student desks. I thought that proximity would to the best student might rub off on me and it seemed to; for a while it did. What I really did was copy her traits. When given an assignment, she got right to it. She did not raise her hand often and never waved an arm when our teacher asked for volunteers. When called upon, she hesitated for an instance, formed her answer, and spoke by restating the question in her response. Of course, her penmanship was perfect because she wrote slowly and efficiently. She knew what to write, unlike most of us who started writing trying to find an answer before we ran out of paper or time.

I could keep up with her in language arts and social studies, but not in math and science. She processed information quickly and correctly. I think Carol saw answers where I saw confusion. Third through sixth grade are a sweet spot in my memory. As I became a Cub and then Boy Scout, swam on the YMCA swim team, and played baseball spring, summer, and fall, Carol was my in-school constant. We talked every day. We shared stories. Knowing and being near her made me a better student and a better classmate. I trusted Carol explicitly and knew she would tell me the truth of things without exception. A friend like Carol is an exceptional friend.

Junior high and high school changed us, as I think they were designed to do. I was in Carol’s language arts and social studies classes but not in her math or science classes. The same was true in high school. We saw each other, talked, and shared stories every day. She developed boyfriends and had a girlfriend. She was a musician and I was a jock. But we stayed close friends in class. While her intelligence expanded and her academic honors increased, she stayed the same best “put together person” I knew. If my parents placed their confidence in Walter Cronkite and his reporting of the evening news, I placed all my confidence in Carol and her explanation of our world.

For each of our thirteen years in K-12 classrooms and activities, Carol and I were the same friends we always had been. She was best student I would ever know and she always will be.

College and distance ended our time. She went to a small, private, out-of-state college and I went to a state university. Carol majored in economics and later earned a master’s degree in Russian literature. She founded an insurance consultant company and wrote a highly regarded book. We did not speak again and the fault of that is mine to bear. Carol died in 2002 at the age of 54 years.

My junior high class schedule card told me Room 410 was my new Home Room. I was to report there on my first day in junior high and then every day for three years. There were 650 students in my K-6 elementary school. There were more than 1,200 students in my grade 7-9 junior high school.

In Room 410 I sat at four-student table next to Bobby, a large black kid in jeans and a T-shirt. Bobby was the first black I met in a school classroom. Black kids played on teams from the neighborhoods closer to downtown in our summer baseball league. That was the extent of my knowledge of black people. We played against each other but never spoke, played but never shared, and played and went our separate ways.

Bobby said “Hi” and I said “Hi” back to him. Home room was the beginning place for students in our school every day. It was a school and grade level organizational time not instructional. Our home room teacher told us to introduce ourselves to the other three students at our table. I do not remember the other two. I shared that I was one of five boys in our family – no sisters – and that I lived one mile from our new school and would either ride my bike or walk to school every day. I was looking forward to playing sports in junior high. Bobby seemed reluctant to share. He quietly said he was the oldest of seven brothers and sisters. Then he was quiet.

When we were handed school forms to fill out, Bobby did not have a pencil. I gave him one of mine. When he did not understand the question, I explained it. We were assigned hallway lockers and given school padlocks to secure our locker. My locker was next to Bobby’s, and I helped him with the combination. He had nothing to put in his locker.

Bobby and I did not share any classes. And Bobby did not go out for the seventh-grade football team. I thought he would, partly because he was a big kid, and I just hoped he would. When I asked him to meet me after school and I would take him to the locker room to talk with our coach, Bobby said he needed to go home right after school.

Bobby and I talked every morning during the first month of school. In early October, Bobby was absent from home room. I was not worried about his absence on the first day or the second but after the third day I asked our teacher if she knew if Bobby was okay. I thought he must be sick at home. She told me that Bobby was fine and was in a new home room. Strange, I thought, but what did I know.

Our junior high had a large cafeteria and four lunch shifts. I was a sack luncher and bought a half-pint milk carton every day to go with my sandwich, carrot sticks and cookie. There was a milk counter at each end of the cafeteria. I knew that were classrooms on short hallways behind the milk counters, but I did not know anyone who went to those classrooms. Down the hallway, there were open doorways and I could see students walking from room to room. I had never been in that basement corner of our school.

I was buying my lunch milk one day in early December when I saw Bobby. He was standing in the hall, about 40 feet away, looking at me. We mirrored each other in our smiles and waved at each other simultaneously. I turned to the lunch lady when she asked for my nickel for the carton of milk and when I looked again Bobby was gone.

The next morning, I asked my home room teacher about the classrooms behind the cafeteria. She told me something that was completely new to me. Those classrooms were for special education students. They had a small and separate school within our school. I asked her what was special about special education, and she told me it was for students who have difficulties learning in regular classes. And that was all she said.

I asked my mother about special education, and she told me that some children are born with mental disabilities that make learning in school difficult and there are special classes that teach those students differently than how I am taught. I was hearing a lot of small answers for a larger question.

For weeks I looked for Bobby down that hallway. I saw others but no Bobby. In January, after our winter vacation, I bought my lunch milk, stepped around the milk counter, and walked down the hallway. Looking in the doors, I saw students in wheelchairs in one classroom and students weaving baskets from straw in another. In the third classroom I found Bobby all by himself. When I called his name, he looked up, shook his head, and waved me off. He said in a faint voice, “I am in time out.”

“Steve, can I help you?” It was one of our football coaches. “I was looking for my friend, Bobby” I said. “Bobby is in time out because he was causing a problem in class” Coach said. “Problem? Bobby? He is never a problem with me,” I said. With a smile and kind voice, Coach told me to go back to the cafeteria.

I never saw Bobby in school, junior high or high school, again.

In the 1960s I could earn my University of Iowa tuition, room and board, and spending money, and more, from summer employment at the meat packing plant in our city. The “more” at the packing plant was my education into the working men and women who did not live in my neighborhood or attend the university. These were men who tutored me in the killing and butchering of cattle, hogs, and sheep. They were my surrogate parents in the world of work. It was hard and honest work that required sweat, attention to safety, and unique camaraderie. Our mutual safety and well-being rested in the person working on either side.

We talked while we worked. I learned stories of men who were born in the south, served in World War Two, and moved to Iowa after the war for new beginnings. Throughout all stories, I heard about underlying bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination. These were not stories told in my neighborhood or in my classes at the university. Their stories were the gist of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King. They were stories of people who suffered discrimination because of their color and race. Work at the meat packing plant, we called it “the Pack,” was a job they could get, and hold, and create a life around.

At the Pack, the only prejudice was for a person who would not work hard and safely. I worked, ate my lunch, took my breaks, and learned every day from black men who became my friends.

That is where I re-found Bobby. At the age of 21 he was a large man and did a large man’s work. Bobby worked in the beef offal section. His job was to fill in where needed. Because of his size, he easily pushed the carts of lace fats from offal to the rendering room. He carted out the kidneys and the livers. I saw him cleaning cow stomachs, washing intestines, and cleaning silage from the floors. He was good with a knife, a smile, and willingness to do whatever was asked of him.

One day as I was filling in for a man in offal on the stomach washing stand, I felt a tug on the back of my full-length rubber apron. After a second tug, I looked behind to see Bobby. It was a face I knew. He was all smiles. I smiled back at him instantly.

“See you at break” I yelled above the constant and loud noise, and he nodded and pushed another lace fat cart down the aisle between stands.

Bobby and I took breaks and lunch together for the rest of my summer employment. Slowly, Bobby filled in the years. He dropped out of school after seventh grade. Due to being retained in a grade level several times, he was a 16-year-old seventh grader. He said that school was too hard, no fun, and not worth his time. At 16 years he got his first job at the Pack and had been working there since. Although he wanted to hear about me, I wanted to learn about him.

Sometimes we learn from a person and sometimes from what others say about that person. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was Bobby’s friend. “He is the kindest soul on earth!” “He has a quick smile, a great laugh, and helping hands.” “I can’t tell you how many times and in how many ways he has helped me. Most importantly, he has been my friend.” “Bobby is family.”

Bobby lived with his aunt. His parents told him that if he was working at the Pack and not going to school, he needed to live elsewhere. He would not be a good influence on his younger brothers and sisters. His aunt took him in, renting him a room with breakfast and supper for $1 per year. Even though he was no longer in his parents’ home, Bobby saw and played with his brothers and sisters every day. He did not go bars or hang out with older single men. He loved his family.

He owned and drove a car, but he did not have a driver’s license. He could not pass the written test. He had a savings account at the Pack’s credit union, though he gave more than half his weekly earnings to his family and aunt.

I worked five summers at the Pack. The first day on the job each summer, I used my morning break to find Bobby, and each June it seemed like we had not been apart since the prior September. While I was getting a college education and preparing to teach English and social studies, Bobby worked his jobs at the Pack.

Before I graduated from university, I was offered teaching contracts in four different school districts. I accepted a job at junior high school out-of-state. Reality, though, was that I had no money to get from graduation, across the summer months, to the start of my teaching job.

I returned to the Pack the day after graduation and my friends and Bobby. I was assigned beef offal, of all places, for my first day. At the morning break, I was surrounded by men and women in their rubber aprons and Pack hats who congratulated me on my graduation. My working friends were happy with my educational success. Although none of them attended college, and some had not finished high school, most had children who were college grads. Educating their children was hugely important for Pack workers. And Bobby was right there in the middle. Smiling as always.

It was a short summer at the Pack. I needed to move hundreds of miles away, settle into an apartment, and attend new teacher orientation. On my last day at the Pack, Bobby and my friends took me to the closest bar for a lunch of sandwiches and lemonade (for Bobby and me). Knowing what was planned, I had arranged to pay the bill. And, at the end of the day, I left the Pack never to return.

Life is life. I taught junior high English and social studies for five years, earned a master’s degree, and took a job as an assistant high school principal. The meat packing industry changed. Meat packing was mechanized and robotics replaced human hands. After several years, the Pack closed and the city razed its buildings; the contaminants in the ground were monumental.

I read Bobby’s obituary in 2005. He never left the neighborhood. Bobby died in a car accident, he was driving. I feel the same about Bobby as I do about Carol. I could have but had not kept up our friendship.

My bookends stayed with me throughout my career in school. Because of them, I was highly aware of intelligent children and challenged children. I knew hundreds of children like Carol whose significant intelligence lit up their classrooms and teachers. Carol was my reminder that the “stars” in school need friendship and nurturing. The pressure of being the top student can be unkind and harmful. And I knew thousands of children like Bobby who did not need basement and hidden classrooms, but teachers who saw their assets instead of their deficits. Bobby is my reminder that all children can learn if we know how to teach them.

So, I will write it again. Life is life. As I did not stay in contact with Carol and Bobby, neither did they keep in contact with me. The former is my fault. In my sunset days, I spend moments considering the latter. Although I remember and cherish my years with them, perhaps their time with me was not that special to them. That is sobering.

I Inquire. Therefore, I am.

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Children are our greatest gifts and our greatest responsibilities. We are accountable for who and what they grow to be – physically, socio-emotionally, and intellectually.

Children grow in our families and communities and reflect various effects of well-researched nature and nurture child development theories. It is the nurturing that concerns me. How are we shaping their abilities to think? Yep, to think. Descartes’s premise “I think, therefore I am” is extremely true of 21st century children. As they develop their capacity to think for themselves, they become the person they will be for their lifetime.

My concern is their capacity to understand and evaluate and draw conclusions about what is happening in their 21st century. Concisely, how are they informed and how do they process information. I am not worried about their conclusions – each generation shapes its own world view and works to find its way forward. And I am not into restricting their thinking. Autocrats try to restrict how the public thinks, not educators.

How are they different?

Our grandchildren, eight young adults, are both treasured and bewildering. The treasured part comes naturally with our unconditional love from their birth. The bewildering part derives from four who are demonstrably inquisitive and engaging with their world and four who are self-absorbed and oblivious to happenings outside their social and online world. As I observe hundreds of young people I worked with in our local schools, I see this schism writ large. The trait of self-absorption prevents some youth from any outward concern for their fellow man. And self-absorption is exacerbated by their ubiquitous use of narrowed social media.

I start with the inquisitive. These four grandchildren read books, pay attention to multiple media outlets, and seek information about global, national, state, and community affairs. The critical attribute to me is that they read. Every person with smart devices today receives flashes of news on their devices. The inquisitive dig deeper to read online to understand why something happened and its significance. They also compare what differing reporters say about events and issues. They are learning to cull the relevant from the irrelevant, evaluate and weigh the evidence of perspectives, and establish their own informed point of view.

Back to that word, “read.” As often as they read from blurbs from their screens, they also read printed texts. Our inquisitive grands always have a book at hand, some in print and some e-books. They are comfortable with the odd moments that occur in their day and turn to their habit of reading. They surprise and impress me with the variety of their titles and authors. More to the point, they delight me with their conversation and comfort in speaking about what they read. They are constantly growing their world by using the stories they read to examine themselves and their world. They compare and contrast themselves to the characters in books, the worlds authors create, and the scenarios of human interactions they read. Readers look outward to consider their inward selves.

The reading inquisitive knows that the proverbial butterfly in Asia affects life in Wisconsin. National and world events that seem so distant from the comforts of town and neighborhood create ripples of effect that permeate everywhere. Inquisitiveness opens a sensitivity to these phenomena that removes their surprise at unintended or expected consequences.

Alas, the non-inquisitive seem to have eyes only for mirrors. Their world is their circle of friends and their friends live online. Without comparatives, their self-worth is only what their circle tells them it is. Their worldview is non-existent.

Their understanding of significant events is limited to what confronts them. In a moment of panic, they will look up from their ongoing conversation with an AI avatar when they want to purchase their favorite strawberry matcha latte. Bewildered when told that the Haitian barista at their favorite coffee shop was deported by ICE after a Supreme Court decision vacated temporary protective status for endangered people. “What will I do now?” is all they can ask.

The Big Duh!

When our youth stop thinking, they cease to be and the future is endangered.

Knowing Matters; Don’t Be Intellectually Passive

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We celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next month. Fanfare is required. So is fact-fare. I asked a party of people “What is the big deal about the Declaration? What really happened on July 4, 1776, that merits our celebration? The Declaration refers to “unalienable rights.” Who does the Declaration imbue with these rights? Everyone?”

Nationally, Pew surveys tell us that 53% of Americans cannot identify the underlying reasons for the writing of the Declaration. Most think that July 4 is the date it was approved by the 13 colonies. Most are not aware that white males had unalienable rights, but women, children, enslaved people, and Native Americans did not. And in most colonies, the religion and economics of a man mattered in deciding their unalienability.

Is knowing these important? The lack of this knowledge will not affect the fireworks coloring the skies or the beer and hot dogs consumed at picnics on July 4th. Knowing though does tell us that the Declaration was not an isolated event 250 years ago but the beginning of a process for all Americans to achieve the unalienable rights guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence. Work is still in progress.

How broad and deep is your general background knowledge? Yep, I am talking about the answers to Jeopardy-like questions. And the kinds of questions that arise in any active conversation that relies on knowing things. When asked factual questions, what percentage of the time do you know the answer and what percentage of the time do you Google, Siri, or AI an answer? Does knowing things make a difference?

What are we talking about?

Cultural literacy is a person’s capacity to understand, discuss, and use the unwritten background knowledge that we take for granted. A literate person knows the literal definition of words, explanations of concepts, has recall of facts, and can fluently talk about these. Literacy includes a working knowledge of shared symbols, references, and traditions of our historical and contemporary life. Like a jack-of-all-trades, the culturally literate are widely knowledgeable though not expert on all.

In the 1980s E.D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know considered 5,000 words, names, concepts, and events that a person should know to be knowledgeably conversant. To not know these meant a person is handicapped in general conversations.

Another measure is a person’s general vocabulary. Assessments show that high school graduates have a confident working knowledge of about 50,000 words. Working vocabulary allows a person to read complex and complicated materials. When a person knows 95% of the words in what they read or hear, they can contextually know the meaning of words they do not know. But when 5% or more of the words are unknown, a person gets lost and stops reading.

The contemporariness of knowledge also is important. In the 1950s Buckminster Fuller estimated that prior to 1900 human knowledge doubled every 100 years. By 1945, he posited knowledge was doubling every 25 years, and by the 1980s knowledge was doubling every 13-14 months. Cultural content changes with the times. Some of Hirsch’s 5,000 would still be valid and other key items replaced by more current knowledge.

Why is knowing things essential?

So that you can connect the dots. Cause and effect are still at work in our world. Most recently a knowledge of world geography, geopolitics, and geoeconomics have been essential to understanding the wars between the US and Iran; Israel and Gaza/Lebanon/Iran; Russia and Ukraine; the Ebola outbreak in the Congo and the lack of US aid; China and Taiwan; and the Trump tariffs on world trade. Each of these alone influences the world. Taken as a whole, the world continues in a state of constant combativeness.

So that false facts and special interests do not misinform you. The stream of everyday news is constant and the biases within it grow ever more powerful. Literacy allows a person to weigh the value and importance of what is said and who is saying it. Bias and prejudice grow as most of the news is owned by a small group of the wealthy elite. We have lost daily, local news and objective state and national news.

So that you do not become passive. Understanding different points of view, underlying causation, predictive outcomes, and the ever-present unintended consequences cause the informed to be more creative in proposing changes and alternatives. A lack of knowledge favors the status quo.

So that AI is not your personal brain power. It would be too easy for a person to give up on knowing. Why do you need to know if you can just ask Siri or orally ask your AI personal agent on your phone. And, voila! Your AI agent is you.

The Big Duh!

If the cure for obesity is to “eat less and move more,” then the cure of cultural illiteracy is to “acquiesce less and read, talk, and engage more.”

We can put the “literacy spurs” to children in school by decreasing the quantity and increasing the quality of information they learn. Quantity is not their friend. Academic content is learned in the “Reader’s Digest” format; it is condensed. It is true that most students seldom finish reading an entire book in school. They are given summaries instead. So, they know a lot of summaries but little of what makes literature great or why a non-fiction work is “must know” information.

We need to be E.D. Hirsch-like and constantly harvest the “required” information for children to learn. There is so much history, science, and literature that children get a glimpse at most. If children before 1999 needed a full school year to study American or world history, how do we expect them to learn both the pre-1999 and everything since 2000 in the same number of school weeks? The same is true of science and the arts. Our school curriculum has bloomed large, and it needs weeding.

And children need engagement experiences at all ages. This is not our engaging them, but their engaging with each other and with people outside the school. During early childhood through graduation, their primary engagement is with faculty. They need to engage with the world, and then consider it, talk about it, and analyze and evaluate it with their faculty.

The world of information is growing by the second these days. As it expands, our next generation needs improved tools to know it, understand it, and deal with it.